In Dubai, entrepreneurs have odd ideas about tourism

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- When Salem Moosa looks out over the skyscrapers spreading like a metallic rash over the sand, this is what he sees: The Eiffel Tower. The Pyramids. The Taj Mahal.

He's angling to build all of them -- but bigger than the originals. And, if you ask Moosa, perhaps even better.

Moosa's constellation of head-scratching oddities would join the marvels already cropping up across Dubai. The man-made islands in the shape of palm trees. The indoor ski resort. The underwater hotel. The lost city of Atlantis. One of the world's largest aquariums, set inside the world's biggest shopping mall, sprawling in the shadow of what will be the world's tallest skyscraper.

At first blush, there's an existential question at the heart of it all: Why? And in the case of Moosa's creations, what kind of tenants would clamor to nest in a swollen pyramid?

In Dubai, a zany, oil-fueled boomtown afloat in plastic fantasy, unbridled ambition, and rivers of cold cash, such questions are dismissed as the calling cards of the unimaginative. Moosa waves them away like sand flies.

''Who wants to live in a pyramid? Everybody wants to live in a pyramid," he said with evident astonishment. ''It's the only address in the world. Imagine your card: 'The Grand Pyramid of Dubai'! "

Bigger. Brighter. More outlandish. Construction-fevered Dubai has an audacious thirst for reinvention. This once-sleepy port of pearl traders and pirates is gunning to turn itself into one of the great capitals of the postmodern world.

If Americans pushed west to manifest destiny, the Emirates are pushing into the sky. There is a vague consensus here that great cities arrange themselves around ambitious architecture, and Dubai is determined to outdo them all. You feel it when you drive down the highway, eyes assaulted by a string of quixotic slogans: ''The earth has a new center." ''History rising." ''Impossible is nothing."

''We can't keep up with it. We're walking around and things are popping up, and we just had no idea," said Trevor L. Evans, a Canadian-born transplant who markets real estate here for Better Homes.

The city cashed in on the chill that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which drove some rattled Arab and Muslim investors to pull their money out of the West lest it be seized under anti-terrorism legislation. Much of that cash has found its way into Dubai's explosive real estate market. So has money earned by Persian Gulf Arabs in the current oil boom, which has pumped up Dubai like a hypercharged steroid.

Today's freewheeling Dubai is a bewildering stew of nationalities, a place where natives make up less than 20 percent of the population of about 1 million. It's also a place where politics is seldom spoken of -- people are much too busy amassing cash and spending it as flamboyantly as possible.

Misgivings rumble into the conversation sometimes. People wonder whether the go-go economy has enough actual stuff underpinning it to sustain itself, or whether the real estate bubble will pop. Human rights groups have accused developers of exploiting thousands of foreign men who come from countries such as India and Pakistan to toil in the hot sun for about $200 a month.

''The city is losing its authenticity. It's losing its past," said Abdel Khaleq Abdullah, a television talk show host.

''Maybe in globalization, identity is irrelevant. That's what the government says. But in reality, hell no, you're losing something very precious."

As he sat in a cafe, waiters brushed past, trays of cappuccinos aloft. The floors gleamed; expensive perfumes wafted through the air; among the milling Asians and Europeans, there was hardly an Arab in sight.

The high-rollers who plot Dubai's future from the polished heights of the skyscrapers like to describe their city as a model of something entirely new. They say they are using the spoils of a boom to craft the Persian Gulf's first post-oil economy, a hub of commerce and tourism that will endure even if the wells of black gold run dry.