Elegant Emirates
Molly Watson
Iknow that it is de rigueur among serious business people to complain that travelling very long distances for work is a stressful and disruptive chore, but I’m still at the stage of my career/emotional maturity level when I really really like it. I have not spent enough time in the pointy end of aeroplanes to have become blasé about the perks of flying in business class — an environment I find far more comfortable than, say, the inside of my flat. But I find it soothing to hang around with people who have; the sort of airmile-laden veterans who get their laptops unpacked and ready for security checks without having to be asked and wouldn’t dream of striking up conversation with each other mid-flight.
Short-term separation from friends and family seems a small sacrifice for the pleasure of seeing a new place at someone else’s expense and with the added advantage of experiencing a foreign culture as a professional visitor with people to see, rather than as a tourist with time to kill. Best of all, as a long-haul business traveller I feel none of the pressure to enjoy myself at my destination that hangs over me when I’ve elected to spend my own time and money on a trip.
So when a project in Abu Dhabi beckoned a few months ago, I skipped home to pack my bags and wait for the car that Etihad Airways (the United Arab Emirates’ new flagship carrier which is experiencing the fastest growth rate in the history of commercial aviation) sent to take me to Heathrow. Twelve hours (several glasses of pink champagne, a delicious fillet of cod and a George Clooney blockbuster) later, I felt reassured that at the very least I was travelling to a nation that knew a thing or two about world-class air travel.
But before my plane even touched down at Abu Dhabi’s mosaic-domed airport terminal, the country’s most famous assets had made themselves known. Huge beacons of flame illuminated the dark desert sky where the pipelines carrying its oil and gas supplies are allowed to ‘breathe’. There is some complicated engineering necessity for what I initially mistook as a show of conspicuous consumption, but with an estimated 8 per cent of global oil reserves and 4 per cent of the world’s natural gas supply lying underneath their feet, the Emiratis can afford to waste a bit.
It is exactly 50 years since oil was discovered in Abu Dhabi. Until then the ancient sheikhdom had an economy based on pearldiving, camel-trading and date-growing — the name Abu Dhabi translates as Father of the Gazelle after the deer that used to gather on this tiny peninsula on the Persian Gulf. The pace of change under the ensuing oil boom has been dizzying; the citizens of a historically nomadic society that paved their first road in 1961 now swish between air-conditioned office blocks and shopping malls in their air-conditioned cars — powered by an economic growth rate that seldom falls below 9 per cent a year.
But for a nation who have grown so very rich so very quickly the Abu Dhabians are incredibly restrained, unspoilt consumers. Only very occasionally do they display a tin ear for enjoying the spoils of their enormous wealth. For instance, some of the spanking new sports cars being driven around the city still have the plastic covers over their leather seats with which they were delivered from the production line. When the plastic wears through, the owners return to their dealers to have it re-applied. Although as someone who threw up on the way to work after being hurled around the back seat of a turbo-charged taxi like a rag doll as my driver negotiated the city’s uncluttered grid of streets, I have to concede that they may have some justification for retaining a wipedown option.
My abiding memory of the Emiratis I encountered in Abu Dhabi is of a people extremely at ease with themselves. Their sense of humour and friendliness makes it easy to forget that their near neighbours are predominantly war-torn or extremely restrictive regimes. Granted, they live under an absolute and devoutly Muslim monarch, but they do so with a light yet respectful touch — no doubt partly influenced by the fact that 80 per cent of the population are expatriates. I found the same colleagues who at noon and sunset put down their laptops as they heard the call to prayer being broadcast across the city were more than happy to befriend local Christians and discuss Jennifer Aniston’s romantic traumas over a lunchtime pizza. There is a deep respect for their inspirational ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, but it is a reverence that leaves room for telling stories about him allegedly driving round the city incognito to check that the palm trees he is so fond of aren’t bulldozed by the relentless tide of construction that characterises life in the city.
In many ways Abu Dhabi is defined by what it is not. And what it is most certainly not is the new Dubai. Where Dubai does brash, Abu Dhabi does style. While Dubai is constructing ‘The World’ — a footballers’ paradise of man-made islands — in three years time Abu Dubai will unveil a new Frank Gehry-designed £100 million Guggenheim Museum housing art from the Louvre and our own Royal Academy. At street level there is something far more alluring about the veiled women of Abu Dhabi, in their beautifully cut abaya gowns accessorised with designer heels and handbags, than the scantily clad Westerners who seem to have taken over Dubai nightlife. The sight of the locals sitting immaculate in their dishdashes and designer shades in the lobby of my hotel made me feel embarrassed to belong to the tribe of Westerners baking themselves outside by the swimming pool. I didn’t think traditional dress could be chic until I made friends with some of my Emirati colleagues and saw that a modest black robe can still be a modest black robe when it is cut in silk and embroidered with crystals.
This sense of elegance even extends to Abu Dhabi’s macro-economic choices. Despite having at least 50 more years worth of oil reserves, there is a concerted move to diversify the economy away from petroleum. Abu Dhabi’s population is now among the best educated on the planet and its leaders are investing in everything from international healthcare to green technologies. Next year, Masdar, the world’s first totally green city designed by Norman Foster, will open on the capital city’s suburbs and set a new global standard in solar technology.
I flew home in daylight and used the opportunity to scan the city from the sky for signs of its roots in the third century BC. There was none. The timeless-looking spires of its central mosque were apparently completed just a couple of years ago and aside from the famous White Fort there are few old buildings to see in Abu Dhabi. I put this down to the erosive effect of sand and sun, combined with a culture that seems more interested in building for the future than preserving the monuments of the past. And who can blame them? As one of my new colleagues put it, ‘We don’t have time to look back too much here. Forget the gold rush or even the black gold rush. We are in the middle of an opportunity rush.’
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