Travelling – it gives you home in a thousand strange places, then leaves you a stranger in your own land.
Ibn Battutah
It was late morning by the time Sir Bani Yas came into view from the deck of the boat. It was a desert island in the most literal form. Just five miles off the coast of the UAE, this little atoll was my gateway to the Emirates. My plan was to walk across the island before taking another boat on to Abu Dhabi and then Dubai.
This coastline was known to the British colonial administrators as the Trucial Coast – named because of the loose confederation of tribes that made it up. It was a region that until the twentieth century was infamous for piracy, smuggling and the slave trade. Nowadays the tribal affiliations have become slightly more regulated, with borders drawn and nations settled upon.
The United Arab Emirates consists of seven sheikhdoms, which combined in 1971 in order to have a stronger unified force against neighbouring enemies. Abu Dhabi is the largest of these emirates, sitting atop the majority of the land and the majority of the oil; Dubai the best known, with its mega-city a global commercial hub; the smaller emirates of Ajman, Sharjah,Umm al-Quwain and Ras al-Khaimah sit along the Gulf coast and Fujairah faces out into the Arabian Sea.
I figured that a mini walking expedition of a few days would help me acclimatise to the intense heat of the Gulf. Iraq had been exhausting, but the truth was that most of it had been spent crammed in the back of trucks and, for all its hardships, apart from the couple of days running around the battlefields, it hadn’t really given me the chance to explore the place on foot. I was keen to walk, to stretch my legs and feel the sweat pouring down my brow. It makes you feel alive and gives you a sense of achievement, in a way that staring out of a car window can never do.
More than that, I felt as if I needed to test myself against the environment. It had been a while since I’d been in the desert and I knew that what lay ahead could be some of the most brutal and demanding terrain I’d ever encountered. The Empty Quarter Desert and the mountains of Dhofar loomed in my mind. In just a couple of weeks I’d be entering Oman, where my biggest challenge would lie, so whatever practice I could get in now would be not only useful, but essential. I knew all too well the dangers of heat, exhaustion and thirst, so a couple of days getting hot and sweaty now could pay dividends later.
Mustafa was waiting for me in the opulent surroundings of the Anantara resort.
‘Welcome, sir.’
I looked around at the luxury hotel, the only one on the island, which serviced the few high-end tourists who ventured beyond the gated communities of the mainland. I took in the traditionally themed lobby, with its boutique shops and butlers in mess kit and huge pieces of aboriginal art. It was truly palatial.
Mustafa was a guide from Morocco, a Berber from the Atlas Mountains, who’d come to the Gulf in search of work fifteen years ago and ended up in the hotel industry.
‘But my real love is wildlife. I grew up in the mountains and always wanted to help protect the endangered species. I sometimes think that I love animals more than people,’ he said, hoisting a rucksack onto his back.
‘This sort of place is all well and good,’ he motioned to the beautiful restaurant, where some American tourists were slurping on lobster and steak, ‘but the real pleasure is out there.’ He pointed out beyond the manicured gardens to the desert beyond. ‘That’s what life is all about.’
I’d barely taken a moment to appreciate the magnificence of the hotel, before Mustafa was leading us down a track past the staff quarters and beyond some acacia bushes that hid the rubbish bins. We hopped over a fence and my feet landed on the stony gravel that marked the start of my walk.
‘You know, we don’t normally do walking safaris on the island.’ He smiled. ‘Most people just want to drive. Arabs are pretty lazy.’
With our backs to the sea, Mustafa led the way down a little slope towards a turquoise lagoon that was trapped by a sand dune. He was clearly excited to be guiding me on foot rather than sat in a jeep, and took great delight in wading through the tepid waters to get to the other side.
We walked up a rocky outcrop and on the far side I saw what we were aiming for. Ten miles distant lay a mountain. It wasn’t particularly big, but its looming presence marked the centre of the island, and the point we were hoping to reach by the evening to make camp. But between us were miles of desert, savannah and forest. It seemed like every kind of terrain could be found on this little paradise.
‘It wasn’t always like this, though,’ said Mustafa, as we trekked through a plantation of date palms. ‘Until the seventies, it was all empty desert and hardly any trees. It was Sheikh Zayed’s idea to bring this to life. He used to have a holiday home over there.’ Mustafa pointed to a bay in the distance, where I could make out the abandoned ruins of a palace.
‘Then in 1977, he decided to ban all hunting and save the animals. It was basically his own personal zoo and he brought in all sorts of wildlife.’
Mustafa was scouring the gravel for signs of tracks and prints.
‘Most Arabs couldn’t give a shit about the environment,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘They throw their litter everywhere and totally ruin the place. You can probably tell, I don’t really like Arabs. I’m a Berber and we’ve always thought they were brutes. Working here, I haven’t really changed my mind on that. They’re not all bad, though. Sheikh Zayed was different. He had a vision to turn the Emirates into something really special.’
I’d heard of Zayed. It was impossible not to, travelling through the Gulf – his image is everywhere: on posters, billboards and in frames in almost every public space. He was the ruler who had consolidated the tribal powers and pushed for the formation of the United Arab Emirates, not long before discovering huge oil reserves beneath the new country, making him one of the wealthiest people in the world.
‘Zayed was a visionary. He was born in the desert as a Bedouin and grew up riding camels. Even when he lived in his palace, he would still go out for weeks in the desert to hunt. Zayed wanted the Emirates to be the best place in the Arab world. And he kind of achieved it, didn’t he? I mean look at this place compared to all the other places in the region. They’re all screwed.’
Mustafa smiled. He pointed to some faint markings in the sand. ‘Hoof prints. Probably gazelle.’ He grew suddenly animated.
‘If we’re lucky, we’ll see some oryx soon. They usually hang out on the savannah at the base of the mountain.’
I’d heard about the famous wildlife on the island, but nothing could have quite primed me for the scenes that lay ahead. ‘There’s thirteen thousand indigenous animals here.’ Mustafa grinned.
Sheikh Zayed had declared Sir Bani Yas a no-hunting zone in the 1970s, and with some very expensive irrigation it wasn’t long before the island was green, fed by a nine-kilometre underwater pipe from the mainland and some desalination plants. Over the last thirty years, millions of trees have been planted and Zayed set about repopulating the island with animals that needed a safe haven – some of which were already extinct in the wild. Now, under the shade of the palms and acacias, all sorts of beasts roam free.
‘In a few years we want to use solar and wind power here, and we even have a no-fishing zone around the island to preserve the sea life,’ Mustafa said, as we followed the trail ahead.
We walked for another two hours, beyond the date groves and into the desert. It was brutally hot and my clothes were drenched with sweat. I’d put sun cream on my face in the morning, but now it was streaming into my eyes and stinging them painfully. I’d wanted to push myself and I realised pretty quickly that I’d certainly be doing that. Mustafa looked perfectly happy, however, skipping ahead.
The humidity was over ninety per cent and that meant I was sweating buckets and getting through water rations very rapidly. The deserts I’d been to before were often hot, but usually dry heat, so you don’t tend to sweat so much. Here I was literally pouring fluids, and we were only carrying four litres of water, which had to last us till the evening, when we would find a resupply in the mountains.
‘Keep up, Lev, we haven’t got all day.’ Mustafa grinned.
Further ahead, the sandy desert broke into more rocky terrain as we neared the foothills. The trail led through some narrow canyons, which at least afforded some shade from the relentless sun. Mustafa stopped in his tracks.
‘There,’ he whispered, pointing into some craggy rocks up ahead. I squinted and couldn’t see anything.
‘Wait till it moves.’ Mustafa held a finger to his mouth.
I held my breath in anticipation and then suddenly there was a flash of brown, and I could make out the shape of an enormous ram the size of a small horse. ‘That’s a urial.’
‘A urial?’ I said, surprised to see the massive sheep with curled horns. ‘Aren’t they from Central Asia?’
Mustafa laughed. ‘Yes, but it’s not just endemic and indigenous species, there’s all sorts here. There’s rhea, ostriches and giraffes. It’s like Jurassic Park.’ My Moroccan guide smiled.
The sheep bounded off into the boulders and disappeared. We carried on walking through the gorge and then began scrambling up onto a plateau filled with acacia bushes. It reminded me of an African savannah landscape, the kind I’d seen in Kenya and Tanzania, and I half-expected to see a lion stalking its prey.
‘No lions, I’m afraid, but there are a few cheetah and plenty of hyenas and jackals,’ said Mustafa. ‘There used to be cheetah all across Arabia, but they were hunted to extinction. The same with oryx and ostriches.’
As the day wore on and the water supplies grew low, we ascended the mountain and onto almost the highest point, where we could see views across the island. The orchards and plains spread out below us like a patchwork quilt of greens and browns, and in the far distance you could make out the haze of the Arabian Gulf, glistening like a faraway sea of diamonds.
‘It’ll be dark soon,’ said Mustafa, ‘and we’re camping down there.’ He pointed to a valley of green palms five or six kilometres away. By the time we climbed off the mountain and reached the flat ground, it was already dusk and I was worried we might find ourselves stuck in the open at the mercy of stalking cheetahs.
‘Don’t worry, they won’t hunt us,’ said the ever-optimistic Moroccan.
As we crested a small ridge and the plains opened up, I was reassured to see why we wouldn’t be the cheetahs’ main priority. There, right in front of us, was a scene straight out of The Lion King.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of antelope were busy grazing in the golden light of the afternoon. I could make out all sorts of different species. ‘They’re Arabian sand gazelle,’ Mustafa pointed at the biggest group, ‘and those are blackbuck.’
I looked to see the slightly bigger beasts with curly horns. There were deer as well, Sri Lankan axis deer with their distinctive white spots, and what I thought to be the common fallow deer, the kind you see in Richmond Park, dozing in the bushes nearby. In among the herds, I saw the most beautiful of all – the muscular black-and-white Arabian oryx with their ramrod straight horns, lolling under the shade of the trees. These magnificent creatures were almost all extinct in the wild apart from here.
Wild Indian peacocks strutted around pecking in between their four-legged cousins, bringing a colourful flash of purple and blue to the party. Some ostriches were busy racing across the savannah in the distance and then, lurching from behind some palm trees came the giants – a pair of beautiful African giraffes, seemingly unconcerned by the ethnic makeup of their companions.
We picked our way through the frenzy and the animals cleared a path, darting away in zigzag dances, but they never ran too far. These beasts had led a charmed life and had never been hunted by humans, and even the timid gazelles thought twice before leaving the comfort of their acacia shade to bolt.
As the sun set behind the mountain and the shadows enveloped the wadis, we entered a little forest where Mustafa had planned for us to camp.
‘Not far now,’ he said, as we pushed through the trees to find a clearing. We collected some firewood and set up our tents and listened as the sound of the forest grew loud. Bullfrogs and crickets chirped and the last of the birds to roost called their final song, until the crackling of the fire drowned out all else. The blackness surrounding us concealed a sense of wonder and beauty, and it reminded me that on this journey not everything was as it seemed. The secrets of Arabia were all around, hidden just below the surface, if only you searched for them.
The next day we trekked to the pristine white beaches of the coast, and after saying goodbye to Mustafa, I took a boat to the town of Ruwais on the mainland. The scenery couldn’t have been more different. I suddenly found myself in a dusty port, walking past industrial sites and huge oil refineries. The road east was hardly appealing. After the greenery and beauty of Bani Yas, I was faced again with the harshness of the desert, scarred with the markings of the modern world: service stations, motorways and grey warehouses.
As I walked along the side of the motorway, I kept my arm outstretched, and on hearing the sound of approaching vehicles, I always turned around to face the traffic head on. I’d learned in years of hitchhiking that the trick to getting a lift was always to look your potential target in the eyes. That way there’s a connection, they can’t escape and they feel more inclined to stop.
Hitching gets more difficult as you get older. I remembered back to when I was in my early twenties and hitched lifts from England to India. There were some places, like Russia, where it had been difficult, but most of the time people would stop and go well out of their way to look after you. I guess when you’re younger, people feel sorry for you and want to help, or perhaps there’s a sense of romanticism about being on the road, and it was a familiar tale to be picked up by old travellers wanting to hear a story or two, or to reignite their own sense of adventure by living vicariously.
When you’re in your mid-thirties, though, and hitching through a country where there’s no real culture of it, it’s a bit more tricky.
The cars zipped by, beeping their horns or ignoring me completely. Most of the cars were new; shiny sports cars and big 4x4s screeched past, kicking up dust. These were the only cars driven by the Arabs themselves. You could see them in their white keffiyehs and dark sunglasses, without so much as a glance in my direction, as they roared past at a hundred miles an hour. Then there were the lorries trundling past at a much slower pace, but an equal reluctance to stop for a foreign pedestrian.
Finally, after forty-five minutes of walking in the perilous grit of the emergency lane, a Toyota Corolla taxi pulled over fifty metres ahead. I’d hoped for a free lift, what I considered a ‘proper hitch’, but I’d already learned that very little comes for free in the Arab world. I ran forward to show a bit of appreciation for him having stopped in any case. The window rolled down and the young man at the wheel invited me to get in.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked.
‘Dubai,’ he said.
I’d planned on stopping by Abu Dhabi first, but Dubai was only another hour and a half north-east, and it was where I wanted to get to anyway, so I got in.
‘Ahmad at your service,’ said the man, who didn’t look older than twenty-five.
I asked him where he was from. He wasn’t an Arab and must have been one of the eight million immigrant workers who reside in the UAE, keeping the economy afloat.
‘I’m from Pakistan, sir,’ he said, with a little head-shake. ‘From the city of Peshawar. Do you know it?’
I told him that I did, and that I’d visited, at which point his eyes lit up and he was keen to chat.
‘Sir, I would love to come to live in your good country. It is my dream to live in London. Do you think you could get me a visa?’
I explained that it was rather more difficult than that.
‘Yes, sir, I know. Being an immigrant is a hard life,’ he said, with melancholic eyes. ‘Especially these days. Nobody wants foreigners anymore. It seems like the world is under a change of management.’
‘A change of management?’
‘Yes, sir, with Mr Trump in charge, everything is becoming troublesome. I would have liked to study in the great America, but now it is impossible. So I come here in search of employment. But it is hard here also. I am working here now for three years. I am working as a taxi man, but before I was in Abu Dhabi in the building sector. I was working for a big company, but it was very difficult work.’
He shook his head.
‘When I arrived, they made me sign a contract in Arabic and took my passport. I couldn’t even leave if I wanted to. I had to work seven days a week and it took me six months before I got any money. I worked for more than sixteen hours a day and had to sleep in a tiny, hot room in a low bunk with six other people, there was no fan or air conditioning.’
Ahmad’s story was commonplace. Migrant workers were enticed to the Middle East with promises such as green cards and high wages and when they got there, agents often took a cut of their pay and they lived as indentured servants. Living and working conditions could be dire, but with no passports, they had few options but to work without complaint.
‘I didn’t dare to complain, or they’d take away my sponsorship, and then what would I do? I don’t like the Arabs, they are so rude and treat us foreigners like dirt, but the Pakistani agents are even worse, so I was stuck. I waited for my two-year contract to end. That’s when I started as a taxi driver, it is better, I have some more freedom and now I can have one day off a week.’
There are something like half a million Pakistanis in the UAE, in addition to the two or three million Indians (the actual figures are pretty sketchy), one million Bangladeshis and hundreds of thousands of Egyptians, Nepalis and Filipinos, not to mention the Russians, Europeans and Brits who fill the majority of the more professional and financial roles. Immigrants make up eighty-five per cent of the population of the UAE, leaving the few Arabs in a sort of ethereal existence. The local Emiratis need the immigrants to make the country work, but as a result, the passing traveller never gets to meet any ‘locals’.
The divide was immediately apparent as we drove through the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, with its flashy high-rise buildings and palm-lined corniche. The only Arabs you’d see were in the fancy cars driving to and from the mall.
‘Go shopping. That’s all they seem to do,’ said Ahmad. ‘The Arabs, they have jobs in the army and government and run some of the oil businesses, but they are lazy and I never see them do any work.’
It was true that the UAE had outsourced the dangerous and dirty jobs to migrant labourers, as the economy rapidly expanded. Now some ninety-six per cent of the workforce is non-Emirati. As Ahmad had pointed out, the Arabs still held the bulk of the roles in the public sector, maintaining control of the military and government, but a staggering ninety-nine-and-a-half per cent of the private sector was made up of foreign workers.
However, things were slowly changing. ‘In the early days it was good,’ said Ahmad. ‘There was no tax to pay, but now they are saying that we must pay tax.’
It seems that the government has realised the oil isn’t going to last forever. The boom years have gone and now the UAE appears to be diversifying its economy, becoming more reliant on sustainability and tourism. But while the gold rush is over, it appears the mentality of the Emiratis has yet to change. ‘They think they can just sit back and watch us do all the work? We’ll just leave,’ said Ahmad, ‘and then they’ll learn they have to do some work themselves.’
We arrived in Dubai in time for the rush hour. We sat in a queue of 4x4s on a big wide highway with six lanes and a seemingly endless rotation of spaghetti junctions and flyovers. Out of the window were sprawling mansions, endless shopping malls, fat Humvees and glass towers lined up against the sky. In Dubai, it seemed, there was a premium on size. I passed the sparkling base of the Burj Khalifa. Never ones to do things by halves, Dubai created the highest building in the world, so tall it has its own micro climate. We drove past enormous waterparks, indoor ski slopes and vast lawns with immaculate flower beds. It’s impossible to imagine that forty years ago, this was a sleepy fishing village that barely made the maps.
Cranes hovered low between the endless hotels, standing by to erect more steel and concrete. Whatever Ahmad thought, the relentless development wasn’t over quite yet. Lights blazed from the buildings in all shades and colours, flashing signs that lured my eyes. Nothing much was happening on the streets. Everything seemed to go on behind high walls, tinted car windows and closed doors. We eventually reached the coastline, where the white sand was dotted with sun loungers and leafy palms.
I wanted to get some rest in Dubai, so I’d blagged a few nights in the luxury of the Jumeirah beachside hotel, a five-star resort overlooking the bay, right next to the famous Burj Al Arab ‘Sail’ Hotel, with its £25,000 a night presidential suite. I wanted to enjoy the beach and make time to catch up with some old university friends. I knew quite a few people who’d made the transition to expat life, and with tax-free status, luxury accommodation, year-round sunshine and a live-in nanny, why not?
I met Griff at his home in one of the wealthy suburbs. His Filipino housemaid opened the door to the five-bedroom mansion. Griff was playing with his two-year-old daughter, while his wife Claire made tea.
‘Lev, you old bastard, it’s been a while.’ He put his daughter on the sofa and gave me a hug.
‘Three or four years at least,’ I reminded him. I’d served in the army with Griff and he’d since left to come and work in investment banking in Dubai, as a way of earning some money to afford a house in London.
‘It’s not often the missus lets me out these days.’ He slapped me on the back. ‘But we can’t have you out boozing on your own, can we, Lev?’
He kissed his wife and daughter and we took a taxi to one of Dubai’s fancy hotels. It was a Friday and that meant there was only one thing to do.
‘Brunch,’ said Griff with a wide grin. ‘I haven’t been to one in a while. Since having a baby, I can’t really go out for an all-day session anymore, but they are good fun. It’s basically an excuse to eat as much food as you want and drink champagne, well, cheap prosecco at least.’
We’d booked tickets to go to a 1990s-themed brunch at a hotel on the famous Palm – a tree-shaped piece of land built from the sea – now home to hundreds of hotels, resorts and bars. We arrived to find a rather sticky red carpet and a bouncer with a clipboard. We were led to round tables and sat next to total strangers. It reminded me of a gala dinner, except everyone was wearing shorts and gorging themselves on burgers and lobster. There must have been eight hundred people crammed into the room. It was only midday and already most of them were drunk. They were almost all British or Irish, and there wasn’t an Arab in sight.
‘Isn’t it weird, getting pissed in a country where alcohol is illegal?’ Griff said, pouring himself an oversized glass of sparkling wine. ‘You know, we’re meant to have a licence to drink here. But obviously nobody does.’
‘So what happens if you get caught?’ I asked. I’d read plenty of reports of British expats and holidaymakers ending up in jail for seemingly minor offences, but I couldn’t see how the law actually operated, when almost the entire population is foreign, and a good chunk of them are beer-swilling Brits.
‘For the most part, nothing. It’s technically illegal to be drunk, but just have a look around later on and you’ll see that nobody gives a shit. The problems only really come when the Arabs get involved. There was a guy just last week who was in a bar carrying a pint. He was trying to shuffle past some Emiratis and bumped into one or something, I think he was trying to stop his drink from spilling, and brushed one of the Arabs on his waist or his arse. You know, the usual stuff that happens in a pub on a Friday night. Anyway, the Arabs didn’t like it and called the police, who came and arrested the bloke. Now he’s in jail and facing charges of indecency. They say he’ll get three years in jail. Basically, the rule of thumb is it’s okay to get pissed, just don’t piss off the Arabs.’
I looked around. In among the piles of sushi and pizza, hundreds of British people, most of them in varying states of undress, were sinking beer by the bucketload as Peter Andre gyrated on the stage, singing ‘Mysterious Girl’ while showing off a set of remarkably defined abs. It occurred to me that life in the Gulf was far too complicated to try to understand in a week, so better not to bother and simply indulge. When in Rome and all that.
It took about three days to get over that hangover.
I hitched north out of the city, leaving the glitz of Dubai behind. Huge sand drifts piled up at the side of the motorway as it sliced through the desert. The suburbs and industrial overspill lined the coast to the north, all the way past the airport to Sharjah and beyond to Umm al-Quwain. My lift dropped me off at the side of the road next to an abandoned airstrip that flanked a lagoon. I could just about smell the salty mangroves beyond the haze. He pointed to what looked like a business park half a mile away down a track, and told me that was the best chance of getting another ride onwards to the north.
I decided to take a short cut across the waste ground, since the fence had already been ripped down, so I trampled over the piles of rubbish and broken bottles to what would have been the runway. Signs indicated that it must have been in use until fairly recently. The hangars were up ahead, but what stood out the most was a huge passenger plane simply parked up outside them. The doors had been ripped off and there were holes in the fuselage; as I got closer, I noticed pigeons flying in and out of the broken windows. It was a sorry affair and it looked like the apocalypse had already come here.
Beyond the rusting hulk of the plane, I walked through the hangars. The floor was littered with the remains of humanity: a dusty sofa upturned, papers and files strewn across the floor and bits of wood that had fallen from the rafters. A moth-eaten parachute was draped over some chairs in the corner. I walked into one of the adjacent offices, which still had most of its stationery littered around. There was a faint smell of death and I saw in the corner the rotting corpse of a desert fox.
There were pictures on the walls of certificates. It was a parachute training school for civilians. I saw the dates of the course photographs. The last one seemed to be in 2005. For whatever reason, it had been abandoned and left as it was for the desert to reclaim. Sand had piled up against the walls and there were trees that had already begun to sprout up through the concrete, reminding me that nature always wins.
I carried on beyond the airstrip and rejoined the slip road to the little industrial park next to the lagoon. As I got nearer, I saw a sign for ‘Barracuda Wine Shop’. It appeared to be a huge warehouse selling duty-free booze to the wholesalers. It was out of the way, hidden from view by a line of eucalyptus and acacia trees. It was yet another of the dichotomies of the Gulf. In a region known for its strict adherence to Islamic sharia law, there were always exceptions made out of convenience, especially when it came to making money.
I couldn’t help but notice that among the queue of foreigners – Brits, Russians and Indians – there were a few Arabs, too. Resplendent in their kandura and keffiyeh, even the Emiratis weren’t above pushing a cart load of whisky to the boot of their Land Cruisers. It raised the question, was the image of the Gulf Arab as a strict Muslim really all a façade?