Congratulations are in order. The country I’ve lived in for over 25 years just celebrated the 40th anniversary of it’s unification. It has come a long way in these 40 years. The pace at which things have changed over the years is just indescribable, especially in the city of Dubai. I like to think I’ve witnessed the most incredible transformation of a city in the history of time. The transformation of a dead and barren expanse into a bustling city full of life, in the space of little more than a decade. I’ve been a part of it, in my own way, and it has been a truly remarkable experience.
I have learnt to call this country home. Twenty five years in once place does that to you. I know the streets of Bur Dubai like the back of my hand. For a good part of my childhood, I used to play hide and seek around where Bur Juman sits right now. Sometimes my mother would walk me over to al Fahidi street. We’d go grocery shopping at the Choitram’s there, get ice cream from Baskin Robbins and then rent a couple of VHS tapes at al Mansoor Video. There used to be a Modern Bakery van parked right outside. I remember playing cricket on the grounds near Karama, near where Wafi now sits. I remember the desert looming large, right across Defense roundabout. Back then, al Ain’s Hili Fun City wasn’t a derelict scrapyard, and the World Trade Center was bewilderingly tall.
But when my father got off the boat, 35 years ago, none of those things existed. He landed at Abu Dhabi airport with nothing much else but fifteen Dirhams to his name, money he’d borrowed from a friend in Karachi, his hometown. He started out working in advertising, with one of the Galadari brothers, long before Khaleej Times or Galadari Publishing were even a dream. He then took up a sales position with an engineering interest the Galadaris owned, and engineering is what he’s been doing ever since. He had walked into a land of opportunities. “It was really a bed of roses, ready for the picking” he says.
Before he came to the UAE, my dad spent his early twenties in Tokyo, cooking meals in diners, labor camps, five star hotels. Pretty much any place that would hire him. He worked the kitchens of Honk Kong, Bangkok, Singapore and Kobe amongst others. His sentiments on the UAE’s 40th ‘National Day’: he regrets not having settled down in Tokyo. “Life would have been different.” he says. He’s voiced his regret many times before. And now I understand his reasons.
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Posted from Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
Tags: dubai, expats, national day, uae
