Dubai

Dubai is a place I have seen twice through the barrier of thick glass. On a visit to and from South Africa for my sister's wedding I stopped off, with my mother and my brother, in Dubai Airport. I know very little about the place other that it has examples of huge wealth and is a place where over-indulgent displays of affection are not tolerated - if only this were the same in school corridors. When I think of Dubai however, my first thought flies to Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse Five. On the return flight we stopped for a number of hours at an undefinable time in Dubai Airport. It was the middle of the night for me, but outside were bright blue skies and a high penetrating sun. I attempted sleep, but uncomfortable loungers that I kept sliding down, a mother who kept starting conversation and busy feet storming purposefully in all directions made this an impossibility, so I buried myself in a book. 

  I like the fact that certain books seem to have locations or memories attached to them. My book-venue memories include: The Testament by John Grisham: my sick-bed at Lorna Road, Hove; Reflections on the Psalms by C.S. Lewis: the front seat of my dad's car travelling from Brighton to Devon; Brighton Rock by Graham Greene: the top deck of a Brighton bus; The History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters by Julian Barnes: the toilet at Bellerby's College, Hove; How To Be Good by Nick Hornby: the side of a pool in Zante, Greece.

  Anyway, back to the subject in hand: Dubai or rather the novel that defined my moments there. The book is about a bloke called Billy Pilgrim who fought in the Second World War and uncontrollably time travels to various points in his own life. One passage stood out to me as being utterly beautiful and one of the greatest statements on war I've ever read:

  American planes, full of holes and wounded men and corpses took off backwards from an airfield in England. Over France, a few German fighter planes flew at them backwards, sucked bullets and shell fragments from some of the planes and crewmen. They did the same for wrecked American bombers on the ground, and those planes flew up backwards to join the formation.

  The formation flew backwards over a German city that was in flames. The bombers opened their bomb bay doors, exerted a miraculous magnetism which shrunk the fires, gathered them into cylindrical steel containers, and lifted the containers into the bellies of the planes. The containers were stored neatly in racks. The Germans below had miraculous devices of their own, which were long steel tubes. They used them to suck more fragments from the crewmen and planes. But there were still a few wounded Americans, though, and some of the bombers were in bad repair. Over France, though, German fighters came up again, made everything and everybody as good as new.

  When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.

  The American fliers turned in their uniforms, became high school kids. And Hitler turned into a baby, Billy Pilgrim supposed. That wasn’t in the movie. Billy was extrapolating. Everybody turned into a baby, and all humanity, without exception, conspired biologically to produce two perfect people named Adam and Eve, he supposed.

  The beauty of war in reverse is striking and highlights the brutal reality of war when it's seen when the play button is pressed. The image a baby Hitler struck me as well. What would we do if we held the baby Hitler in our arms? There seems to be no satisfying answer. The final image of everyone reversing back through history and Adam and Eve standing there made me think of humanity as a Russian doll with me hidden within generations and generations of lives. War considered in this context is shown up for the insanity it is: a brother killing a brother. 

  With these thoughts and red wine-tinged tiredness I collected my free breakfast and got a plane bound for Gatwick.