How Tintin Got Me to Dubai

4 min readJust now

The thing about Tintin comics:

Iwas obsessed with Tintin as a kid in Colombo. The Land of Black Gold, The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Red Sea Sharks — I must have read each one fifty times. My favourites were the Middle Eastern adventures. All those flat-roofed buildings, the mosques, the robed Arabs, the desert landscapes. It looked so different from anything I knew in Sri Lanka.

What caught my attention:

InThe Land of Black Gold, Tintin goes to this kingdom called Khemed. The architecture was incredible — tall arches everywhere, buildings that looked ancient but functional. The people wore long white robes and headgear. There were shaikhs, desert storms, and this sense that anything could happen. I used to stare at those images for hours.

The Red Sea Sharks showed these bustling Arab ports with merchants and traders from everywhere. It made the Middle East look like this place where you could reinvent yourself, where a young guy with some courage could make his fortune.

My decision to go:

When the opportunity came up to work in Dubai in the seventies, I jumped at it. Sure, the money was better — ten times better than what I could make back home. But honestly, part of me just wanted to see if those places from the comics were real.

The first thing I noticed:

When I got off that Boeing 747 onto the Dubai tarmac, the heat hit my face and I thought: this is exactly like Khemed. There were kandura-wearing Arabs with beards and headgear everywhere, just like in the comics. It was surreal.

The thing about the architecture:

The buildings had flat roofs, exactly like in The Land of Black Gold. Mosques were everywhere, one every few hundred metres. Tall arches were the dominant theme of architecture. It was similar to the images from my Tintin magazines of what a Middle Eastern country could look like.

What I discovered:

Everything was light-coloured because of the harsh sun. The buildings were all creamy pastels, bleached by the desert heat. There was sand everywhere, no trees anywhere I looked. I had never seen a camel until Dubai — these tall, calm creatures that seemed battle-hardened, just like in the comics.

The culture was different too. Almost everyone was Muslim. Men wore white robes. Women wore black bourkas. No young girls were visible anywhere — a culture shock for me. Everyone prayed five times a day, with prayers blaring from loudspeakers on the minarets.

The thing about the bazaars:

The markets in Bur Dubai were exactly like those merchant scenes from The Red Sea Sharks. Haggling was normal. We crossed Dubai creek on wooden boats, just like the dhows in the comics. The whole market was full of migrant workers from South East Asia, everyone trying to make their fortune.

What I realised:

Those Tintin comics hadn’t just entertained me as a kid. They had prepared me for this. When I saw my first skinny cow eating a newspaper, or when I bought that National Panasonic stereo with just one week’s pay, I felt like I was living inside one of those adventure stories.

The thing about being there:

Dubai in the seventies was raw, unfinished, full of possibility. It was a place where a young guy from Colombo could buy luxuries that would have taken months to afford back home. ix Dirhams for a movie ticket. Two Dirhams for a shawarma or two parathas with fish curry. Everything was cheap and accessible..

I missed my parents, my family, friends and girlfriends back home. There were no mobile phones or international calls. Everything was through snail mail. But I was living the adventure I’d dreamed about since I was a kid reading those comics.

What I learnt:

Tintin taught me that the world was bigger than Sri Lanka. Those comics showed me that different didn’t mean dangerous, that respect and curiosity could get you anywhere. When I needed courage to adapt to local customs or navigate a completely foreign culture, I remembered how Tintin had done it — with respect, observation, and a sense of adventure.

The heat was unbearable. The sand got into everything. I felt like an industrial slave when they took my passport. But I was also living the dream I’d had since I was fourteen years old, staring at those perfectly drawn panels of Middle Eastern adventures.

Those comics got me to Dubai. They gave me the imagination to see opportunity instead of just obstacle, adventure instead of just hardship. Not bad for a bunch of Belgian comic books about a boy reporter and his dog.