Yesterday's man

An interview with Paul, a 25-year-old everyman refugee from Dubai’s property market crash.

June, 2009

There he sits on his bespoke sofa at three o’clock on a weekday afternoon. Pale, unshaved and chain-smoking, dressed in a grubby t-shirt and shorts, he doesn’t look like capitalism’s young dream anymore.

This flat, that’s a duplex to you, in the Dubai World Trade Centre Apartments costs AED250,000 ($68,000) a year to rent, and the lease will ex…