My mother was so glamorous; she could throw on rags and look terribly chic. She looked sophisticated even for a trip to the supermarket, for which I’d often exclaim: “You’re not going to a soiree!” She would totally snub me and continue coiffing her hair, while seated on her dressing table adorned with glistening cases and bottles of Estee Lauder, Clinique and Chanel. I’d never known my mother to be an old lady — this was a woman who did Botox in her eighties — and she was certainly not happy about ageing. My mother didn’t just look young, she acted young and even young people gravitated towards her.
She was highly emotional, liked her own company, was never mistaken, always knew best and was fiercely independent. Utterly charming, she always got her way and was incredibly funny, all the way to her nineties. A wonderfully interesting, multifaceted character, she once discharged herself from hospital because she felt like it. She revelled in compliments, which in addition to getting for her appearance, humour and art, also got for her fine cooking. She was passionate about feeding and excelled in Levantine stuffed vine leaves, kibbeh (bulghur, minced meat, spices and onion) and various cuisines.
My mother didn’t take criticism well, and if you dared utter a negative comment, you were struck off the list. There was a masculinity about her, even though she looked feminine. One thing my mother most definitely was is assertive: she said what she wanted and stood up for it. I’d go so far as to say she was a revolutionary – in her thinking, behaviour and character. She spoke through her paintings; they were where she poured her emotions and where many answers lay. In many respects, she was a dark horse.
My parents met and married in 1946 in Iraq; my father was serious and down-to-earth, and my mother was vivacious and bubbly. Together, they were like chalk and cheese. For 15 years, they didn’t have children, and in that time, my mother pursued her childhood love for drawing by studying art at the School of Domestic Fine Arts in Baghdad, graduating in 1949, and later enrolled at the Central School of Art and Design in London in 1957, where she completed a bachelor’s degree. Three years later, she staged her first solo show in Baghdad and became an active member of the Society of Iraqi Plastic Arts with whom she exhibited her work. She pursued more art study in Cambridge and staged more shows in Baghdad and London, before moving to Beirut where my sister, Zina, and I were raised.
The Lebanese capital of the 1960s and early 1970s was golden, and my mother met and mingled with the cultural intelligentsia of the time. Looking back, I’d say she was at her happiest then.
She poured her love for her roots in her canvases and, in London, I saw the searing pain of longing and the sorrow of being away
She staged solo exhibitions at Beirut’s seminal Gallery One in 1965 and the other in 1974. She created large-scale works, which at up to 3 x 2 metres were quite unconventional of the time. In those canvases, she allowed the paint to drip on the figures and forms, which she would then refine. Her artistic expressions were outrageous, explosive and uber abstract, and as the political situation tensed, chaos began to appear at the bottom of her canvases. She illustrated her feelings about the civil war exactly as the conflict unfolded: it crept into society just as it crept into her paintings.
Tensions rose, the political situation worsened, and I was sent to boarding school. My parents stayed on in Beirut, hopelessly in love with the city. Things escalated, and in 1980, they moved to London. Iraq and Lebanon remained engrained in their hearts and minds, and I could see the pain of this exodus in my mother’s work. My God did she love the Arab world. It was only then that I realised that she had always expressed her love for the region and its heritage in her work — her inspiration was rooted in medieval Arab manuscript illumination, the Sumerian and Assyrian civilisations, as well as the motifs in handicrafts and rugs. She poured her love for her roots in her canvases and, in London, I saw the searing pain of longing and the sorrow of being away.
When she painted, she shut off from the rest of the world and no one was allowed to be around. I guess that explains her 3am wake-up to paint. It was an urge, and if she didn’t find a canvas, she resorted to cardboard or magazines, grabbing anything, desperate to release her pent-up emotions. She was her own planet orbiting around itself and she mastered the knack of keeping everyone at bay, wholeheartedly believing that she was different and unconventional.
In 1988, she participated in the exhibition Arab Women Artists in the UK at the influential and now-defunct Kufa Gallery in London that was instrumental in showing the works of leading Arab artists.
Never one with a commercial mind, my mother continued to paint and though my father was consistently disinterested, it didn’t deter her. Both Zina and I encouraged her and came along to exhibitions, which she enjoyed tremendously. She had a fundamental conviction in art and in the need to create it. Art was paramount and it was clear that her life depended on it. She could detach from everyone and channelled her emotions internally — and I saw that pique after my sister’s death in 2008.
I can see that my mother was a conflicted person who struggled with the issue of belonging. I started to sense increased solitude in her work, and however vivacious she was, there was an insecurity, an isolation. I saw that she painted grief — her own at having lost herself. You see, in the Arab world, she was something of an artistic delicacy; she stood out as a female artist, had a voice, a strong personality, was glamorous and respected. In London, she was an outsider, an unknown. In the Arab world, she was nadira, which means unique.
Before she died in 2020, I thanked her for the legacy of her painting, which made her happy. She would be over the moon to know that her work is being acquired and appreciated in the Arab world — where her heart always was.
Moments in Time, an online solo exhibition for Nadira Azzouz will run from April 27-May 25, 2022 on www.janetradyfineart.com
The Africa Institute 101
Housed on the same site as the original Africa Hall, which first hosted an Arab-African Symposium in 1976, the newly renovated building will be home to a think tank and postgraduate studies hub (it will offer master’s and PhD programmes). The centre will focus on both the historical and contemporary links between Africa and the Gulf, and will serve as a meeting place for conferences, symposia, lectures, film screenings, plays, musical performances and more. In fact, today it is hosting a symposium – 5-plus-1: Rethinking Abstraction that will look at the six decades of Frank Bowling’s career, as well as those of his contemporaries that invested social, cultural and personal meaning into abstraction.
Cricket World Cup League 2
UAE squad
Rahul Chopra (captain), Aayan Afzal Khan, Ali Naseer, Aryansh Sharma, Basil Hameed, Dhruv Parashar, Junaid Siddique, Muhammad Farooq, Muhammad Jawadullah, Muhammad Waseem, Omid Rahman, Rahul Bhatia, Tanish Suri, Vishnu Sukumaran, Vriitya Aravind
Fixtures
Friday, November 1 – Oman v UAE
Sunday, November 3 – UAE v Netherlands
Thursday, November 7 – UAE v Oman
Saturday, November 9 – Netherlands v UAE
FIRST TEST SCORES
England 458
South Africa 361 & 119 (36.4 overs)
England won by 211 runs and lead series 1-0
Player of the match: Moeen Ali (England)
Key findings of Jenkins report
- Founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al Banna, "accepted the political utility of violence"
- Views of key Muslim Brotherhood ideologue, Sayyid Qutb, have “consistently been understood” as permitting “the use of extreme violence in the pursuit of the perfect Islamic society” and “never been institutionally disowned” by the movement.
- Muslim Brotherhood at all levels has repeatedly defended Hamas attacks against Israel, including the use of suicide bombers and the killing of civilians.
- Laying out the report in the House of Commons, David Cameron told MPs: "The main findings of the review support the conclusion that membership of, association with, or influence by the Muslim Brotherhood should be considered as a possible indicator of extremism."
ATP WORLD No 1
2004 Roger Federer
2005 Roger Federer
2006 Roger Federer
2007 Roger Federer
2008 Rafael Nadal
2009 Roger Federer
2010 Rafael Nadal
2011 Novak Djokovic
2012 Novak Djokovic
2013 Rafael Nadal
2014 Novak Djokovic
2015 Novak Djokovic
2016 Andy Murray
2017 Rafael Nadal
2018 Novak Djokovic
2019 Rafael Nadal
Red flags
- Promises of high, fixed or 'guaranteed' returns.
- Unregulated structured products or complex investments often used to bypass traditional safeguards.
- Lack of clear information, vague language, no access to audited financials.
- Overseas companies targeting investors in other jurisdictions - this can make legal recovery difficult.
- Hard-selling tactics - creating urgency, offering 'exclusive' deals.
Courtesy: Carol Glynn, founder of Conscious Finance Coaching
Specs
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The specs
AT4 Ultimate, as tested
Engine: 6.2-litre V8
Power: 420hp
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Price: From Dh330,800 (Elevation: Dh236,400; AT4: Dh286,800; Denali: Dh345,800)
On sale: Now
The Specs:
The Specs:
Engine: 2.9-litre, V6 twin-turbo
Transmission: 8-speed automatic
Power: 444bhp
Torque: 600Nm
Price: AED 356,580 incl VAT
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Honeymoonish
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Killing of Qassem Suleimani
More coverage from the Future Forum
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
The biog
Year of birth: 1988
Place of birth: Baghdad
Education: PhD student and co-researcher at Greifswald University, Germany
Hobbies: Ping Pong, swimming, reading
Five hymns the crowds can join in
Papal Mass will begin at 10.30am at the Zayed Sports City Stadium on Tuesday
Some 17 hymns will be sung by a 120-strong UAE choir
Five hymns will be rehearsed with crowds on Tuesday morning before the Pope arrives at stadium
‘Christ be our Light’ as the entrance song
‘All that I am’ for the offertory or during the symbolic offering of gifts at the altar
‘Make me a Channel of your Peace’ and ‘Soul of my Saviour’ for the communion
‘Tell out my Soul’ as the final hymn after the blessings from the Pope
The choir will also sing the hymn ‘Legions of Heaven’ in Arabic as ‘Assakiroo Sama’
There are 15 Arabic speakers from Syria, Lebanon and Jordan in the choir that comprises residents from the Philippines, India, France, Italy, America, Netherlands, Armenia and Indonesia
The choir will be accompanied by a brass ensemble and an organ
They will practice for the first time at the stadium on the eve of the public mass on Monday evening
CHINESE GRAND PRIX STARTING GRID
1st row
Sebastian Vettel (Ferrari)
Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari)
2nd row
Valtteri Bottas (Mercedes-GP)
Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes-GP)
3rd row
Max Verstappen (Red Bull Racing)
Daniel Ricciardo (Red Bull Racing)
4th row
Nico Hulkenberg (Renault)
Sergio Perez (Force India)
5th row
Carlos Sainz Jr (Renault)
Romain Grosjean (Haas)
6th row
Kevin Magnussen (Haas)
Esteban Ocon (Force India)
7th row
Fernando Alonso (McLaren)
Stoffel Vandoorne (McLaren)
8th row
Brendon Hartley (Toro Rosso)
Sergey Sirotkin (Williams)
9th row
Pierre Gasly (Toro Rosso)
Lance Stroll (Williams)
10th row
Charles Leclerc (Sauber)
arcus Ericsson (Sauber)
Benefits of first-time home buyers' scheme
- Priority access to new homes from participating developers
- Discounts on sales price of off-plan units
- Flexible payment plans from developers
- Mortgages with better interest rates, faster approval times and reduced fees
- DLD registration fee can be paid through banks or credit cards at zero interest rates
Healthy tips to remember
Here, Dr Mohamed El Abiary, paediatric consultant at Al Zahra Hospital Dubai, shares some advice for parents whose children are fasting during the holy month of Ramadan:
Gradual fasting and golden points - For children under the age of 10, follow a step-by-step approach to fasting and don't push them beyond their limits. Start with a few hours fasting a day and increase it to a half fast and full fast when the child is ready. Every individual's ability varies as per the age and personal readiness. You could introduce a points system that awards the child and offers them encouragement when they make progress with the amount of hours they fast
Why fast? - Explain to your child why they are fasting. By shedding light on the importance of abstaining from food and drink, children may feel more encouraged to give it there all during the observance period. It is also a good opportunity to teach children about controlling urges, doing good for others and instilling healthy food habits
Sleep and suhoor - A child needs adequate sleep every night - at least eight hours. Make sure to set a routine early bedtime so he/she has sufficient time to wake up for suhoor, which is an essential meal at the beginning of the day
Good diet - Nutritious food is crucial to ensuring a healthy Ramadan for children. They must refrain from eating too much junk food as well as canned goods and snacks and drinks high in sugar. Foods that are rich in nutrients, vitamins and proteins, like fruits, fresh meats and vegetables, make for a good balanced diet
What the law says
Micro-retirement is not a recognised concept or employment status under Federal Decree Law No. 33 of 2021 on the Regulation of Labour Relations (as amended) (UAE Labour Law). As such, it reflects a voluntary work-life balance practice, rather than a recognised legal employment category, according to Dilini Loku, senior associate for law firm Gateley Middle East.
“Some companies may offer formal sabbatical policies or career break programmes; however, beyond such arrangements, there is no automatic right or statutory entitlement to extended breaks,” she explains.
“Any leave taken beyond statutory entitlements, such as annual leave, is typically regarded as unpaid leave in accordance with Article 33 of the UAE Labour Law. While employees may legally take unpaid leave, such requests are subject to the employer’s discretion and require approval.”
If an employee resigns to pursue micro-retirement, the employment contract is terminated, and the employer is under no legal obligation to rehire the employee in the future unless specific contractual agreements are in place (such as return-to-work arrangements), which are generally uncommon, Ms Loku adds.
