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Omar Sabbagh

Minutes from the Miracle City

Minutes from the Miracle City

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$22.99 AUD
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Taking place across the last few days of Ramadan, ‘Minutes from the Miracle City’ is a unique retelling of the virtuoso project that is Dubai.

SAM'S REVIEW

My brother, Charlie, lived in Dubai for over a decade. Despite the offer of free accommodation, I didn’t visit him once. I could barely afford one holiday a year for most of his time there, and I wasn’t going to spend it on Dubai. I couldn’t see the appeal. Minutes from the Miracle City, a novella by Lebanese poet and Professor of English, Omar Sabbagh, comes as close as anything has to convincing me to visit. (Sorry Charlie.)  

Over the course of a few days in the lead up to Eid, Sabbagh uses the overlapping lives of a cast of characters to show us how this mirage of glass and steel is emerging from the desert. The cast is drawn from all corners of Dubai’s ever-changing population. Hakim is a Pakistani taxi driver who’s seen “the urban relish and gusto, the bravery and the brag and the boast of it all. And a small piece of his insides gloated to be a part”. Patrick, a Ugandan security guard, dreams of being writer. Farida, a Moroccan beautician, is rebuilding her life after divorcing young. Rachel, a former journalist, left her London career behind to follow her husband’s real estate ambitions, which are paying off handsomely. And Saeed, the sole Emirati and a former colleague of Rachel’s, has returned home only to face his mother’s daily pleas to marry. 

The story centres around Saeed and Farida as they meet, make an instant impression on each other, and prepare to go on their first date, which will take place on Eid. Saeed, “the great intellectual” as his sister Hala sarcastically names him, describes Farida as “an ingenious argument delivered by the doyen of philosophers, convincing his heart wit Ciceronian eloquence”. Farida, with less verbosity, looks forward to “[A] thrilling, novel conversation with a handsome brainy man. She had nothing to lose. Only the risk of crushed hope perhaps; and a wearier heart.” While these two prepare for their date, the rest of the cast prepare for Eid and the opportunities they hope it brings. 

In focusing on the small moments and meetings, Sabbagh shows how the onrush of modernity and inrush of immigrants is changing the city he calls home. Saeed and Hala’s home life provides a glimpse into how the younger Emirati’s are pushing against the stricter traditions of their parents. While Saeed is celebrated for building a professional reputation in London, Hala’s desire to study there leaves their mother “petrified” at the thought of her travelling “so far away on her own; no, not a young girl as ludicrously beautiful as her”. Patrick and Hakim sacrifices to earn minimum wage demonstrates the optimism which drives people from all over the world to seek their fortune (however meagre) in the Miracle City. And Rachel represents the Dubai which Australians and, in my case, Brits, know best: high salaries, no taxes, and luxury laid upon luxury. A flux and flexing of wealth that is turning sand into a global city.

It is Rachel and Saeed’s interactions that gave me the most to ponder. When thinking about an article Saeed has asked her to read, Rachel muses that the part she liked best was “that he’d averred in it that Dubai was a success story precisely because it didn’t try to countenance such cosmopolitanism by creating some wishy-washy, overly liberal and ultimately mendacious middle ground.” My gut, uneducated, reaction is to view Dubai as hypocritical – as allowing the westerners to behave in one way while restricting the freedoms of the Emiratis. But when reading “The country and the princedom has kept their Islamic identify intact. The expats knew where they stood as guests. And this overt advert to alterity was healthy”, I’m pushed to reconsider. Does their version of multiculturalism work better than ours?

Early in the book, security guard come writer, Patrick, describes his attitude to life with the view that every moment is “like an atom, there to be split, and the explosion into newer richer life was to be savoured to the draining of the last dreg!” This sentiment sums up the hope and joy that spills from the pages of Minutes from the Miracle City. Sabbagh has clearly fallen in love with the place he now calls home and, if my brother still worked for the Dubai tourist board, I’d be sending him a copy of this book immediately. I’ll send him a copy regardless, for Minutes from the Miracle City is an oasis of optimism in what is too often a literary desert of such sentiment. 

 

PUBLISHER REVIEW

‘Even if there was now a Ministry for Happiness in Dubai, she was still unsure of her own.’ Farida, a Moroccan beautician hoping for a fresh start. Hakim, a Pakistani taxi driver whizzing through the streets. Patrick, a Ugandan security guard with aspirations of becoming a writer. Saeed, a respected Emirati journalist just back from London. Taking place across the last few days of Ramadan, ‘Minutes from the Miracle City’ is a unique retelling of the virtuoso project that is Dubai.

"Sabbagh is the RK Narayan of our times." —Christopher Jackson, poet and biographer

"Sabbagh gives us something we do not expect: a small place packed with complex dwellers." —Adnan Mahmutovic, author, How to Fare Well and Stay Fair

"A cast of vivid characters, whose interlocking fortunes and fascinatingly detailed lives create a compelling story, yet achieve the status of proverb." —Fiona Sampson MBE FRSL, poet and writer

"A delightful kaleidoscopic tale of contemporary Dubai." —Dr. Pamela Chrabieh, Middle Eastern Studies expert and writer
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