A 63-story luxury hotel in Dubai, the Las Vegas of the world, burned not far from where the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, celebrated the new year with a dazzling display of fireworks. The cause of the inferno is not yet known, but it caused several injuries and one heart attack.

Surely there is a deeper meaning in the proximity of this fiery catastrophe and fiery celebration. It must tell us something we need to understand about Dubai, a city the was hit hard by the global economic collapse in 2008, but has since bounced back and is set grow an astonishing 5 percent this year. But what could all of this possibly mean?

Charles Mudede—who writes about film, books, music, and his life in Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, the USA, and the UK for The Stranger—was born near a steel plant in Kwe Kwe, Zimbabwe. He has no memory...