Gulf de Luxe.(luxury hotel in Dubai)

There is only one seven-star hotel in the world: the Burj Al Arab in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. It rises over 1,000 feet in the sky from a man-made island in the Persian Gulf, and though it is supposed to resemble the white sail of a traditional Arab dhow, to me it looked more like a rocket from a 1940s science-fiction comic. The toy of the oil-enriched Sheikh al-Maktoum, it is seldom even half full: not altogether surprisingly, since the cheapest room is $885 a night, and the most expensive -- the Royal Suite -- is $8,192 (mere Presidential Suites are $6,553 -- who says that breeding counts for nothing?). For those who cannot afford the experience itself, a postcard is available of the royal bathroom.

Inside, one feels that Frank Lloyd Wright has joined forces with King Farouk, abetted perhaps by D. W. Griffith. It is impossible not to be impressed by an atrium several hundred feet high, with gold pilasters and huge tropical aquaria beside the escalators, and electronically controlled fountains that perform ever-changing arabesques, making a sound like the rhythmic clapping of hands in a Bedouin tent.

The decoration and furnishings are best described as sheikh-rococo, mainly crimson and gold, and in a gallery on the 17th floor a British artist sells his terrible hyper-realist paintings of desert fauna at $30,000 each, the exhibition sponsored by such well-known patrons of the visual arts as British Aerospace and Lockheed.

There is a restaurant 656 feet above the sea (with a truly breathtaking view), and one several yards below it too, where, according to the brochure, you can "feast on the fruits of the sea, surrounded by the Gulf's multi-colored marine life, either in the main dining room or one of the private dining rooms." One wonders whether someday a Western academic, resident in the Middle East, will rise up and write a book entitled "Occidentalism."

Of course, I didn't stay at the Burj al Arab. Like most people, I paid my $30 to visit (redeemable at any of the bars, restaurants, or gift shops selling, inter alia, Burj al Arab T-shirts and baseball caps). Visits are tightly controlled by a multitude of handsome and elegant attendants, who exude a kind of groveling menace, so that one wonders what exquisite punishments await those who refuse to obey their orders. On each floor with bedrooms, a beautiful but forceful woman sits at a vast and well-equipped desk, like a very up-market version of the KGB babushka who used, in the good old days, to sit at the entrance to every floor of a Soviet hotel, to survey and inform on the comings and goings -- and, at the Burj, to prevent nous, les ploucs, as my (French) wife put it, us the bumpkins, from disturbing the peace of the moneyed.

The staff of the Burj are drawn from the graceful young people of every nation in need or desire of a tax-free income and a bit of adventure: and one realizes, as one watches them deal with the unimaginably rich, that obsequiousness carried so far ceases to be a defect of character or an imposition, but an almost sensuous pleasure, as well as an implicit form of satire.

I was in Dubai en route to Australia, and as it happened it was the week of Dubai's "traditional" annual Shopping Festival (for what is life but a brief interlude of shopping between two eternities of oblivion?). Attendance this year was down because of certain events last September: but in any case, "traditional" is a relative word. In Dubai, a building that dates from the 1930s is a ...