GroundTruth

I landed in Dubai on Wednesday, just in time for Obama’s speech. I wanted to be in the Arab world to hear what was being billed as an important address. And it lived up to its billing. It was indeed an eloquent and profoundly important statement of a new American tone in the Muslim world. Obama focused on respect for the contributions of the Muslim world, but also a spirit of honesty. He quoted the Koran and he used his full name Barack Hussein Obama, both to standing ovations by the crowd who gathered to hear him at the University of Cairo. Dubai provided a great vantage point to assess the impact as it is a melting pot of the Muslim world with its ragged army of immigrant laborers and its high fanciers and real estate tycoons, all of whom hail from every corner of the globe. GlobalPost provided colorful and insightful team coverage of the speech and our correspondents in Egypt, Indonesia, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Beirut and elsewhere all brought forward Muslim voices reacting to Obama and what he called “a new beginning.” Our coverage of the event was picked up by AOL and you can catch it there as well. Here was my take from Dubai:

By C.M. Sennott
DUBAI – On the dusty outskirts of this glistening city, an army of laborers from all over the Muslim world trudged back to the crowded dormitories where they scratch out an existence and tune in via satellite channels to hear the message of “a new beginning” that President Barack Obama delivered to the Muslim world.

While the speech was underway in Cairo Thursday, these laborers were busy toiling on scaffolds and mixing concrete and paving roads in the searing 100 degree heat of midday here in a country where a building boom fueled by the riches of oil has suddenly slowed in the wake of the global economic crisis.

But these ragged men in their filthy work uniforms are the audience to whom Obama must speak most convincingly if his powerful and resonant speech is to have lasting impact.
These are the people who represent the masses who too often go ignored and unheard across the Muslim world.

“I like what he has to say. He’s trying to make a connection with us. That’s good. Just trying to make a connection is better than Bush,” said Nawas Khan, 32, a Muslim fisherman who came to Dubai two years ago for a job cleaning bathrooms at construction sites after his village and its fishing boats in southern India were destroyed by the Tsunami.
He caught a glimpse of the speech at the Gents Star Barber where he was cleaning up on a rare day off.

Imran Ullah, a 32-year-old member of a construction crew here who hails from Peshawar, Pakistan and sends money home to his wife and two children every month, said dismissively, “It’s the same policies, different name.”

“America likes to talk to the world and Obama is good at that. He said these beautiful things. But what we care about are actions, not words,” said Ullah, who listened to the speech on a transistor radio at his worksite.

Within the Muslim world, the United Arab Emirates and its shimmering jewel of a city, Dubai, is unique. In no other country in the world are there so many Muslims from so many corners of the earth and so many different levels of society as there are here in Dubai.
From fancy dinner parties in the wealthy enclaves of this oil-rich kingdom to the sprawling labor camps where hundreds of thousands of workers are crammed into filthy, overcrowded conditions, everyone here has been talking about Obama’s journey to the Middle East.

It started in Riyadh where he met with King Abdullah on Wednesday and then to Cairo on Thursday where he delivered an address focused on what he called “a new beginning” between America and the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims.

Noting that while he is Christian his father hails from a Kenyan family with generations of Muslims, Obama told the crowd, “As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That is what I will try to do today.”

But those who listened across the Muslim world also had truths to share, and hoped Obama was listening to them as well.

And one of the most resonant themes expressed across the economic and ethnic divides here in Dubai about Obama’s words is that as eloquent as they were, he is mistaken if he thinks he can talk to all Muslims at once.

They have different concerns and different agendas and different equations of anger and hope that provide the sum of their lives.

There are many who couldn’t help but share their cynicism about the fact that Obama went to Egypt and was hosted by President Hosni Mubarak, who is viewed by most of the Muslim world as a brutal autocrat who has violated human rights to suppress all political opposition. There are others who scoff at his meeting with the House of Saud which embodies an American-backed monarchy that revels in profligate waste and excess while millions of Arabs suffer under tyranny, oppression and poverty.

“I like that Obama is here talking and listening. At least, I hope he is listening and not only talking. said Abdul Kader, 40, a Muslim from Kerala, India who works the counter at the Sonapour Grocery.
“America has many words about democracy, but we hope we will see the reality of those words. We are waiting for actions, not words,” adds Kader, who was serving a long line of customers.
Many of them were picking up newspapers in Arabic and Urdu with headlines about Obama’s arrival in Cairo where he gave his powerful, signature speech.

Sonapour is a sprawling city of 300,000 laborers who live piled atop each other in hot, fetid dormitories where six men sleep on three bunks in tiny 12-by-6-foot cells. They’ve all come to Dubai to build the new, shiny skyscrapers that seem to fill every corner of the downtown here.
These towering, modern-day pyramids, including the Burj Dubai, the tallest building in the world, are monuments to the riches and the ego of the royal family. They are also testaments to faith in the energy and creativity and cash that fuels Dubai and makes it one of the hottest cities in the world for real estate, finance and trade.

But the United Arab Emirates is a dream built on sand, and the laborers who build it live in here in a system akin to modern slavery. They come from desperately poor countries, all too often suffering at the corruption and despotism of US backed regimes in the Muslim world. When they arrive, most laborers see their passports taken and they are forced into a kind of indentured servitude in which they must pay back the fees that brought them there before they can begin to send remittances home.

Their lives go largely unnoticed by a gilded class of bankers, hoteliers and oil industry executives who benefit from the riches of the kingdom and the economy it generates.
At an elegant dinner party Wednesday night in the neighborhood of Jumerieh, several of these successful businessmen and women talked about President Obama’s visit to the region as they were served by a butler in black tie.

This is the other side of Dubai and here their eye on the speech was on the economy and what Obama is doing here in the region and around the world to help the global economy recover. They are mindful that Dubai’s construction boom has come to a near standstill in recent months, a fact made evident by the scores of cranes at building sites that remain frozen in motion.

“I expect he will be quite good as always, but I also worry that the expectations for what impact he can have are too high,” said a high level executive in one of the largest real estate firms in Dubai.
“The key is for him to succeed in recovering the economy. Everything else will have to flow from that,” he added.

But to a person at the dinner party – men and women of backgrounds including Lebanese, Iranian, Palestinian, American, Dutch, Syrian and a few others I probably missed – said they also see this as a pivotal speech, a chance to redefine America’s relationship with the Muslim world. The core of the issue for so many of this elite, educated class is justice for Palestine and the appearance that America’s alliance with Israel has made Washington them a less than fair broker for peace.

I met Lina Dajani Malas, who is Palestinian and is married to an executive in finance here, at the dinner party and caught up with her on Thursday when she tuned into Obama’s speech after a luncheon with friends. She shared that Obama’s speech provided important clarity about the need for Israel to stop building settlements and for there to be a two-state solution.
But she quickly added, “He is a beautiful speaker. He is eloquent. But the truth is we have heard this before. Can he really change America’s policies? Actions speak louder than words. And can Obama lead America to really take on those actions. We’ll see.”