Choices wrapped in gold

It feels decadent, controversial, and also delightful, to leave cold Haarlem and walk that same evening in a breezy summer dress to a restaurant near our luxury resort in Dubai. The sun that always shines here has already set, but it is still pleasantly warm outside and we can’t stop looking at the colourfully lit skyscrapers and palm trees. 

Every year I explore a different culture together with Roos, our headstrong young adult daughter. We look at our destination through the eyes of two generations. This time we visit the city that is constantly competing with itself and the rest of the world for the honorific title of biggest, tallest, most expensive and most luxurious. I supplement Rose's list of trendy places to be with some local culture and nature.

We admire the architectural highlights we drive by, some more incredible than others. Roos takes selfies and I imagine how my father came here for business fifty years ago when there were only some simple stone barracks in the middle of the desert. Later, when we stroll through this oldest part of the city, Rose is bored more quickly than I am. I marvel at how ‘clean’ it has been restored, sandwiched between skyscrapers on the desert soil my father remembers. 

It is here that Roos, who prefers pasta or sushi, finally enjoys our traditional Arab lunch. In the old courtyard, traditionally Arab and modern Western dressed guests, locals and tourists meet with kindness and respect. If only the whole world can be so peaceful and tolerant, I muse. 

Later that afternoon back at our resort, I feel uncomfortable with the submissive helpfulness of the staff, so I thank them kindly and tell them I can carry my towel myself. Roos, on the other hand, enjoys it effortlessly. Together we feel vicarious shame when other guests give condescending orders, as if these people don't deserve respect. We would not talk like that to a dog. 

And while Rose is already wondering what she will wear that evening, it touches me how the workers here live. Our mostly Pakistani Uber drivers have been recruited with a car, an apartment and an annual ticket to visit their wife and children. They take this job because it is ‘well’ payed, but in my eyes this is poverty. Roos can put it into perspective more easily: 'That's the way it goes in the world, unfortunately,' she says.

We get off at the Dubai Mall where Roos tries on a pair of pink shorts at Fendi, her favourite brand. I'm relieved she's not buying them, seven hundred euros for a pair of shorts, that's going too far even for Roos. Laughingly we compare it to the Fendi winter coat she paid two thousand euros for earlier, at least that is warm and she can wear it often. I told her then I would never buy something this expensive, no matter what. But I am careful not to judge her choices; after all, it's her life, not mine, and she doesn't have to become a copy of me. Not judging is sometimes hard working, but as long as she remains socially involved and respectful of others, I manage quite well. 

When we sit down at dinner show Play that night, we choose the "affordable" dishes, because four hundred euros is crazy enough for me. Between the dishes, our chats and the show numbers, Roos posts a story on Insta while I watch in amazement as three men sip cocktails at the table between us and the stage. They laugh together, flirt with the show ladies and regularly disappear into their cell phones as if they were sitting at home on the couch. Carelessly, one of them clips a piece of meat wrapped in wafer-thin gold leaf between his sticks and swallows it. The rest, worth a monthly social security payment to us, disappears untouched via the kitchen to probably the garbage can. A shiver runs down my spine when I think again of the many Uber drivers here, far away from their families to be able to feed them.

It is special to step into this world for a moment, especially together with a daughter who sees the world through a different, younger, lens. We do things that one of us would never do without the other. Roos herself would never eat lunch in the oldest part of town, I would never have gone to Play. We look at the same thing and experience it differently, but it is precisely in this way traveling together that we find and understand each other. I am proud of her and the choices she makes to shape her own life with courage.

The choices that help us to design our own life and be happy, to me those are the gold wrapped choices that taste like more!