Talking about his latest movie, Dunkirk, which opens on Thursday , film director Christopher Nolan described the skill of storytelling as the ability to look for "gaps in the record" and of being able to identify, in an absence, something meaningful and positive.
In Nolan’s case, those gaps provide the ideas for his films, but when it comes to Abu Dhabi, cityscape absences often represent something negative, disappearances from the city’s historic urban fabric and from its memory.
The capital is riddled with such spaces, seemingly empty plots that appear and disappear between the high-rises, providing Abu Dhabi with a peculiarly moth-eaten quality that can only be appreciated up-close and by those with a mind to remember.
Now overlooked by a multi-storey car park, the long, sunken plot on the Corniche near the ADMA-OPCO headquarters is just such a place, which has stood empty since 2014.
For 50 years this was the site of the rambling Gray-Mackenzie building, the Abu Dhabi headquarters of one of the Arabian Gulf's oldest trading companies, established in 1883 and still operating throughout the city.
An ambassadorial-looking compound that was once surrounded by traditional arise, or palm frond homes, the building enjoyed uninterrupted views out to sea, an ideal location for an entrepôt in the days before the construction of Mina Zayed, when cargo was often transported directly to the shoreline.
Further inland, there are several plots on Airport Road, Salam, Al Falah and Hazza bin Zayed Streets that were once architecturally connected because they all housed two-storey buildings that were constructed to the same essential design.
Modestly decorated with arches and patterned tiling, these buildings supported typing offices, tailors, garages and groceries on their ground floor and were topped with modest homes on the first.
The Airport Road example was the last survivor of its type. Home to The Diamond, a pristine one-woman typing operation, a dilapidated women's tailoring business and Ahmed Awad's Agricultural Supplies, a purveyor of irrigation pipe and seeds, the building was earmarked for demolition back in 201,5 but hung on until just a few weeks ago when it was finally demolished.
Built to a scale that spoke of a very different life, in a very different city at a time when Abu Dhabi’s oil wealth was yet to produce the buildings and living patterns that define it today, such buildings raise issues about conservation, heritage and the memories and histories we cherish and those we decide to forget.
The former Bait Al Sayegh is a case in point. Tucked behind the Fotouh Al Khair Centre - Marks & Spencer - in the heart of downtown Abu Dhabi, the rambling compound, complete with its own wing of apartments and shops, once stood in stark contrast with the steel and glass towers that surrounded it.
But what had once been a substantial and clearly important family compound complete with palm trees, inner courtyards, apartments and majlises, had become an overlooked and overcrowded slum in the very heart of the city by the time The National reported on it in 2012.
Research among local residents and shopkeepers, most of whom are transitory, revealed nothing about the compound’s history and the best guess among local historians, long-term expats and merchants who had their businesses in the neighbourhood was that the building had once been used as an embassy.
That was the line that ran, incorrectly, in The National in article about the city's uneven patterns of remembering and forgetting but less than a year later memory, so often an unreliable guide to the capital's history, came to the rescue when Munira Al Sayegh produced a short photographic project based on the property.
Now a curator and the programme officer at the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, Al Sayegh was working as an assistant producer with New York University Abu Dhabi's Forming Intersections and Dialogues (Find) programme at the time and the project can still be found on their website.
Rather than a diplomatic compound, the house had belonged to her grandfather and when she returned to it after a seven year absence, Al Sayegh found the experience both inspiring and challenging and, like Nolan, she used that absence as the basis for something positive.
“I walked through the halls and doors that occupied my memories. Suddenly, sounds and smells, familiar faces and distant memories all came back to life. Things I forgot, people who are no longer here, all came back to me instantly,” she wrote at the time.
When the British urbanist Ian Sinclair wrote a book about the many ways in which London’s past was being steadily eroded, a reviewer described the work as the summation of “the lost worlds of a white man's city, filtered through rose-tinted nostalgia”.
Al Sayegh’s experience, and the enthusiasm of the many visitors who took part in the recent "My Old House" tours that were organised in Al Ain, show that a concern with built heritage is not only a matter of historical importance, but that it has a resonance that crosses generations and communities.
Buildings such as the Gray Mackenzie compound may now exist only in photographs and memories, but if the capital’s older buildings have to be lost, perhaps they can be recorded, like the Bayt Al Sayegh, before they are incorrectly identified or forgotten completely.
The specs
Price: From Dh529,000
Engine: 5-litre V8
Transmission: Eight-speed auto
Power: 520hp
Torque: 625Nm
Fuel economy, combined: 12.8L/100km
Lexus LX700h specs
Engine: 3.4-litre twin-turbo V6 plus supplementary electric motor
Power: 464hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 790Nm from 2,000-3,600rpm
Transmission: 10-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 11.7L/100km
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh590,000
A new relationship with the old country
Treaty of Friendship between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates
The United kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates; Considering that the United Arab Emirates has assumed full responsibility as a sovereign and independent State; Determined that the long-standing and traditional relations of close friendship and cooperation between their peoples shall continue; Desiring to give expression to this intention in the form of a Treaty Friendship; Have agreed as follows:
ARTICLE 1 The relations between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United Arab Emirates shall be governed by a spirit of close friendship. In recognition of this, the Contracting Parties, conscious of their common interest in the peace and stability of the region, shall: (a) consult together on matters of mutual concern in time of need; (b) settle all their disputes by peaceful means in conformity with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations.
ARTICLE 2 The Contracting Parties shall encourage education, scientific and cultural cooperation between the two States in accordance with arrangements to be agreed. Such arrangements shall cover among other things: (a) the promotion of mutual understanding of their respective cultures, civilisations and languages, the promotion of contacts among professional bodies, universities and cultural institutions; (c) the encouragement of technical, scientific and cultural exchanges.
ARTICLE 3 The Contracting Parties shall maintain the close relationship already existing between them in the field of trade and commerce. Representatives of the Contracting Parties shall meet from time to time to consider means by which such relations can be further developed and strengthened, including the possibility of concluding treaties or agreements on matters of mutual concern.
ARTICLE 4 This Treaty shall enter into force on today’s date and shall remain in force for a period of ten years. Unless twelve months before the expiry of the said period of ten years either Contracting Party shall have given notice to the other of its intention to terminate the Treaty, this Treaty shall remain in force thereafter until the expiry of twelve months from the date on which notice of such intention is given.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF the undersigned have signed this Treaty.
DONE in duplicate at Dubai the second day of December 1971AD, corresponding to the fifteenth day of Shawwal 1391H, in the English and Arabic languages, both texts being equally authoritative.
Signed
Geoffrey Arthur Sheikh Zayed
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cylturbo
Transmission: seven-speed DSG automatic
Power: 242bhp
Torque: 370Nm
Price: Dh136,814
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Nancy 9 (Hassa Beek)
Nancy Ajram
(In2Musica)
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Company%C2%A0profile
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Profile of Udrive
Date started: March 2016
Founder: Hasib Khan
Based: Dubai
Employees: 40
Amount raised (to date): $3.25m – $750,000 seed funding in 2017 and a Seed round of $2.5m last year. Raised $1.3m from Eureeca investors in January 2021 as part of a Series A round with a $5m target.
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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
Company%20profile
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Results
2.15pm: Handicap Dh80,000 1,950m
Winner: Hello, Tadhg O’Shea (jockey), Ali Rashid Al Raihi (trainer).
2.45pm: Handicap Dh90,000 1,800m
Winner: Right Flank, Pat Dobbs, Doug Watson.
3.15pm: Handicap Dh115,000 1,000m
Winner: Leading Spirit, Richard Mullen, Satish Seemar.
3.45pm: Jebel Ali Mile Group 3 Dh575,000 1,600m
Winner: Chiefdom, Royston Ffrench, Salem bin Ghadayer.
4.15pm: Handicap Dh105,000 1,400m
Winner: Ode To Autumn, Patrick Cosgrave, Satish Seemar.
4.45pm: Shadwell Farm Conditions Dh125,000 1,200m
Winner: Last Surprise, James Doyle, Simon Crisford.
5.15pm: Handicap Dh85,000 1,200m
Winner: Daltrey, Sandro Paiva, Ali Rashid Al Raihi.
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre 4-cyl turbo
Power: 201hp at 5,200rpm
Torque: 320Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm
Transmission: 6-speed auto
Fuel consumption: 8.7L/100km
Price: Dh133,900
On sale: now
The years Ramadan fell in May
Juliot Vinolia’s checklist for adopting alternate-day fasting
- Don’t do it more than once in three days
- Don’t go under 700 calories on fasting days
- Ensure there is sufficient water intake, as the body can go in dehydration mode
- Ensure there is enough roughage (fibre) in the food on fasting days as well
- Do not binge on processed or fatty foods on non-fasting days
- Complement fasting with plant-based foods, fruits, vegetables, seafood. Cut out processed meats and processed carbohydrates
- Manage your sleep
- People with existing gastric or mental health issues should avoid fasting
- Do not fast for prolonged periods without supervision by a qualified expert
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Bib%20Gourmand%20restaurants
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
THREE
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Company profile
Company: Rent Your Wardrobe
Date started: May 2021
Founder: Mamta Arora
Based: Dubai
Sector: Clothes rental subscription
Stage: Bootstrapped, self-funded
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
The specs
Engine: 4.0-litre V8 twin-turbocharged and three electric motors
Power: Combined output 920hp
Torque: 730Nm at 4,000-7,000rpm
Transmission: 8-speed dual-clutch automatic
Fuel consumption: 11.2L/100km
On sale: Now, deliveries expected later in 2025
Price: expected to start at Dh1,432,000
The National's picks
4.35pm: Tilal Al Khalediah
5.10pm: Continous
5.45pm: Raging Torrent
6.20pm: West Acre
7pm: Flood Zone
7.40pm: Straight No Chaser
8.15pm: Romantic Warrior
8.50pm: Calandogan
9.30pm: Forever Young
If you go...
Fly from Dubai or Abu Dhabi to Chiang Mai in Thailand, via Bangkok, before taking a five-hour bus ride across the Laos border to Huay Xai. The land border crossing at Huay Xai is a well-trodden route, meaning entry is swift, though travellers should be aware of visa requirements for both countries.
Flights from Dubai start at Dh4,000 return with Emirates, while Etihad flights from Abu Dhabi start at Dh2,000. Local buses can be booked in Chiang Mai from around Dh50
