The United States has historically been described as “the melting pot” or “the gorgeous mosaic” – metaphors that offer different ways of understanding how the country views its culturally diverse inhabitants.
Unfortunately, these days, both metaphors are showing signs of strain. The endless vitriol of the presidential election is matched by regular and relentless violence – and while the violence in the US is nothing compared to what we’re seeing in Yemen and Syria, it is dismaying nonetheless.
It’s as if the melting pot is, itself, melting, and the tiles in that gorgeous mosaic are chipping and falling off.
I thought about that damaged mosaic the other day, while I was chaperoning a son and his friend at Yas Waterworld and was reading in the news about yet another Trumpian insult to the US principles of tolerance. I couldn’t help but think about Abu Dhabi’s own “gorgeous mosaic”, much of which was parading around me in various sorts of bathing costumes as I read.
A woman in an abaya and shayla stood at the edge of the wave pool, her toes barely touching the water as her young children splashed around her. Teenage girls in bikinis stood knee-deep in the water, ignoring everything except their selfies. Tattooed young men in baggy board shorts trooped past, debating which ride was most death-defying.
Languages – Arabic, English, French, Tagalog, German, Urdu, Russian – swirled through the air as if we’d arrived at the waterslides of Babel instead of Yas. Of all those languages, only one was universal: the sound of the tired crabby children who were wailing in front of the ice cream stall.
A sweaty nanny in a faded blue uniform and matching headscarf tried to soothe them, but to no avail: the treats she proffered were hurled to the ground in a rage.
The day after my Yas Waterworld trip, I went to a panel discussion about art-making in the UAE. The panelists – a professor, a novelist from Abu Dhabi and an artist/curator from Dubai – talked about the ways in which the creative arts can challenge conventional narratives about the Emirates. How can art help to preserve, and complicate, the stories that get told about this place? And, more importantly, perhaps, who gets to tell those stories?
What would happen, for instance, if all those people at Yas Waterworld were asked about “their” Abu Dhabi? I suppose some of the people I saw the other day were tourists just passing through, and that their stories would emerge as a hot blur of skyscrapers, fancy cars, malls and sand (and water slides). That’s the typical, even stereotypical, portrait of the city. But many of the people there that day, citizens and non-citizens alike, call Abu Dhabi home – even if their passports say otherwise. What stories would those people tell about this place, and where might those stories intersect or collide? What vision of “Abu Dhabi” would emerge from the abaya-clad mother standing at the water’s edge, or from the nanny in the blue uniform?
One of the many problems with Mr Trump, of course, is that he only wants to hear certain types of narratives. It’s easy to imagine that he would turn back the clock to an era when the only voices that mattered in the US would be the voices of people who looked like him. His idea of the “gorgeous mosaic” would be a self-portrait executed in pink-and-white tiles.
I’m not suggesting that Yas Waterworld become the governing metaphor for Abu Dhabi, although it did seem, the other day, as if representatives from around the globe were splashing through its gates. I am wondering, though, how we can make sure that all those voices get heard and recognised as the voices of the city.
Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi
