It went a bit like Ursula. On Saturday, when Iran started flying missiles into Dubai, Ursula von der Leyen made a tweet (or whatever they’re called now) saying that, given the gravity of the situation, she was calling a security meeting for Monday.
All the pages of all the social networks were filled with memes, Sanremo was forgotten (it had taken its time not to be memorable) and everyone was only playing with Europeans who don’t work on Saturdays and Sundays even if missiles rain down.
I only received and sent memes for half a day, and I thought that today I would write about it, about us idlers, how bad it is to make us work on the weekend. But then the algorithm, which doesn’t honor holidays, made me understand that the situation was evolving faster than Ursula or I could have predicted.
And so now here I am, on a Monday afternoon, writing this little Tuesday page when for two days my Instagram has been monographically full of Italians in Dubai. It looks like Cortina at Christmas 1984. It looks like Rimini at August 1962. They’re all there. And they have, I discover, very peremptory opinions about being there.
I only knew Dubai by name, only because every now and then some of my acquaintances say something like “yes, you make a lot of money, but how do you do it, people reduced to slavery with confiscated passports”; for that, but above all because Emirates stops there.
I don’t know how it happened that a place that until fifteen years ago no one had ever heard of has become the one you have to pass through to go anywhere, but currently I have a number of acquaintances who are prisoners somewhere – in Thailand, in the Maldives, in Australia – because that air route is closed and they can’t return.
Yesterday a friend spent an amount that would make the internet indignant for a plane ticket that would take her back from Thailand by taking a wider route, from Hong Kong and Paris, skipping Dubai. She could have stayed on the beach an extra week and nothing would have happened, but she says prices have already tripled and who wants to stay in that part of the world with missiles flying anyway.
An acquaintance slept in the car park of the Mandarin, in Dubai, because the solution, when you have rich tourists and missiles in your head, is to send them to the car park three floors underground.
Another acquaintance, who, returning from the Maldives, had the bad luck of stopping in Dubai shortly before they closed the airport, says that after three nights “with these Bedouins” she learned to distinguish between the noise of the interceptor and that of the fighter. Quick course for learning the sound of war details.
But all this is nothing compared to the Italians in Dubai that Instagram offers me. Meanwhile: none of these people understand what profession they do. I take it for granted that they are the replica of that conversation between Silvio Berlusconi and Nadia Macrì (“and what good do you do?” “President, what do you want me to do: hustlers”). The men boh.
They are all founders of you can’t understand what, heads of you can’t understand what, dieticians, mystics, private jet experts. It’s as if missiles were flying over the set of a Carlo Vanzina film, which I thought about a lot in forty-eight hours of discovering this fabulous humanity. I even saw someone making videos wearing a white Lacoste, I hadn’t seen a white Lacoste since I played tennis in a club that kicked you off the court if you weren’t in white, about forty years ago.
To make you understand the spirit of these wonderful expatriates that every proloco dreams of having on their side, I am copying the caption of one of these videos, made by someone who wrote in his bio that he is a 5-a-side football coach (whatever that is) and from his accent it seems like he has never left the GRA, and instead he is in Dubai, two hours outside the centre, because like many he seems convinced that missiles are a question of postal code and therefore he went a little out of the way because otherwise the older son will ask too many questions at the noise of the missiles.
Caption of the video: «Even more convinced that we live in a state that takes care of the citizen in every aspect. Thank you United Arab Emirates.” He’s a nice director. In the speech of the video, our hero of the Arab connection says that “really chapeau” because “in any case the security, guys, let’s be clear, was crazy, because I don’t know how many other nations could have withstood an attack of, well, two hundred-odd missiles”. There aren’t even many other places that have Iran in front of them, Iraq on one side, Pakistan on the other, and in short let’s say that the emirs are expected to have a more organized defense than the French, that’s it.
The “CEO and founder” of a private aircraft company says don’t worry, you can take the dog away on your good private jet, if they have the vaccines in order the dogs can leave Oman, entering is more complicated but who wants to put their furry child at risk by making him go to those dangerous places, damn.
The founder of something related to yoga (be patient, these are territories unknown to me) is relieved because her plane left Abu Dhabi just before the missiles were launched, so she is safe and sound in the Maldives, but there is also bad news: the participants in her yoga seminar are unable to get to the Maldives, damn. It takes empathy, he explains.
But most are keen to tell us that they are all false alarms, there is no danger there, they are still the “chapeau” nation that the other one said. «But escape from where, from what», harangues a real estate agent who inexplicably does not warble “Maracaibo”. «We who were here felt more panic from Italy than from Dubai. Here too I saw someone riding the panic trend.”
Perhaps he is referring to one of my favorites – bio: «esoteric entrepreneur» – who also went outside Dubai, and films us in a sort of gigantic tavern furnished by nouveau riche and in fact deserted: «There is only us, the resort is completely private, this is the location».
I don’t know what job it is that a blonde lady indicates in her bio with the words “I built my independence online”, but she too is indignant with those who dare to say that Dubai is dangerous, for some missile: “Just stay calm at home as a precaution”. No respect, says the young lady, for those who suffer from anxiety: “Broadcasting all this hurts.”
The «licensed influencer» broadcasts from a rather crowded underground garage, and appearing exceptionally sane says «people seem to be calm, I don’t know how the fuck they do it».
The woman who from a terrace where she is having dinner “with a fireworks display” points out to us a building that has been hit will have fifty thousand euros of Chanel stuff on her: maybe Carlo Vanzina isn’t enough, maybe Monty Python is needed, maybe they aren’t enough either, it’s just something completely different.
My favorite is perhaps the one that explains to us that the government has told us to stay away from windows, so as not to run the risk of tripping over a missile, and he tells us this by making his good video on the balcony. But there are many nominations in what is perhaps the first convergence between war with cameras in the phone and war in the territory of the rich: the wet dream of any screenwriter.
The coach (from I don’t know what, I guess about life) is in Bali, she left Dubai five days earlier, she wanted to stay but felt the need to be “hugged by mother Bali”, and the lesson she draws from it is not “don’t go to rich third world places” but “trust the energy that surrounds you, let yourself be guided”.
The guy who works in fitness and is in a basement with the cat in the cage, but warns “don’t believe everything you see on social media, the explosions are due to wiretapping.”
The digital creator who in strict Neapolitan explains to us that it is “a more particular Sabbath” while making toast with Nutella. “The worst thing is when the alarm goes off.”
The Sicilian couple – his bio is all in all honest: «New projects coming soon» – makes a video from the supermarket, in front of the Barilla pasta shelf. They thank you for your concern, but he explains that there were many explosions but now they’re making a lasagna, she adds that «in Dubai safety is an absolute priority, the security systems work perfectly, life goes on». Stalin’s Russia had more dissidents than Dubai’s Italy.
