City of Angels

Even angels long for the passion in human life.

Riding the escalator up in City Center, the largest shopping mall in town, I worshipped a white dishdasha (floor-length shirt-dress), 6’2” tall and three stairs above of me. I thought I saw an angel but when looking around I realized that there were so many of them in this huge complex. There were equally as many black angels in abeyya (female shapeless black gown). While I still immersed myself in the colorful saris from my April India trip, I was stunned by this purity and simplicity. But the black and white itself did not compose a city of angels—Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE).

Today was my third day interning at SME (Small and Medium Enterprises) division of Dubai Development & Investment Authority (DDIA). We were not located in the luxury Emirates Towers but the 1st fl of a simple construction in the Humanitarian City, next to the United Nation. However, I was quite happy when I saw the ground floor set up quite creatively for entrepreneurs’ office usage, because it reminded me much about the Cambridge Innovation Center by the MIT campus. SME is 25 folks strong with two thirds in either black or white, meaning they are UAE nationals, operated more in a venture capital mode than a bureaucratic government entity.

Before getting to know them, I would not associate my colleagues with angels. For example, my assigned buddy, Ram, is an Indian, who only dressed in suits. Nonetheless, he drove a very cool black four by four picking up every morning from the hotel. As the fund manager, he surprisingly did not talk much about the business but rather introduced me great resources allowing me the space to explore my entrepreneurial endeavor— to identify creative financing strategies for UAE nationals’ SMEs. So many conversations have taken place between Ram’s colleagues and me that I feel that they are the angels who are passionate about bringing building blocks to local entrepreneurs.