The Emirati Model

The Story of Farida: A Life Remade in the Emirates Farida was only thirteen years old when she left her home in Eritrea. The year was 1983, and her village stood in the shadow of a brutal war between the Eritrean independence fighters and the Ethiopian army. The road to Sudan was not just dusty and long — it was deadly. As she crossed into contested territory, she encountered a checkpoint manned not by soldiers, but by children not much older than herself, rifles slung over their bony shoulders. They asked her to stop, to join them, to take up arms for the motherland. She told me how they never demanded it, rather, they asked, as if this were a normal thing to ask of a teenage girl. And in some places, it was. Farida did not stop. She smiled, and kept walking — away from the front lines, away from the revolution, and toward a future that hadn’t yet revealed itself. When she reached Khartoum, she was still a child, but one who had already crossed borders, buried friends, and come to know the absurdity of war. She had family waiting in Sudan’s capital, and through a combination of grace, beauty, and survival instinct, she found work as a model. For two years she lived in Khartoum — not as a refugee in a camp, but as a woman trying to chart her own course. Her path then took her to Kuwait, married and with two young children. But fate was not finished testing her. Her husband abandoned her shortly after the birth of their second child, leaving her not just a single mother, but a foreign one, with limited rights, scarce funds, and two mouths to feed. That was when she made a decision that would change her life — and, in some ways, speaks to the very heart of the story I’m telling in this book. She boarded a flight to the United Arab Emirates. When she arrived, she knew no one. She did not speak Arabic fluently, though the cadences were familiar from her native Tigrinya. She had no savings, no profession, and no formal education. What she had was will. And in the UAE, that was enough. The Emirates are full of stories like Farida’s — stories that never make it into newspaper profiles or glossy exposés, but which are, in fact, the country’s backbone. In the UAE, she learned Arabic and began working at a local salon. She learned the business not through training modules or certifications, but through observation, patience, and relentless repetition. She served traditional Eritrean coffee in her home to guests — Americans, Germans, and Britons who had fled Eritrea like she had. Their conversations, held over porcelain cups, stitched together a diaspora — but it was the UAE that gave that diaspora a home. I know this story not because I read it in a magazine, but because Farida is the mother of one of my best friends. I grew up in her home. I saw the hustle behind her hospitality — the way she would host guests while still managing employees, the way she’d dress elegantly even among royalty, the way she gave respect and demanded it in turn. Farida was building something — not just a life, but a legacy. Today, Farida owns multiple beauty salons across the UAE and has launched her own fashion line — a blend of Gulf elegance and African heritage. She doesn’t wait for foreign aid agencies or NGO budgets to trickle down into her home country. She invests directly into Eritrea — hiring contractors, buying equipment, mentoring young women. She is a private actor, powered not by institutional charity, but by profit and principle. Farida’s story is the Emirati story — not by birth, but by belief. The belief that you can remake yourself. That the past need not dictate your future. That commerce can be redemptive. That a woman who escaped a war with nothing can, through effort and enterprise, create a life of dignity and abundance — and extend that dignity back to her homeland. This is what I mean by capitalism without apology. Not Wall Street derivatives or speculative bubbles, but real capitalism — the kind that gives people tools and space and incentives to build. The UAE did not rescue Farida. It did something better: it didn’t get in her way. It gave her room. It gave her peace. And in return, she gave it loyalty, labor, and creativity. The Western imagination too often sees Gulf states as places where opportunity is reserved for nationals, or where migrant workers are simply numbers in a ledger. But this narrative misses the nuance. It misses Farida. It misses the millions like her — Emiratis and expats alike — who come here not because it is easy, but because it is possible. Farida’s salons don’t just offer African and Arab styles to a diverse clientele. They offer independence. They employ other women who, like her, came from places where hope was rationed. Her fashion brand isn’t just a side business — it’s a statement that elegance can rise from exile. The UAE, for all its glittering towers and mega-projects, is still a place made of people like her. People who carry their past but do not let it anchor them. People who bet on themselves. And the state — through its security, its open economy, its minimal ideological interference — lets that bet play out. When we speak of the Emirati Model, we’re not just speaking of ports and airlines and investment funds. We’re speaking of the capacity to absorb, to empower, and to export not just capital, but human potential. That is why this model matters. That is why it endures. And that is why, when Farida’s grandchildren walk the streets of Abu Dhabi or Asmara, they will know that their grandmother didn’t wait for the world to save her. She found a place where she could save herself.