The Fujairah factor

Expatriate life often seems short-term, fast-paced and stressed out. But long-time residents of Fujairah believe it doesn't have to be that way. Piers Grimley Evans meets a few people and discovers that in Fujairah there are secrets - and pleasures - of living life a little less hurriedly.

The road from Dubai to Fujairah has an epic, almost cinematic, quality. Sharjah's gritty city backstreets give way first to a billowy sea of sand, then to a desolate mountain pass.

The sense of adventure is topped up by regular scrawls of rubber pointing across the tarmac to twisted sections of crashbarrier. It only takes an hour-and-a-half, but even without a swelling soundtrack, you arrive with high expectations.

At first sight, these may well be punctured. The Hajar Mountains - which along this route never quite fulfil their promise - peter out to reveal an urban grid that sits in the coastal plain like a site manager's office in a quarry.

In an instant the view switches from moonscape to multi-storey office. Another five minutes down the road and you are in the Indian Ocean.

But in Fujairah first impressions count for little. "Nobody can see Fujairah in the first visit,'' says Mohammed Saeed Al Dhanhani, Director of the Ruler's Office, "you cannot see it with your eyes. You have to ask for it."

At restaurants and other such places you hear accounts of initial reactions involving words like "bleak", "villagish" and "Welsh slagheaps"; yet the speakers are still here, sometimes several decades on, and fully convinced it is "a beautiful place to live".

"Lots of people switch companies rather than take a posting elsewhere," says an expat who has spent two decades here. "And even when they leave, they come back. One teacher has now come back twice." Still, the town's charm, however real, hardly slaps you in the face.

Not that Fujairah lacks attractions. For tourists, it is a springboard for beaches, ancient forts, hot-water springs, rugged mountains peppered with ancient carvings, a sea teeming with colourful life and - most uniquely - a picturesque tradition of bovine sumo wrestling.

The Emirate of Fujairah covers just 1.8 per cent of the UAE. It has 110,000 residents, around half of whom live in the city itself. The economy is steadily growing.

The northern half of its coast - where Le Meridien Al Aqah Beach Resort is expected to launch a colony of six or seven upscale hotels - is reserved for tourism. The southern half, for industry, such as steel, cement and petrochemicals.

For the town itself the main earner is bunkering. After Singapore and Rotterdam, Fujairah is the world's third largest bunkering port - in other words, a key service station for the Gulf's vast fleet of tankers.

Every night, the lights of up to 200 ships flicker off the coast. Over a year, 6,000 vessels - three quarters of them tankers - anchor here.

A main sideline is aggregate. Seventy quarries are chewing up the hills around the town to supply the region's building industry. The rock trundles off in sturdy trucks or is sent down a three-kilometre conveyor belt under the coastal highway to the port for shipment to Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar.

The operation is on a truly geological scale. By the end of 2004, nearly 30 million tons of mountain will leave. In only a few years the sky has opened over the city like a parasol as the mountains make way for new developments.

Commercial horizons are also widening. A raft of projects is stoking the local economy. Shankar Bharadwaj of the Al Diar Siji Hotel, a business hotel next to the town's solitary highrise tower, estimates that as many as 15 per cent of its prairie-scale rooms are currently occupied by contractors.

The first stage of a desalination plant is now complete and a natural gas pipeline is snaking its way from Qatar to Oman.

But Fujairah's magic ingredient is, by all accounts, the social life. A swelling calendar of cultural initiatives has followed commercial expansion.

Closest to the heart of Mohammed Saeed Al Dhanhani - a playwright himself - is a biennial international festival of one-man shows, due to return in December 2005. Other recent events include, a touch surreally, world championships in eight-ball billiards and body-building.

Okay, the schedule may not be hectic, but in the social sphere Fujairah possesses a key advantage over some of the other emirates - superior reserves in the vital natural resource of time.

For example, since relocating from Dubai, Shankar Bharadwaj no longer crawls to work through heavy traffic. He now nips to his office in three minutes. And the hours he gains are directed into the Indian Club, of which he is the general secretary.

The motor for Fujairah's leisure activities is education. The most active example is Alyson Menzies of the Higher Colleges of Technology, currently arranging a charity "Cross Channel Swim" and rehearsing a Christmas show to be followed, for the first time, by a disco with authentic flashing lights.

There may not be, she admits, that much for kids here but whatever can be done in terms of swimming clubs, triathlons and raft-building she's got covered.

An essential social hub is the dhow-shaped marina, Fujairah International Marine Club, run by Major Ahmed Ibrahim Mohammed Darak. By the end of this year, the marina will have hosted over 20 events including International Powerboat Championships.

"We are traditionally a fishing culture," he says, "so we love everything related to the sea." His initiatives also include two restaurants and a newsagency stocking foreign titles. "I am trying to make it clear that the Marine Club belongs to everyone in Fujairah."

Then there's the Rugby Club run by scuba operator Paul Algate. The nationalities of the 40 boys who play - UAE national, British, Pakistani, Indian, Iranian, Greek and Palestinian - exemplify what residents consider another home advantage.

"In the past, rugby has been seen as very much a Western expatriate sport," says Algate. "But here because the community is so small there is no segregation."

Fujairah's expats also boast a cultural mix enriched by an enduring Bedouin welcome. Here authentic heritage survives. On a practical level, all residents can attend the Ruler's regular majlis, or public audience. "He deals with them," says Al Dhanhani, "like a father or an old friend."

But if you need further proof of the Fujairah difference, head to the beach on a Friday
evening. In an improvised arena of corralled 4WDs one-ton Brahma bulls, bulked up like WWF wrestlers on a mixture of milk, honey and butter, stand off in the ancient sport of bull-butting.

It is a largely bloodless affair, although on occasion an animal adds to the fun by breaking loose to menace a passing motorist.

It's an element of Fujairah life we should enjoy while we can. There are big plans for this town and they include relocation for rampaging bulls. Already tourist traffic in 2003 was up 48 per cent on the previous year.

Further expansion is planned. And pursuit by lev