When I got five free days to myself for Eid, I stressed out, as I had not planned anything until my nephew from Muscat said he was coming over.
Then in 48 hours, we did Dubai, the emirate that I have been living in for a long time, and finally realised why it is such a magnetic pull for tourists from around the globe.
The first night, I took one look at the flashing blue lights of police cars and the long queue of vehicles snaking from the entrance to the Dubai Mall and on to Shaikh Zayed Road, and turned back.
We came back the next day and there were no crowds in the daytime but all the floors of the “Fashion Parking” were full and we had to circle and circle and ended up on the rooftop.
A week ago I had checked out the movie Blade Runner from my son’s hard disc to watch on the TV screen. The Ridley Scott cult sci-fi movie is set in the year 2019 and according to his vision, the future is dark, foreboding and bleak.
In his version of Los Angeles, it is raining all the time, the streets are crowded and tall, monolithic skyscrapers reach out to the dark sky.
From the rooftop of the Dubai Mall, the scene was very different. It was a picture-post card day with not a cloud in the sky and all around us were buildings that were an architect’s delight.
The centrepiece, Burj Khalifa, was there of course, but all around it were towers that seemed to have been designed by someone with a sense of fun, and that made my nephew go crazy with his cameras.
Dazzled by the futuristic architecture we descended down to the Mall and were greeted in an entirely different fashion. Emirati men were standing at the entrance of a traditional souq with baskets of dates and fanajeen (small coffee cups without a handle) of qawha (coffee).
One tall Emirati slipped a leather glove on my wrist and placed a beautiful, hooded falcon on it. There was a lot of ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from women tourists who wanted to touch the bird of prey. I stroked its sleek back and it didn’t even flinch. I had read somewhere that when a falcon dives for its prey, other birds in mid-flight do not stand a chance.
“What’s that?” asked my nephew, pointing towards the beach side as we traversed the Shaikh Zayed Road one more time. I had completely forgotten to show him Dubai’s iconic hotel that doles out gold iPads to its guests.
Burj Al Arab had always been there for me as I drove past it on Beach Road. For a long, long time I could see the massive construction work going on some distance away from the Burj. I had heard there was some huge dredging work going on there. Finally, one day the Madinat Jumeirah opened.
We headed there to join groups of tourists trying to take trick photos, holding the Burj in the distance, between their hands.
Time was running out as my nephew needed to catch the bus back to Oman, but I had to show him the place where it had all started for Dubai—the Creek. It is said that the ancient Greeks called this saltwater creek, the River Zara, and it was said to meander far inland to Al Ain.
We didn’t take the abra to cross over to the other side, but we walked along the Creek and checked out the stuff waiting on the wharf to be re-exported by dhows.
It was fun rediscovering Dubai though we did not even cover the top 10 tourist attractions of the emirate. And it is unlikely we will get another long, long Eid holiday like this one again.
