THE NEW YORK TIMES: In a city where weather that would constitute a deadly heat wave in Europe is just a typical summer day, official “night beaches” have become a popular way to cool down.
Toddlers squealed, the sea roared and a portable speaker abandoned on the shore played a love song. Perched on a giant inflatable hot dog, a child paddled through the shallows.
This could have been any beach anywhere on a summer weekend, if you closed your eyes tight enough to shut out the light of the moon. But it was midnight on a recent Monday. The lifeguards were working a night shift, and blazing spotlights were trained on the water, staining it an eerie, luminescent turquoise.
Even at this hour, it was 90 degrees, with 79 percent humidity. That is pleasant, relatively speaking, for summer in Dubai — a city of glistening skyscrapers and bustling ports in the United Arab Emirates, an immigrant hub where citizens are the minority.
“It’s so hot we can’t come to the beach during the day,” said Ramshah Ahmed, 36, a Pakistani teacher who had traveled to Dubai to attend a wedding and spent most of her days inside air-conditioned malls. She was delighted to find a beach open at night so her children could burn off some of their energy; newcomers were still arriving on the sand as she and her son whacked a pink badminton shuttle back and forth. » | Vivian Nereim | Photographs by Andrea DiCenzo, Reporting from the beach in Dubai, United Arab Emirates | Monday, August 28, 2023
