Word: worldly
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...want to see the world," I told a boatman in Dubai Creek, and pulled out my map. He waved me on board his little wooden boat with no hesitation. I could have told him I wanted to sail up the river Styx, and he would have agreed. Times are tough in the Persian Gulf emirate, and my Bangladeshi boatman had spent hours chugging up and down the creek looking for a fare. It was his bad luck that his passenger appeared to be crazy...
...World," I repeated. Again he nodded, this time rolling his eyes slightly. He tried distracting me, asking me if I wanted to visit the Ali bin Abi Taleb mosque or ogle the colossal white yachts lining the waterfront like beached Moby Dicks. I pointed out our route - down the creek to the harbor and into the Arabian Sea. There, three miles offshore, was a cluster of 300 man-made islands shaped like a map of the globe. Each was named after a country or a city. The massive archipelago stretched across six miles and supposedly had been constructed with more...
...shook his head madly. "Not possible," he muttered. With sign language - the universal drawing of the finger across the throat - he made it clear that no matter how much money I was offering (and frankly, it wasn't much), he wouldn't sail into the maze of islands. The World was a pet project of Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, and it was patrolled by security guards in fast boats. Illegal Bangladeshi immigrants and nosy foreign reporters entered at their peril...
Depending on your point of view, the World is either the apex of mankind's ingenuity or a cautionary tale about the feverish excesses of Dubai's 21st century boom. Each island was selling for $15 million to $50 million, by invitation only: its developers were pitching the spits of land to tycoons, sportsmen and celebrities. But when Dubai's property market imploded last year, dropping more than 50%, cheeky headlines in the international press suggested that "the end of the World" had arrived. One dealer was quoted as saying that the multibillion-dollar project had been postponed "indefinitely...
...promotional materials, the World looks impressive: a scattering of computer-generated islands lush with palm trees and peppered with lavish hotels and villas. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were supposedly interested in buying Ethiopia, although a representative for the couple later denied the deal. An Irish investor (who committed suicide in February, after his company went broke) planned to build a theme resort on Ireland; never mind that the gulf's extreme heat would turn a pint of Guinness into a bubbling black stew. Only one island, reportedly belonging to Sheik Mohammed, ended up occupied, its palms shading a large...