“Where the US really messed up,” Jasper continues, “is with Dubai Ports World.”

The purchase by dpw of UK ports operator p&o, which owned the management contracts for six American ports, ignited a firestorm of controversy over an Arab government firm managing US ports (despite the fact that many US ports are already foreign-run). The outcry quashed the deal, and the American contracts were sold at a generous profit. Still, the issue continues to irk Dubai’s expats, who see the emirate as a model for what the US says it wants in the region: tolerant, progressive, Western-minded — a place where the state religion is not Islam but capitalism. Why forbid Dubai from running American ports while using it as the number-one foreign port of call for US warships? And the uae spends billions on American military hardware, while Dubai allows US military personnel on r&r to drink themselves silly (provided they are quiet about it), and provides a tax haven for growing numbers of American multinationals. “Here’s a country that lets the U-2 land,” says Jasper. “And now they’ve been demonized. Patience is running out.”

Bjorn’s wife has called three times, once for every round Fang Fang has brought us. The two men take their leave, but not before Jasper explains why Dubai prospers. It’s not luck. “Sheikh Mohammed is a genius. And the only other geniuses I’ve met in my life all work for him.”

That evening I have dinner at the home of Ali, an Iranian economist. Clad in shirt sleeves, he barbecues kebab in his courtyard and tells me about Iran’s capital flight, which has Iranians buying up prime Dubai real estate. They’ve joined the wealthiest strata of Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, and Lebanese, so-called “insurance seekers” buying apartments and villas here as security against political instability in their homelands. Then there are the Indian, Pakistani, Russian, and other European business people, rapidly growing numbers of Chinese, and the global jet set for whom Dubai is the latest brand-name destination, right up there with Paris, London, and New York. But will it last? “Dubai,” Ali warns, “is a glass house that could be shattered by a single Kalashnikov.”

I am crashing through sand dunes in a white 4X4 with a newlywed Pakistani couple. They live in Dublin; he a swarthy middle-aged ophthalmologist, she a pretty child psychologist who looks barely old enough for grad school. They speak six languages each, including Urdu, thank God, since they can plead for our lives with our carefree Pakistani driver. As we roar up another vertical wall of sand, I can only muffle my screams. “Was all of Dubai once like this? ” asks the ophthalmologist as sand crashes over the windshield. He blinks at the seemingly endless desert landscape and marvels: “It’s amazing what money can do!”

That thought follows me to Burj Al Arab, the world’s only “seven star” hotel — though, admittedly, it awarded the seven stars to itself. Dubai Holding, which owns the Burj, has sent Lejla, a gorgeous six-foot Swedish public relations rep in a navy blue pantsuit, to show me around. (Dubai Holding is one of three corporations, including Emaar and Nakheel, which, through combined projects worth $100 billion (US), manage Dubai’s white-hot property market.) Curved like a traditional sailing dhow, the Burj is situated across a small bridge on an artificial island. The expansive lobby is decorated in the colour of fire-works: greens, blues, reds, electric yellows. A young man in a white robe greets me, dousing my hands in rosewater. A portrait of Sheikh Mohammed is framed near the entrance; Lejla has no idea how I might go about meeting him.

Up the escalator to the main floor, amid jewellery stores and a synchronized dancing fountain, the restaurants and lounges offer menus in English, Arabic, and Russian. The Russians are everywhere. They appreciate ostentation. A group in dark tailored suits huddle together on a plush banquette, chain-smoking, like characters in a Martin Scorsese film. When I snap their photograph, they fix me with a cold stare.

Earlier, a ruddy British construction manager named Ian told me about staying in a hotel where every night Russians gathered out front, packing up “everything from boxing gloves to Land Rovers” to be sent home. All night he was kept awake by the screech of packing tape.

Lejla takes me inside one of the $15,000-a-night rooms; the bathroom is almost the size of my apartment. She shows me the pillow menu — thirteen varieties, each one “washed with the clear, calcium-free water of the Bavarian Forest in Germany.” The room is blue and gold, and the window furnishes a panorama of one of three multi-billion-dollar man-made “Palm Islands” Nakheel is building to expand Dubai’s waterfront from 45 kilometres to 1,600. Donald Trump, Lejla tells me radiantly, is building a hotel on the Palm’s trunk. The frame around the television set is gold-plated, she explains, and there’s a channel that lets you see who is coming to the door. “That way you know if it’s a hit man,” I say, but she looks at me blankly. “For the Russians, I mean. . .” She doesn’t share my sense of humour.

Later that evening, over dinner with an Italian who designs “concept” restaurants, I hear about the Syrian jeweller who was murdered by a group of Russians at the Burj a few months earlier in a diamond deal gone wrong. The Syrian’s head was allegedly smashed so hard against that of his colleague (a Russian) that it doubled in size. But these aren’t the sorts of subjects that PR pros like Lejla grace with their attention. To make up for my faux pas, I make polite noises about the custom white Rolls-Royce Phantom that serves as the hotel’s limousine and the private helicopters that land on the helipad. It was there that Tiger Woods was photographed teeing off, and Andre Agassi and Roger Federer played a celebratory round of tennis.