“What about on your side?” Khaled asked. “Would the New York Mercantile Exchange partner with us on such a project?”
David fought back the first answer that popped into his head—a huge, resounding no. He wanted to try to humor the idea a little longer, if only because Khaled’s enthusiasm was so damn infectious. But the idea of selling this to the Italians and Jews who ran the Merc—it seemed overwhelming. When kids from Brooklyn pictured Arabs, they saw men in robes riding camels and chopping off heads.
Certainly, Gallo would never go for the project; it would be exactly the sort of change that he dreaded. David could just picture him in that butcher shop with his baseball bat. On the other hand, Reston might be swayed to at least entertain the idea—to think about the ways such a project could benefit the exchange in terms of publicity. And of course, financially, a Dubai exchange
could be structured to benefit the Merc immensely: they could create a new set of oil contracts so that they didn’t compete with the contracts sold in Manhattan—and in that way open up an entirely parallel oil market. But for Reston to feel strong enough to set out to convince the rest of the board to partner with an Arab country—well, that was unlikely, to say the least.
“I don’t know,” David finally said, trying to sugarcoat his response. “There are many members of the board who would definitely be against it.”
Khaled nodded.
“I do know what you’re thinking, Mr. Russo. I understand that there are a lot of misconceptions—on both sides. I know how the West views the Islamic world. I spent time at NYU, then finished my schooling in Cambridge and Geneva. I know what you see on TV.”
David shrugged. Was that what was holding him back from taking this idea more seriously? Stereotyping? Racism? Unintentionally, David thought back to his father, unable to step inside an elevator or to take a one-hour flight to watch his only son graduate from business school. The image brought up more dark thoughts—angry thoughts. David quickly pushed them away. In truth, those thoughts embarrassed him. He was not going to be controlled by emotions like those. And besides, it wasn’t emotion that made Khaled’s idea seem insane—it was the impracticality of it. This was an Arab country. The Merc was a purely Western idea. Oil was the only thing they had in common—but to Khaled’s people, oil was “the Black Blood of Allah.” To David’s people, oil was money, pure and simple.
Luckily, before David needed to respond, Khaled rose from the table, clapping his hands together. Then he gestured for David to follow and suddenly headed toward the door.
“I know you are skeptical, Mr. Russo, but at least do me the favor of keeping an open mind. Give me a day or two to work on you. The only way to truly change one stereotype is to create a new one. That, more than anything, is what Dubai is
attempting to do. Maybe you and I will find a way to be a part of this revolution.”
As David followed the young Arab out of the conference room, he decided that, at the very least, he could do as Khaled asked and keep an open mind. At the same time, somewhere deep in the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but think about the last conversation he’d had with his father.
Khaled’s idea seemed impossible—but then again, a center of market capitalism in the middle of the Arab world…
if that wasn’t something important, then what was?
T
he nightclub was called Kasbah, though it didn’t need to be; it was an extravagant, cavernous, three-floor affair dressed up like a sheik’s palace, with arched entryways, Persian carpets, palm trees, wicker baskets, and flowing draperies. If it hadn’t been for the multicultural, well-heeled crowd and the thundering and thoroughly modern Arab dance music, David would have felt transported right into the pages of an Arabian fairy tale.
“There’s something for everyone,” Khaled explained as he waved off a waitress in a tube top and a miniskirt attempting to sell them shots of pure oxygen from a yellow tank slung around her waist. “Originally, Dubai’s native population had a thriving souk culture, which means that it’s a city with a trading heritage. When the emir decided to thrust the nation into the modern era, it was natural to invite in partners from all over the world—and places like this sprung up almost overnight. Now the City of Gold caters not only to foreign investors but to foreigners as well, with a social scene that rivals that of any big city in the world.”
Having visited a half-dozen bars, restaurants, and discos before settling into the Kasbah, David could not argue with Khaled’s
assessment; certainly, the Kasbah matched anything David had seen in New York or London. Even though it was barely eleven at night, the place was packed; every table in the VIP was reserved, and he’d counted more than twenty bottles of champagne gliding past on trays carried by members of the gorgeous waitstaff—all of those bottles in the last twenty minutes.
At first, David had been surprised to find that the club served alcohol. But Khaled had explained that most of the nightclubs, discos, and expat bars existed in a differently regulated part of the city.
“There are really two separate Dubais,” he had said as they were led to the VIP table by an Asian hostess wearing harem pants, a midriff-bearing top, and a veil. “One for devout Muslims, and one for the expats—who, by the way, now outnumber the indigenous population almost eight to one.”
It was an amazing statistic, but the number wasn’t surprising: during the tour Khaled had given him over the past few hours, David had noticed that most of the people they passed were either European or Southeast Asian. Even the Arabs they saw—often young men in large groups dressed in Western style, but occasionally in smaller cliques wearing traditional robes—seemed to be from elsewhere, either tourists or businessmen. And David had also noticed that a large proportion of the people he’d seen were young.
“And it’s not just the nightlife,” Khaled continued. “The citizens here recognize that many of our visitors come from very different cultures; as long as the respect flows both ways, there are no problems with the many varied lifestyles.”
David nodded. Khaled had already explained much of this in the BMW ride over from the Emirates Tower. The conversation had begun when David asked him about something he had seen in the lobby of the building: a woman was showing a marriage certificate to one of the security guards before entering an elevator that led up to her hotel room. Khaled had explained that after a certain hour women and men were allowed into the same room
only if they proved that they were husband and wife. It was all very quiet, very reserved—but the rules were there, and this was assuredly a double society. You could drink and play in the clubs, but you didn’t flaunt things in public, you didn’t walk outside with a beer, and you didn’t try to bring a girl back to your hotel.
At the Kasbah, the alcohol flowed and the girls wore miniskirts; outside on the street, women didn’t have to wear burkas—though David had indeed seen a few in the hotel lobby and on the sidewalks—but they didn’t flaunt their sexuality either. There were codes of behavior, but once you understood that, Dubai seemed as free as anywhere else David had been. And from the looks of the Kasbah, there was certainly room for debauchery.
At the moment, however, David was sticking to Perrier—partially out of respect for Khaled, who did not drink for religious reasons, and partially because he wanted to keep his mind sharp as he surveyed the Dubai scene. Ever since he’d left the conference room, his thoughts had been on overdrive; though he still believed it was an impossible idea—and one that he wasn’t even sure he wanted to take part in—he had already begun deconstructing the notion of a Dubai oil exchange analytically, like they’d taught him in business school.
Breaking it down to its simplest form, David realized that to build an oil exchange in Dubai you needed three things: you needed the physical exchange; you needed the personnel who would be willing to go trade there; and you needed the rest of the world to take it seriously.
Considering the amount of money the emir had been pouring into construction, the physical exchange was not an issue. And places like the Kasbah—and the multitude of high-end restaurants, lounges, and dance halls that Khaled had shown him on their tour—went a long way toward solving the second task. It was incredibly important to be able to show traders and brokers that living in Dubai was really no different than living in London or New York—that the comforts they expected were available and there was ample opportunity to spend the money they’d be making.
David stretched his neck to peer over the brass-rimmed balcony toward the dance floor below. Certainly, there were women everywhere—some as beautiful as he’d ever seen walking down Fifth Avenue, and that was saying a lot. In fact, the club seemed disproportionately women—tall, well-dressed, striking women with plenty of makeup, mostly in groups of four or five, writhing to the beat coming from the huge overhead speakers.
Khaled nodded to David. “Although it’s not something generally spoken about, our after-hours scene has also flourished with the growth in the expat community. Women from all over Europe—models, royalty, socialites, the party set—have come, following the wealth to its source.”
David turned back to his Perrier. Selling the lifestyle of Dubai wouldn’t be the hard part, that was for sure. It was the third aspect of building an exchange that would be the nonstarter. How would the trading world take seriously a center of pure capitalism smack-dab in the center of the Middle East? Khaled had been giving him the full-court press—first-class travel, first-class hotel room, a tour of the megaclubs—and still he was having trouble believing that Khaled was entirely serious. He was truly beginning to like the kid, and he respected his intelligence—but what was his angle? Didn’t he have to have an angle?
“Khaled, you studied in New York, Cambridge, and Geneva. Now you’re working on multibillion-dollar deals with developers, banks, whatever. Why do you want to go after something like this, a twenty-million-dollar project that will probably fail anyway?”
Khaled paused as a pair of young Lebanese men dashed by their table, chasing a pretty blond Russian who was heading for the stairs that led to the dance floor. Then he leaned forward over the table.
“David, I’ll be honest with you. I’m not like most of the young men in this city. I am not here chasing wealth. My uncle is one of the richest men in the world. My father—rest his soul—always provided me with the best that life had to offer. I could leave Dubai tomorrow, go live in one of my uncle’s many palaces, or
enter the party circuit in a dozen cities around the globe—maybe along the way drop my beliefs and pretend I was a secular and free Lebanese like many of the Arabs who visit Dubai on vacation pretend—but none of that interests me.”
His high cheeks were flushed, and there was real fire in his dark eyes.
“Dubai, for me, is not about wealth and Western-style debauchery. I believe I was sent here to make a difference.”
It was strange to hear something like that, especially in a place like this. David knew that Reston would have laughed his way right down to the dance floor, corralling a waitress or two in the process. But David didn’t feel like laughing. Instead, he was again reminded of his father—and about what his thoughts had been when that airplane was heading toward his window.
About doing something important.
David looked at Khaled, at his dark Arabic features. It was more than irony—it almost seemed like some sort of cosmic joke. That the thing his father spoke of—the important thing that David could do—might come from a kid with those features, in a place like this.
“Khaled,” he started, then he stopped himself. Did he really trust this kid enough to tell him what he’d kept inside for more than a year? And why him? Why here?
But David knew the answer. He
wanted
Khaled to know—and respond to—what he carried inside.
“On 9/11,” he started again, “my dad was at work on the twenty-seventh floor of the World Trade Center. I was at Harvard Business School at the time, and I was sleeping off an all-night study session in my dorm room. I got a call from the dean’s office and rushed over in time to see the buildings collapse on TV. I was so hysterical, they gave me these knockout pills to keep me from hurting myself. By the time I woke up, they’d found my father. He was alive. In fact, he had no physical injuries to speak of, but sometimes the worst kinds of injuries don’t show up on X-rays and MRIs.”
Khaled’s expression softened, but he did not turn away. Nor did he interrupt; he just let David say what he had to say.
“He’d been trapped inside that building, watching people burning and falling to their deaths—and it just broke something inside of him. Two days later, he suffered a serious heart attack. Then, after he’d gotten out of the hospital, the panic attacks and the claustrophobia started.”
David blinked away memories he didn’t want to talk about:
His father unable to see him graduate because he couldn’t get on an airplane. His father calling him, desperate, from the basement of a department store because he couldn’t get back into the elevator or find his way upstairs. His father, this big, Italian tough guy, unable to do the most simple fucking things in life, like ride in the back of a taxi or get on a city bus.
“A couple of weeks after that happened,” David finally continued, “I wanted to bomb the whole fucking Middle East. This incredible rage overcame me—to the point where I almost lost myself. It took months for me to realize how stupid I was being—and I’m embarrassed by my own reaction, even today, a year later. I don’t think I’m racist, and I don’t blame the Arab world for the actions of a handful of terrorists. But I do know, firsthand, the sort of feelings much of the West has for your part of the world.”
Khaled lowered his eyes for a brief moment, then shook his head. “Then you also know why we
have
to at least entertain the idea of working together on this. Why this exchange may be the most important thing you ever do.” He looked up, his intensity magnified. “David, this might be hard for you to understand, but when 9/11 happened, most Arabs felt the same pain and anger that you did. We wanted to hunt down the men responsible and kill them—not only had they murdered innocent people, but they’d killed a part of our culture too and set us back so many years in our efforts to be respected by the West. But the Arab world is complicated; educated, powerful Arabs like my uncle
could not come forward and speak these things—because the Arab street would not have allowed it.”
David had heard the term only a few times before: the Arab street, the pictures of the Arab world that Americans saw on TV whenever a terrorist bomb went off or an anti-American rally made the news. In truth, he doubted that the Arab street was as unfamiliar a concept as most Americans probably thought. It was the consensus of the silent mob—the people, the everyday Joes. In America it was akin to the silent majority. The passionate—though often misled and disillusioned—people who populated the cities and towns across the country. In the Arab world the silent majority’s voice was heard in the street because in many ways the street was the center of Arab culture.
“My uncle—along with my father before he died—has spent a lifetime quietly finding ways to work
around
the Arab street, to try to fix many of the problems of our region, but also to find ways to unify us with the West. I think you and I have an opportunity to do the same.”
David listened to Khaled speak. He had never told anyone other than Serena about the day his father had been ruined by the collapsing building. He could hardly believe that he’d shared the story with Khaled, a total stranger, but somehow it seemed to make sense. And what Khaled was saying—could it also make sense?
David shook his head. He and Khaled were just two kids. Still, deep in his mind, he couldn’t help wondering: What if somehow they brought the Merc to the Middle East? What if they built that damn soccer stadium in the middle of the Arab desert?
Would the rest of the world really come and play?
David’s thoughts were interrupted as Khaled suddenly rose from his seat. David turned in time to watch a young man approaching across the VIP balcony. If David had had to guess, he would have placed the young man’s age somewhere around thirty; European-looking from the way he was dressed—in a
sleek, buttoned-down shirt, designer slacks, and a tapered DKNY jacket—he had a confident, polished gait and slicked-back brown hair that reminded David of the rich trust-fund kids he’d known at Williams and Harvard.
The young man was grinning as he reached their table and held out a hand to Khaled.
“Khaled,” he said, and his accent immediately pegged him as British. “Never expected to find you here, out slumming with us Eurotrash.”
Khaled nodded toward David. “Just entertaining a new friend from the States. David Russo from New York, this is Stephen Seebeck, London. He’s with Signature Asset Management out of the U.K. Real estate, banking, what have you. He’s also quite a regular in the late-night expat scene.”
“There’s nothing regular about us,” Seebeck said. “In fact, I’m on my way to a wonderful little soiree right now. I don’t suppose you chaps would like to tag along? What do you say, Khaled—show our new friend the real Dubai?”
David was beginning to wonder how many “real” Dubais there were. Khaled sighed, patting Seebeck on the shoulder.