Saaniya Abbas on the stand-up scene being built in Dubai

They say: ‘Build it, and they will come.’

And in just 52 years, the UAE built everything. Skyscrapers. Islands. Billionaires. It didn’t just grow, it exploded. And so the people came, from every corner of the world, each one carrying a story. A dream. A reason. Today, that adds up to over 10 million stories. Mine is one of them.

I moved to Dubai from New Delhi 13 years ago. I was in my early twenties, restless, a little angry, and full of that very specific kind of frustration that comes with feeling caged your entire life. Back home, I wasn’t even allowed to drive alone after sunset because it wasn’t safe. I remember thinking one night: ‘This can’t be it. This can’t be my whole life.’

So I left. I traded the comforting chaos of home for the intimidating unknown of Dubai. While it was perfectly safe to exist as a woman alone on a road, waiting for a taxi in the middle of the night, it still took me some time to trust the city. Today, I trust it with my life. So much so, I’ve probably become too careless to survive anywhere else.

I came here a blank page, ready to write a new version of myself into existence.

And I wasn’t alone. All around me were people doing the same thing. Starting over. Reinventing themselves. And without realising it, we were all contributing to a culture that didn’t yet have a name. Not the loud, flashy Dubai the world thinks it knows. Not the parties or Bugattis or influencer photo ops. Something else. Something softer.

A quieter culture. One rooted in art. In expression. In that deeply human urge to make something.

It started small. A poetry reading in a bar no one could find on Google Maps. An open mic night for musicians inside a tiny shawarma shop. A comedy show for an audience of four, one of whom was on their phone the whole time. But it was real. It was alive. Like wildflowers pushing through the cracks in the pavement. Stubborn but beautiful.

In the early days, everything felt underground. No one was quite sure what was allowed. What crossed the line. What even was the line. But we figured it out, slowly. The rules got clearer. The shows got bolder. The rooms got fuller. The laughs got louder.

And I was in love.

I’ve sat in the back of rooms and heard poems that made my chest hurt. Stories about identity, about displacement, about longing for a place to call home. I’ve watched plays that flipped good and evil on their heads and made me question my own instincts. And I’ve watched comedians, nervous and shaky-handed, introduce entire audiences to stand-up for the first time.

We weren’t just building the art. We were building the audience.

It’s such a strange and beautiful thing to be a part of. To not just witness the birth of a new culture, but to help shape it. How many artists get to say that?

But even now, the question persists. Can comedy truly evolve to its highest form without its key ingredient? The F word.

No, not that one. The other one.

Freedom.

Freedom to say whatever you want on stage and trust the system to let it stand. Not because it agrees with you, but because it can take a joke.

It’s the one thing we have to be mindful of when we’re on that stage. And that’s okay. It’s something we accepted when we moved here. There are red lines, and we all know where they are.

You don’t joke about the government.
You don’t joke about religion.
You don’t joke about politics.

George Carlin wouldn’t last five minutes.

That doesn’t mean we’re silenced. Far from it. We joke about sex. About dating. Divorce. Failed situationships. Mental health. Tinder bios. Trauma. The small stuff that adds up to a life. The stuff that makes people feel seen.

But I do wonder, every now and then, who might I become without the filter? If I didn’t have to second-guess. If I didn’t have to keep certain jokes in drafts. If I could speak without the quiet maths of consequence. What would I say? And would it unlock parts of me I haven’t met yet?

I get my fill when I do shows abroad. I get to feel what it’s like to speak with no red lines in the air. To try out the jokes that wouldn’t see the light of day back home, and see who I am when nothing is off the table.

After the Fringe, I’ll be taking my show to the New York Comedy Festival.

A friend recently told me to delete some old jokes I’d posted about Donald Trump.

‘Just in case,’ he said. ‘They might hold you at immigration. I hear they’re cracking down on that sort of thing now.’

I had to laugh.

Turns out, every country has its red lines. Even America. The land of the F word.

• Saaniya Abbas: Hellarious is on at Gilded Balloon Patter House at 8pm during the Edinburgh Fringe.

Published: 1 Aug 2025