How writer use and misuse exotic settings

Let's imagine Teo Olberht's story, "The Blue Water Djinn," in this week's New Yorker, in some other setting. She writes about a boy named Jack in an unnamed beach resort hotel, his mother about whom we know nothing gone to London, leaving Jack (apparently) in the care of the hotel owner? manager? staff?, all of whom have Arrabic-sounding names, so my guess is the hotel may be on one of the Red Sea Egyptian resorts such as Sharm-al-Sheik (sp?); Jack sees (we learn toward end of story) a French tourist, a rather lonely guy known for his pencil sketches, swimming naked and drowning - unclear if accident or suicide - and Jack the next day or so watches as they search for the man's body, recover it, hold a ceremony, etc. Jack says nothing. He's convinced (we don't know Jack's exact age) that the Frenchman (unnamed) was spirted away by water djinn. Okay as far as it goes, and pretty well written, but willfully and annoyingly unrevealing of key information - who is Jack and why is he here alone? - so again readers have to wonder if this is an excerpt from a novel (probably) or an opaque short story. How much of its effect depend on the exotic setting? A lot. You could place it on a Caribbean Island or even on Nantucket, say, changing names and some topical references - and it would be the same story, but it feels or seems more powerful and "universal" because it's set far away (from us). Okay, that's all fair - but on a deeper level I wonder what does the Arabic setting mean or say? Does it answer some question about Jack and his fears? Does it tell us something about his absent mother and unidentified father? If writers choose to set their fiction in unusual places, they have to make the location central to their fiction and not source of names, fauna, customs simply for "local color."