Will Self: The night I was trapped in Dubai Airport

Dubai, 1.30am. I totter, unsteady as a newborn foal, along the gantry from the Emirates Airbus that drove me here. In the curvilinear spaces, the potted palms and the glass booths full of cigarette smoke I see this: the topological analogue of international jet travel. Here, time, which has been smeared across the heavens, is once more balled up into the simulacrum of place.