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“Anastasia’s Godfather Visits the United Arab Emirates”
By Randall D. Ball
We waited at the airport for nearly two hours, and he never came. Someone, and by someone I mean not me, had misread her brother’s itinerary, so we were one day early to greet Brian at the airport. The next day, same place, same time, Brian did arrive and greeted his goddaughter, his niece, the first in the family to see Anastasia, who was only three weeks old.
Anastasia was going to have a busy week.
Brian’s first day, however, was relaxed. We picked him up at the airport in the morning, fed him a full English breakfast at one of our favorite restaurants, and took him to Emirates Palace, our seven-star hotel here in Abu Dhabi, to see spectacular grandeur and over-the-top elegance that oil money can buy. They also had a temporary Picasso art exhibit there, and we showed Brian the Saadiyat Island exhibit, although he slept through that part. I would have to take him back there later in the week.
Brian slept through his first afternoon here, arising for what would become his dinner of choice: Lebanese mixed grill (grilled chicken, beef, and lamb) with humus at our neighborhood spot, Al Fawar. The men who work there recognized me and complimented us on Anastasia, a personal touch that impressed Brian almost as much as the food. It’s a lot of meat—so naturally, we guys liked it. Christine ate salad, humus, and a few bites of my chicken.
The next day, Brian, Christine, Anastasia, our nanny Misrak, and I all traveled two hours up the coast to Dubai, so that we could show Brian (a civil engineer) all the construction there. After all, at least twenty-five percent of the world’s cranes are located in Dubai. He also had a close-up view of the Burj Dubai (tallest building in the world and it’s still under construction) and the Burj Al-Arab (world’s tallest hotel and the OTHER seven-star hotel in the world). We spent the afternoon at the Mall of the Emirates so Brian could get frost bite in the desert; he went snowboarding at Ski Dubai.
I had baby duty for about an hour (we gave Misrak a break so she could do some shopping on her own). Anastasia and I were in a coffee shop in the Mall of the Emirates when she started crying, and before I knew it, a local Emirati woman, completely covered in her abaya and sheyla, approached me, offered to hold her, and soon she was sitting next to me and we were talking in the coffee shop. Normally, this would be practically taboo, but Anastasia is a gateway to the locals. The woman was a natural, fawning over the infant while she told me about her own five children and gave me home remedies for colic. In all fairness, we were in Dubai, which is a bit more liberal than Abu Dhabi—but still.
On Brian’s third day in the United Arab Emirates, we took him to the Abu Dhabi Falcon Hospital on the mainland, just past the airport. Falconry is a treasured Bedouin tradition, part of hunting in Arabia, and these days such falcons can cost tens of thousands of U.S. dollars. Even the UAE President, His Highness Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al-Nayhan, had a falcon at the hospital during our visit. We had the opportunity to hold the powerful birds (no, not the president’s), their immense talons digging into the heavy-duty gloves we were given, and Brian and I even fed them—raw quail. I think their beaks are stronger than their talons! The falcon hospital cares for such avian ailments as broken wings, parasites, injured claws, even bird tuberculosis! Unfortunately, “Anastasia” and “anesthesia” sound alike with some accents, so I’m certain at least one avian doctor there is wondering why Christine and I named our daughter “Anesthesia.”
The following day, I drove our posse to Al Ain, a popular date-palm oasis near the Oman border. The drive took us from the blindingly-white salt flats (sabka) of coastal Abu Dhabi into the romantic, rolling red dunes of Arabia. Al Ain is the birthplace of the UAE’s founding father, the late Sheikh Zayed Al-Nayhan, the current president’s father. We saw his palace, the oasis itself, and the Al Ain National Museum, and then we (err, I) drove up Jebel Hafeet, the tallest mountain in the UAE (“Jebel” means mountain), for a magnificent view of Al Ain and the surrounding desert. Jebel Hafeet is hard to miss in Al Ain; it’s that massive rocky mountain interrupting a relatively flat horizon.
The day after our Al Ain adventure, we visited Sheikh Zayed’s Mosque in Abu Dhabi, the world’s second largest mosque (after Mecca, of course) and home to the world’s largest dome, which is above the world’s largest chandelier, which is above the world’s largest carpet. Christine and Misrak—but not Anastasia, of course—had to cover up in abayas for this visit. The mosque, which is expected to cost $545 million once it’s completed, is also the final resting place of the late Sheikh Zayed Al Nayhan.
The next morning, we took Brian to the camel race track, once again on the mainland outside the city of Abu Dhabi. The camel races don’t take place in the middle of the summer, but there are still a few groups practicing. Brian, using pantomime and broken English to communicate with a camel tender (camel shepherd? Camel nanny?), at length persuaded him to let Brian sit on a camel. This spectacle drew a little crowd as everyone laughed at the American trying to get on—and off—a camel. We all had a good laugh, but Brian got the much-desired photographs of him on a camel. Don’t be fooled by the one photograph where he appears to be slapping a camel’s backside. What he is actually doing is falling off the animal, arms flailing helplessly—and humorously.
After a morning of camels, we returned to the city, where I showed Brian the deep-sea port at Mina and Heritage Village, an informative but touristy locale on the breakwater that celebrates the Bedouin lifestyle. Here, Brian learned three things:
1. Just because a souvenir market is open and on display doesn’t mean that there will be anyone there to actually take your money;
2. at the exhibit where the ox draws water from the well, don’t try to pull water from the well yourself. There’s a ten-minute lecture in Arabic for you if you do; and
3. those ducks weren’t fighting. Two of them were violently crushing a third against the ground while others pecked at the victim, but Christine insists it was just duck sex.
On his last day in Abu Dhabi, we took Brian to the beach for some photo-ops with Anastasia. She did well, by the way, allowing the gentle waves of the Persian Gulf to wash over her without crying. She pleased her coastal-born and raised father, certainly.
We also returned to Emirates Palace so Brian could see the exhibit on Saadiyat Island, or Island of Happiness. Saadiyat Island, located a kilometer from downtown, will be the cultural hub of Abu Dhabi, featuring a maritime museum, the Louvre, the Guggenheim, a national museum, and an opera house. All these structures are amazing architectural feats (once completed), and in the eyes of an engineer like Brian, impractical abominations that people like him must make happen when architects go wild. Actually, Brian liked my favorite exhibit there, the maritime museum, where the walkway seemingly dives into the water and comes out underneath. The island will be an incredible achievement, a valid reason to return to Abu Dhabi in a few years to see the finished product.
Brian saw much during his visit, from the history and culture presented at the Al Ain Museum, Heritage Village, and the falcon hospital to the present attractions of Ski Dubai and fancy hotels to the promise of tomorrow in the Burj Dubai and Saadiyat Island. It’s a good time to be in the United Arab Emirates.
