The other day, I took a walk. Not a walk-for-exercise walk, not a stroll-along-the-beach walk, just a walk around a neighbourhood I’d never seen before.
I’d arrived early for a doctor’s appointment and thought about trying to find a cup of coffee but then decided on a stroll. It had already been a long week (although it was only Tuesday) and I decided that moving around a bit would be better for my mood than sitting hunched in a coffee shop.
The act of walking just to walk instead of walking to get somewhere has a meditative quality. You have to pay attention when you cycle (especially in Abu Dhabi), but when you walk, your mind is free to wander, especially if you find yourself, as I did, in the winding streets behind a super block. Being off the main streets meant no life-threatening pedestrian crossings or jumping out of the way so that a motorist taking the corner at the last second won’t turn you into a hood ornament.
One of the things I miss most about living in New York is walking everywhere. Friends who came to visit told me that my definition of “a short walk” had no basis in reality. “Forty-five minutes is not a short walk,” one friend told me. “It’s a cab ride.” The little neighborhood tucked in behind Delma Street, where I found myself the other morning, wasn’t big enough to sustain a long walk but it nonetheless reminded me that Abu Dhabi is in fact a city, not just a series of hive-like compounds.
_____________________
Read more by Deborah Williams
Surely those of us with the luxury of stability can do more to help the uprooted
De-cluttering is essential, but then so is nostalgia
Tempers and temperatures are boiling over in the US, a country at odds with itself
What happens if we lose our anchors to the past?
_____________________
I exchanged long and meaningful looks with a cat who was guarding the neighbourhood from the top of a small rusty swing-set. After the cat leapt away to chase an errant plastic bag, I meandered down a narrow walkway between two garden walls. At the end of the path, bougainvillea spilled over the wall in a rush of scarlet light, and an old gentleman sitting in a little balcony above the flowers smiled at me, lifting his coffee cup in a silent toast to the morning.
Two men clearly late for work rushed past, leaving a wash of cologne in their wake. They were walking so fast they didn't see what I did when I swerved to avoid their cologne zone: graffiti in Arabic and English that said "too busy."
I rounded another corner and almost bumped into a woman sweeping the front walk of a still-shuttered villa. We exchanged “good mornings,” and then I added “nice day, isn’t it?” I think that means I’m a bona fide Abu Dhabian, because it was 35C at 7:45AM, and so humid that my glasses had steamed over when I got out of the car, but there I was, happily oblivious to the heat and to the thin trickle of sweat between my shoulder blades.
_____________________
More from Opinion
Editorial: When it comes to our health, every step really does matter
Editorial: As the heat of summer drops, our calendar fills up
Editorial: On the economic burden of poor health
_____________________
When is the last time you went walking without a purpose or even with a purpose, other than to get from your car to a building? We live in a city built to some degree on the world’s need for gas and oil, so I guess it makes sense that cars have pride of place here, but do we all have to give in so readily to our automotive masters? At the end of my walk, the step-counter app on my phone suggested that I’d burned off barely the calories of a tiny muffin, but my stroll hadn’t been for the calories. It had been for the flowers, the cat, the “good mornings,” the graffiti. It had been to remind myself that I can’t know the city if I only see it from the inside of a car.
But of course, the opportunity to burn a few extra calories can't be ignored, not if you are, as I am, in your late mid-40s (which is how I define being 53). Besides, I remember once reading a tongue-in-cheek solution that someone proposed as a solution for both the obesity epidemic and the energy crisis: "Eat less. Walk more."
The weather is improving, people. Get out of the car.
Deborah Lindsay Williams is a professor of literature at NYU Abu Dhabi
Follow The National's Opinion section on Twitter
_____________________
Also read
Editorial: Excise taxes will contribute to a healthier tomorrow
Editorial: There is no second home quite like the UAE
_____________________
Tips for taking the metro
- set out well ahead of time
- make sure you have at least Dh15 on you Nol card, as there could be big queues for top-up machines
- enter the right cabin. The train may be too busy to move between carriages once you're on
- don't carry too much luggage and tuck it under a seat to make room for fellow passengers
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
Test
Director: S Sashikanth
Cast: Nayanthara, Siddharth, Meera Jasmine, R Madhavan
Star rating: 2/5
2025 Fifa Club World Cup groups
Group A: Palmeiras, Porto, Al Ahly, Inter Miami.
Group B: Paris Saint-Germain, Atletico Madrid, Botafogo, Seattle.
Group C: Bayern Munich, Auckland City, Boca Juniors, Benfica.
Group D: Flamengo, ES Tunis, Chelsea, (Leon banned).
Group E: River Plate, Urawa, Monterrey, Inter Milan.
Group F: Fluminense, Borussia Dortmund, Ulsan, Mamelodi Sundowns.
Group G: Manchester City, Wydad, Al Ain, Juventus.
Group H: Real Madrid, Al Hilal, Pachuca, Salzburg.
The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
COMPANY%20PROFILE
%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3EName%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESmartCrowd%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E2018%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounder%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESiddiq%20Farid%20and%20Musfique%20Ahmed%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EDubai%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ESector%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EFinTech%20%2F%20PropTech%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInitial%20investment%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E%24650%2C000%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ECurrent%20number%20of%20staff%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%2035%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%20stage%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3ESeries%20A%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestors%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EVarious%20institutional%20investors%20and%20notable%20angel%20investors%20(500%20MENA%2C%20Shurooq%2C%20Mada%2C%20Seedstar%2C%20Tricap)%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
BORDERLANDS
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jamie Lee Curtis
Director: Eli Roth
Rating: 0/5
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
WHAT IS A BLACK HOLE?
1. Black holes are objects whose gravity is so strong not even light can escape their pull
2. They can be created when massive stars collapse under their own weight
3. Large black holes can also be formed when smaller ones collide and merge
4. The biggest black holes lurk at the centre of many galaxies, including our own
5. Astronomers believe that when the universe was very young, black holes affected how galaxies formed
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
