Ed-Dur and the Mysteries of the Ancient World

The site of Ed-Dur. Nothing to see here, folks. Move on, move on...

In the heady days of the building boom, back in the early 'noughties', Dubai property company Emaar started developing the coastal area north of Umm Al Quwain, flattening a great swathe of land and building a posh little sales centre on a curve in the road north to Ras Al Khaimah. It had magnificent views out over the mangroves. Across the road was a ramshackle cold store and a tiny mosque. The place is called Al Dour.

The scheme came to little in the end. The building boom turned into a bust and only a couple of hundred houses were actually constructed. They're still there today, a tiny gated community at the end of a wee drive from the main road, hoarding blocking the views either side of you (it always reminds me of the final scenes from Terry Gilliam's surreal and brilliant Brazil) until you emerge into a small carbon copy of Arabian Ranches.

Off the main road connecting these little beige 'dare to dream' wonders and the sales centre, to the right uphill just before you hit the curve as the road snakes past the mangroves to your left, you'll find a little brown sign to the 'Ed-Dur Archaeological Site'. If you drive on the sandy track up there, you'll find yourself looking at a expanse of shrubby desert fenced off from prying eyes and, behind the fence, a few clapboard buildings that look like a tatty little labour camp.

I'd not recommend this one as a day trip, because you'll see no more than I have just described.

And yet beyond that fence lies one of the most remarkable and mysterious sites in the UAE - an early Pre-Islamic city sprawled across some 800 hectares. Blossoming from the 3rd Century BCE onwards, Ed-Dur is closely linked with Mleiha inland - the two settlements are joined by the great wadi that snakes inland from here through the oasis towns of Falaj Al Mualla and Dhaid. Coins found here at Ed-Dur were minted using coin moulds found at Mleiha, animal burials at the two cities follow a similar rite - while human burials speak of rituals associated with Parthian northern Iraq.

Part of the excavated temple complex at Ed-Dur, slowly being washed away...

Ed-Dur was a significant city with links to India, Persia, Mesopotamia, the Levant and Yemen. It was home to a vast variety of mudbrick and other constructions, from fortifications to houses and temples. It is here that we see alabaster sheets used as glass in windows and it is here that we find ceramics from Mesopotamia, Iran and India as well as Roman glass, all dated to the 1st Century BCE. The temple complex unearthed here contained an Aramaic inscription, one of the earliest finds of writing we have from the area (the others are, of course, from Mleiha), thought to have been the name of an early sun god, Shams (Himyarite) or Shamash (Akkadian).

Ed-Dur has been put forward as Pliny’s Omana, ‘a harbour of great importance in Carmania’. Carmania was a Persian province under Alexander the Great which stretched along the coast from Bandar Lengeh to Bandar Jask. Alexander never quite managed to invade Arabia, despite having expressed a clear interest in doing just that - sending his Admiral, Nearchos, to explore the seas from India to Basra. Nearchos never made landfall on the Arabian side of the Gulf and Alexander died before he could add southeastern Arabia to his list of conquests.

Ed-Dur still has many secrets to tell us. Hellenistic era coins found here celebrate 'Abiel', although we have no idea who Abiel was - similar coins have been found in hoards in Bahrain but in a location dating them to some 300 years before the coins at Ed-Dur. These 'Tetra Drachma' were the coins minted at Mleiha - Abiel seems to have lived on in coinage for a great deal longer than in life.

Hellenistic Tetra Drachma found at Ed-Dur

Both Mleiha and Ed-Dur seem to have declined in the first two centuries of what we now call the 'Common Era' and then they likely fell to the invasion of the Sasanians. Ed-Dur was never to recover and provided archaeologists with a remarkable trove of finds (some of which you'll find on display at Umm Al Quwain's eclectic and pleasant little museum). Changes in sea levels and the silting of the coast here have meant that the maritime centre and former port of Ed-Dur is today a good few hundred metres from the sea it used to serve.

Today, the excavated temple and other buildings stand scandalously exposed to the elements, literally washing away with every rainy season that lashes the site. Unprotected and neglected, the entire area of Ed-Dur (imagine an archaeological centre like Mleiha established here - what a marvel!) is fenced off, a sad testament to the overlooked heritage of the Emirates.

So next time you're hoying off to the Barracuda, look out for the brown sign before the corner by the sales centre and spare a thought for the still-hidden mysteries of the ancient city of Ed-Dur...

Visit the Mleiha Archaeological Centre

The stunning Mleiha Archaeological Centre - the only such centre in the Emirates, sadly...

I was rabbiting on about the amazing archaeological site of Faya-1 and the emergence of anatomically modern humankind (Homo Sapiens, as you ask) from Africa to populate the world yesterday and so I thought it appropriate to tell you how and why you can go there and take the kids, granny, your visiting parents or the school with you. You could do it today, actually - just bundle 'em all in the car and nip out there for a wander around and a funky lunch at the glorious café there!

Faya-1 is part of the remarkable spread of human history you'll find preserved and, uniquely, celebrated at the Mleiha Archaeological Centre in Sharjah. It's a bit of a schlep - about an hour's drive from Dubai, but it's brilliantly worthwhile - nowhere else in the Arabian Gulf will you see such a spread of human history in such a small area. And the Mleiha Archaeological Centre is, while glorious in its own small way, sadly just as unique.

The settlement, city, site of Mleiha is as central to the human history of the Emirates as it is central to the whole country. It's the motherlode, pure and simple.

Not only do we have the finds at Faya-1 to date the emergence of humans from Africa to populate the world, but we have a gloriously preserved 4,500 year-old Umm Al Nar tomb on display at the Centre. Here you'll also find evidence of human occupation - and inhumation - at Jebel Buhais, just down the road. Jebel Buhais, a huge necropolis, stretches from the Neolithic to the Iron Age in its scope - although, oddly, lacks any evidence of Umm Al Nar occupation. It's an enormously important site which has been yielding new clues about the history of the Emirates since 1974, when an Iraqi team first started exploring the area. Buhais stands as the earliest radiometrically dated inland burial site in the Emirates. Beat that!

Mleiha not only contains a museum and a guide to the many sites spread around the area - from Faya-1 and Buhais through to the Iron Age and Pre-Islamic forts and settlements of Mleiha, but it has a funky café (beetroot hummus in Mleiha? Check! Super coffee and hipster cakes? Check!) and offers a series of adventures from dune buggy tours through to nighttime desert barbecues and camping experiences. Opened in 2016, master-planned by Shurooq - Sharjah's development authority , the place has been nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site - and quite rightly so, too.

Nearby, you'll find the achingly contemporary, chiq and just generally cool Al Faya Lodge, which offers reasonably priced and totes chilled (See this? Huh? Down with the kids or WHAT?) overnight accommodation. Or you can simply plan to trek out to Mleiha and do lunch there before heading to the east coast of the Emirates and the many beach hotels therein - just in time for check-in.

I reckon you'll want to read up on it first, so you can answer the kids' questions. What you'll need is a dramatic, accessible and fun human history of the Emirates that tells the story as the amazing epic that it truly is.*

2/2/2020. You'll just have to wait... ;)

*NO, that WASN'T a book plug! It WASN'T! It was a responsibly sourced reference to a future resource. That's all! Now, move on, people...

Out of Africa: the Emergence of Anatomically Modern Humans

The site at Faya-1

It's a little appreciated fact, but on the edge of the desert interior of Sharjah lies a site which marks the beginning of the human history of the Emirates - Faya-1. It is here that archaeologists found, at the bottom of a number of well defined strata, evidence of the passage of humans through the area between 130,000 and 125,000 years ago - the emergence of anatomically modern humans from Africa. This is where I have started the story of Children of the Seven Sands because, well, it's the start of everything.

We now know, from a combination of two emerging threads of evidence, that this passage was part of a wider dispersal - humanity left its home in Africa through a northern route (via Egypt, Suez and the Levant) and a southern route (via Djibouti, Aden and the Gulf). Those two threads are woven from our ever-richer understanding of archaeology and our exploration of DNA research to unravel the mysteries of who we are and where we came from.

Last week, one particularly controversial piece of DNA research dropped, which traces Homo Sapiens Sapiens (that's us, folks) to an enormous primordial lake in modern-day Botswana some 200,000 years ago. It's controversial because other researchers postulate an earlier origin for humanity and argue the study was based on a limited study of the mitochondrial genome. While the data is considered useful as part of the wider picture, some academics reckon it's wrong to view the Botswana study's evidence presented in a standalone fashion. That viewpoint was even expressed by researchers at the German University of Tübingen, the university whose archaeologists found Faya-1 in the first place.

What we do know - and today widely accept - is that climactic change drove the movement of those people to populate the continent of Africa before, some 70,000 years later, they started to travel further afield via the land bridge of Egypt and that of the Bab Al Mandab Straits between Africa and Yemen which, at that time, would have been a shallow and narrow crossing. Global sea levels back then were much lower thanks to glaciation, see?

Another view of Faya-1. You wonder how they knew to dig here...

Our early adventurers would have travelled along the east coast of what is now Yemen and Oman before, presumably, finding their way through the Hajar Mountains to the west coast through one of the three crossings - there are basically three great wadis that intersect the mountain range - Wadi Jizi, Wadi Hatta and Wadi Ham.

At Jebel Faya, just south of the Sharjah town of Mleiha, our early explorers found a natural formation that provided shelter as well as a source of precious water, collected in aquifers which wash up against the rocky outcrop of Faya, which divides the gravelly plain below the mountains from the deep desert beyond to the sea.

You can visit Faya-1 today and stand up on a platform to contemplate this lonely, strange place where our distant ancestors - and those of all humankind - paused to knap their flint tools. You'll find it well marked when you visit the Mleiha Archaeological Centre and you can read the story of Faya-1 - and the remarkable slice of our common history that is buried at the foot of Jebel Faya - at the Centre.

Something for the Weekend? Al Ain Nights

Restored Hafit culture tombs on the foothills of Jebel Hafit

Al Ain has many things to recommend it as a weekend getaway - not least of which is its UNESCO World Heritage listed oasis, which provides a lovely walk around shaded date groves latticed with aflaj irrigation channels. There are forts and museums to visit (Al Jahili and Muwaiji Forts, the Palace Museum and the Al Ain National Museum to name just a few) as well as ancient ruins (the Hilli Archaeological Park, Bidaa bint Saud) and, of course,the great rocky outcrop of Jebel Hafit.

Jebel Hafit offers a 13Km uphill run if you fancy it - or if you're sane, you can drive up to the top and look out over the forbidding expanse of the Rub Al Khali. On the way up, you'll pass the Mercure Hotel, which usually offers a reasonable room rate and perfectly pleasant, if lacking in frills, stay. Many of the rooms have amazing views, of course. Down in the foothills on the one side you'll find the 'Green Mubazzara', a resort with en suite lake and fountain, offering chalets and hot springs. Nestled away here you'll also find a tiny old dam (the 'Mubazzara Historical Dam', according to the wee brown sign) built here by Sheikh Zayed during his time as Wali of Al Ain, when he restored much of the broken down irrigation infrastructure of the area.

On the other side of Jebel Hafit, if you follow this here pin, you'll find some odd-looking monuments that wouldn't look out of place in a Star Wars movie. These are restored Hafit Era tombs, a culture so named after this very area. The Hafit people lived, and died, in southeastern Arabia from 3,200 - 2,600 BCE and were, for many reasons, important in our story of the human development of the area.

Star Wars, anyone?

With so much to do around here, you'd be forgiven for wanting to make the journey out and stay overnight and quite right you'd be, too. There are a number of hotels here apart from the heady heights of the Mercure - although the 'big name' chains have sadly abandoned Al Ain. The Hilton Al Ain as was is now the Radisson Blu and the Intercontinental is now the Danat Al Ain. The last time we stayed at the latter (and I mean the last time) there was an almighty punch up in the pub, which had filled up with a bunch of brunchers who were clearly already boiling. Our simple dinner was punctuated with the smashing of glass, flying of fists and spilling of blood. Quite charming, my dear!!!

If you're staying in Al Ain, don't bother looking around for fine dining or anything like it these days - you're looking at hotel buffets and pub grub in the main - and smoky pubs, they are, too! The sole light in the Al Ain dining out gloom is Trader Vic's at the Al Ain Rotana - also, sadly, smoky.

Don't let that put you off - but do be prepared to eat badly and expensively unless you're up for Trader Vic's, in which case you'll eat perfectly well but expensively. Or room service, which might be a lovely idea if you can sit out on your balcony at the Mercure and enjoy the cool winter evening with a little something you thought to bring yourself!

If anyone has any better Al Ain dining ideas, please do drop a comment...

It's the Fort That Counts: the Human History of the United Arab Emirates in 20 Forts

Fujairah Fort

The human history of the Emirates is all around you, often hidden away in the most surprising places. The Emirates is dotted with forts, for instance - many are museums, some are just forts for forts' sake. You find them lurking around pretty much every corner - and they're there precisely because people around here used to be, well, fighty.

They weren't just recently fighty, either. Our archaeological analysis of Umm Al Nar era remains (we're talking 2,600-2,000 BCE, here) shows a number of fortified towers were constructed by that people, often guarding precious water resources. There are Iron Age forts to be found as well - and even the Portuguese left a smattering of fortification behind.

Today's more obvious forts are mostly a product of C19th and C20th construction, although sometimes built on much older foundations. Quite a few of these forts are now museums - note they aren't open on Fridays, when you'd expect 'em to be - but they all open on Saturdays. All feature ethnographic displays of varying degrees of impressiveness - often, the more eclectic assemblages are the most fun.

So why not take a trip out to take a look at a few - especially now the weather's nice and cool? It's worth getting out and about and taking a few in when you can - we're talking weekend excursions with cooler bags full of sandwiches and chilled home made lemonade in thermos flasks. Don't forget the Cheese and Onion Walkers for that authentic 'day trip car smell'.

You can usually mix it up with something outdoorsy, kayaking or hiking, a swim on a remote beach or a lazy overnight in a hotel - some of which are surprisingly affordable even during the 'high' winter season. Camping, of course, is even more affordable and there are a million places you can happily pitch a tent, taking some time out to explore the desert and more remote inland towns of the Emirates.

So here you go - the UAE in 20 Forts. All the links below open to Google Maps pins...

Dubai Museum, for instance, is located in the Al Fahidi Fort (which dates back to the late 1700s), while Sharjah's Al Hisn Sharjah is a faithful reconstruction of the building almost completely demolished by Sheikh Khalid bin Mohammad Al Qasimi in the late 1960s. Ajman and Umm Al Quwain museums are both located in the town forts, formerly the Ruler's house - Ajman Fort was occupied by the Ruler, the big, white-bearded figure of Sheikh Rashid Al Nuaimi, until 1967. I'd argue it's the most charming museum in the Emirates today.

Umm Al Quwain's Al Ali Fort, home to the UAQ National Museum

Umm Al Quwain National Museum is not only an impressive building (don't miss the UAQ Wall while you're down there, which used to completely protect the town on its isthmus) but houses some very impressive artefacts from the enormously important site of Ed-Dur, a major Iron Age and Pre-Islamic metropolis, itself linked to the inland town of Mleiha. Going inland from UAQ, you can also visit the Falaj Al Mualla Fort, or tootle out a wee bit into the sands and find the three Murabbaa - watchtowers - that guard the Wadi which feeds Falaj Al Mualla's rich agricultural resources. Look out here also for the Sharea, or baths, just opposite the fort.

Ras Al Khaimah National Museum tells the story of the town, but also of the lost city of Julphar (contrary to popular belief, not actually 'old' RAK, but to the north of the town. RAK started life as a southern suburb of Julphar) and the maritime mercantile culture which the town sprang from - including displays of early C8th Thai and Chinese porcelain brought here by the Arab traders who sailed the seven seas of the east, between Julphar and Beijing. Of course, as I mentioned the other day, there is also Sheba's Palace and Al Dhayah Fort...

The C15th mosque and tower at Bidya.

Heading over to the east coast, you can visit the 'oldest mosque in the Emirates' and the tower at Bidya (or the Portuguese Fort here) - don't forget the old fort at Masafi - or the newly restored Governor's House there. Further down the east coast from Bidya, you'll find Fujairah Fort but the National Museum of Fujairah is not actually in the fort, it's across from it - and jolly good fun it is, too - one of the most wacky and varied collections you'll find in a museum. Fujairah is a great destination for Fort Fans and also offers Al Bithnah Fort, Al Hayl Fort, Sakamkam Fort and Awhala Fort.

Take a trip out to Al Ain and you'll find the impressive Al Muaiji Fort, birthplace of Sheikh Khalifa and former home of Sheikh Zayed when he was Wali of Al Ain. It's been lovingly restored and has a pretty slick visitor centre. Al Jahili Fort in Al Ain is also worth a visit, sitting in a pleasant public park. If you want to explore further back, pop up to the Hili Archaeological Park and take a wander around the glorious Umm Al Nar era tomb there.

Last but not least, Abu Dhabi's Qasr Al Hosn was closed for renovations last time we went, so no guarantees here, but I'd reckon they've likely done a stellar job on it.

This is, by the way, not a list of every fort in the Emirates by any means. But it's as good a starting point as any if you want to start fort spotting!!!

Children of the Seven Sands: the Reveal.

The simple life of the Trucial States in the 1950s - A display at Ajman Museum...

As those of you that know me will by now have realised, there may be some book promoting going on around here for a while.

Suffer.

The good news is that this book is a bit, well, different. I try and make all my books different, but this one is differenter.

For a start, it's not a novel, a work of fiction, like the last six. It's 140,000 words of total fact. It's a very big book that tells a very big story indeed.

It's a roller-coaster ride of a tale that has never been told before in one place. And I kid you not.

Everything in it is not only true, but 100% verifiably so. It's meticulously researched and draws from archaeology, academic papers, ancient manuscripts, rare and forgotten books, archives aplenty and reputable, published (and many unpublished) sources. It draws together a story that tells of incredible innovation, of daring and courage - and of human perseverance.

If it doesn't make you draw breath and gasp at the sheer, blinding hugeness of what you didn't know, I'll refund you without quibble. Many of you are aware of my 'no refunds' policy. I'm willing to waive it for this one.

Children of the Seven Sands, set to be published in February next year by UAE-based publisher Motivate Publishing, is the human history of the United Arab Emirates. It's a 130,000 year-old tale that has, quite literally, never been shared before. And I guarantee you, it'll blow you away.

Bloody, gruesome, dramatic, vicious, honourable, glorious, brilliant, deceitful, noble, brave, bonkers and just plain splendorous, the history of the UAE is a wide-screen panorama of a narrative which has carried me away like a bewildered ant clinging to a log adrift in a winter wadi in spate - and I am going to delight in sharing it with you - here on the blog, but also in the book itself. You'd never believe the half of it - you'll never believe it's sitting here right under your noses. And it's all around you, even today.

It's a story I've set out to share with all its depth and vigour, charm and brio - it's a series of remarkable ups and downs, upsets and triumphs. It will challenge everything you thought you knew about UAE history but also quite a few unusual and unknown snippets of European and Indian history, too.

I kid you not - and I'm not overdoing it. I sent the final manuscript off to the publishers today and I can tell you that every single page contains something you didn't know, something that will challenge what you thought about this place and something that'll make you think about here in a totally new light.

Am I over promising? Let's see - but this, ladies and gentlemen, is what has been keeping me so very quiet as of late...

Children of the Seven Sands

Well, this is a first. It's only been eighteen years since I first sent a book to a literary agent (almost to the day, funnily enough), resulting in the first of something like 300 rejections I was to pick up as time went by. I hasten to add this has in no way diminished my joy at writing my six novels (one silly, five serious) or in my interactions with the very many readers who have enjoyed them. And even the one or two who have felt the need to protest them!

And now we have my very first ever publishing contract. And the devil of it is, this book's non-fiction!

More anon...

Twitter Rant Reprised - Bored in the Emirates?

If you wanted the places I outlined in my Twitter diatribe earlier this week in one handy post, you need go no further. Here, for your delectation and delight, are a number of interesting places in the UAE you can go visit at the weekend - particularly as the cool weather she is upon us. Links in bold are to Google maps pins.

I'll be posting a lot more of these, in more detail, but here are the original candidates just for starters.

Meet Al Dhayah Fort, which you'll find north of Ras Al Khaimah. 400 men women and children holed up here for three days withstanding British bombardment in December 1819. There was no food or water for them - many were simple farmers from the date plantations inland of Rams, chased through the plantations by British bluecoats with bayonets. The fall of Dhayah marked the fall of the Al Qasimi Federation and led to the Trucial States. You can park up next to the fort and take a walk up to it: I'd recommend something to cover your head and a lot of cool water to hand.

Have a walk around and wander up to the Iron Age fort at Jebel Buhais - the largest and oldest necropolis in the UAE, it dates back 7,000 years and tells of a human history of nomadism as well as giving us clues to the 'dark millennium' when humankind abandoned the west coast. You'll find Wadi Suq and other burials littering the sides of the mountain and this here Iron Age fort, discovered by an Iraqi archaeological team back in 1974, which you can walk up to and explore freely. Again, cover your head and take plenty water. Please note, I got this shot in before the drone fly zones changed and Jebel Buhais is now WITHIN the no-fly zone, so please don't try and get an aerial shot. If you want one, ping me and I'll send it you.

Mahatta Fort in Sharjah. Here landed the HP42 Heracles, the biplanes that connected the 1930s 'Empire Route' from Croydon to Australia. You'll find the history all in the museum, housed in the fort built in 1932 to house the Imperial Airways passengers and guard against 'improbable bedouin raids'... There's more info from me here about the fort and museum.

Take a trek around Jebel Hafit in Al Ain and visit the reconstructed 5,500 year-old Hafit Era tombs that litter the foothills of the mountain - they're a bit Star Wars, TBH. Zip around the other side of the mountain to take the 13 KM climb to the top. You can stay up on the mountain at the Mercure Hotel, overlooking the forbidding Rub Al Kali desert or just have a chai at the café up top...

Wander around Ajman Fort, probably the most charming museum in the UAE. It was the Ruler's House right up until 1967 and, oddly enough, was invaded in 1920 by the headman of the place in Sharjah where I live, Abdulrahman Al Shamsi. He made a bit of a mess in the process... The displays include an 'old souq', which is just cute.

The nice thing about Ajman Museum, BTW, is its very authenticity. It's not trying too hard, it's not all consultants and glitz. It's truly a snapshop of life here before modernity came a-knockin'...

Here's Masafi Fort, up in the cool mountains above the Dhaid plain. There's an example of an old falaj waterway inside the museum, which is surrounded by traces of the Iron Age settlement of Masafi, including copper mines that used to provide exports to Sumeria 5,000 years ago.

This is a 'Murabbaa', a fortification or watch-tower. These are to be found all over the UAE and every one tells a story - from Deira's Burj Nahar through to the three towers (this is one, the Western Tower) which guard the wadi at Falaj Al Mualla, deep in the desert. Every one of them is a piece of human history... Falaj Al Mualla has a sweet fort/museum and the wadi here is usually lush and a great winter drive - so is a nip up into the desert and the amazing ghaf forest you'll find there.

Here's Sheba's Palace in RAK (properly, the Shimal Fort), an early Islamic era fortification in Shimal - there are extensive Wadi Suq Era burials around here, too. RAK is also home to many Umm Al Nar and Wadi Suq era finds, the world's longest zipline, the lost maritime city of Julphar with its links to C8th trade with China. RAK Museum is fab, too...

Have a trip to the East Coast, pass by the 10,000 graves of men lost in the Ridda Wars at Dibba, visit Bidya Mosque and marvel at the Portuguese Fort there, itself built of stones recovered from an Umm Al Nar fort and burial site. Stay at Al Aqah's beach hotels or camp there...

Stay in one of my favourite hotels ever, the Hatta Fort Hotel - famous, of course, for its chickens - or glamp it up in style at the Adventure Centre with its bike tracks, ziplines and outdoor activities - including kayaking in the mountain lakes of Hatta. Or you can visit the Hatta Heritage Village...

Here you go - a bit of indoor fun. Visit Rain Room in Sharjah, an immersive art experience which lets you walk in the rain and yet stay as dry as a bone (as long as you don't move too fast!). You have to pre-book online for this one, it's a 15-minute giggle-fest. With a Fen Cafe!

See this? This is a carnelian necklace from Saruq Al Hadid, the 'iron path', a major Iron Age metallurgical centre out in the desert near Marmoom. Most carnelian jewels found in the UAE come from the Harappan Civilisation of the Indus Valley. Mysterious and amazingly rich, the huge trove of bronze, gold, jewellery and weaponry so far found at the Saruq Al Hadid archaeological dig out in the desert near Marmoom (the whole thing, BTW, was discovered by Sheikh Mohammed - and a ring from Saruq Al Hadid gives us the Expo 2020 logo) can be viewed at the Saruq Al Hadid Museum in Shindagha, Dubai.

If you HAVE to go to the Louvre, enjoy things like this decoration from the early Christian church at Sir Bani Yas. You can chat to @Peter_Hellyer about it - he found the whole thing. While you're in Abu Dhabi, visit the Founder's Memorial, an amazing monument to Sheikh Zayed...

Go visit the Heart of Sharjah and enjoy a lavish coffee at the Chedi-managed Al Bait Hotel (take out a mortgage) or any one of innumerable teashops and cafes lining the cool walkways of the souks by the creek. Enjoy museums, art galleries and restoration projects aplenty...

Do let me know how you get on - @alexandermcnabb...

Dubai, the Good Old Days and Sundry Confessions

Okay, it's a fair cop, I'll come quietly. It was me. I done the blag.

We had a bit of a clearout yesterday - chucking out bags of that cruft that seems to assemble around life: old user manuals, bits of laptops that had long been consigned to the inexplicably green 'general waste' Bee'ah dumpster outside our villa. The blue one is meant for recyclable waste, which is a novel idea to implement in a place where there is absolutely zero awareness of recycling, let alone which materials are recyclable (actually depressingly few plastics are actually recyclable) and which are not.

I digress.

We found, as usual when you do this sort of thing, some old treasures. My pair of 1995 'Emirates Internet' 3.5" floppy disks, for instance. Eudora and Netscape Navigator, anyone? The edition of Paris Match featuring an interview with British Expat Alexander McNabb hanging out at the luxurious boutique Park Hyatt hotel, which got me into trouble with France Telecom, with whom I was working in Jordan at the time. "We are paying you too much!", their outraged CEO bellowed at me when we met. He'd read the magazine on the plane over. Oops.

But I digress.

The Internet in just two disks! Marvellous!

One of the things we unearthed was a tatty manila file. And inside it was evidence of My Great Crime, perpetuated the very year those two disks were first clutched in my sweaty hand as I danced out of Etisalat's Sharjah HQ with my Emirates Internet subscription confirmed.

You see, I am - was - TE Chapman.

Not unnaturally, you will be puzzled. That is likely because you won't recall the Emirates in pre-Internet days, when the Gulf News letters page was the nearest thing to a forum or chat room, Facebook or Twitter, you could get. It was all very charming. You'd fax (fax, eh?) your letter in and the next day it would be printed. Then the day after, you'd get a reaction to it. Quaint, no?

The pastime of writing stupid letters to Gulf News was popular before we had electrons to play with. The trick was to write something so blindingly stupid that only a drooling idiot would fail to realise that nipples were being tweaked and toes pulled. But to pitch it just right, so that the letters page editor would let it pass. It was a skill I was to hone over the weeks and months.

I recall one particularly mad thread developed around the issue of plant pots on apartment balconies. One prominent expat got away for weeks with a correspondence based on his keen interest in scatology and wondering if there were any other like minded scatologists interested in grouping together to found a society. It was a common thing to find, expats writing in to say they were interested in Scottish history from 1814-1826 and wondered if there were etc etc. It was, literally, weeks before the GN letters editor was apprised that scatology is the study of faeces and the correspondence abruptly closed.

We had more time back then, alright?

Anyway, I digress.

Many of the contributors to the GN Letters Page back in the day were (arguably) unduly concerned with British imperialism, colonialism and any other ism you care to name. It seemed to be the work of just a few seconds to conceive a character who would be a rabid colonialist and set about baiting various hapless victims who had otherwise been passionate about exposing the evils of orientalism and the like.

TE Chapman was actually one of the various names adopted by arch colonialist, hero figure and shortarse Thomas Edward 'TE' Lawrence (Ronald Storrs, the British governor of Mandate Palestine, referred to him as 'Little Lawrence') AKA Lawrence of Arabia. See what I did there?

For quite a while, the GN letters page lit up with fiery denunciation and towering polemic. Chapman incited controversy and thundered away, enraging his audience with joyful consistency until, one day, a foolish young colleague 'outed' him as a nom de plume and Chapman's career was brought to an abrupt end.

They're all in that file. Yellowed, stuck to the daily faxes that went off to GN, a record of my undoubted glee at being quite so successful in being a right royal pain in the butt to so many people.

I was younger, back then, m'lud. That's me only defence.

But yes, it was me alright...

Back

See you, pal? See you?

It's been nigh on a year, don't yer know. Have I missed y'all? Truth is, not so much. I've spent some time doing face to face chatting with some of the people I've known online, which has been lovely. I've been busy with one thing and another and have rarely had the time to think about blogs and suchlike. I've even been taking Twitter very lightly.

One issue with my little online Tamagochi was feeding it. What do I have to say every day? When I started this here thing up in 2007, there was loads to say and I was happy to devote half an hour or so each day to saying it. A whinge here, a snark there, a giggle every now and then - it was all such fun, Pip. But with the passage of time, it started to feel like an obligation - and that, as I wrote in the last post almost a year ago, was when I decided to leave things lie a while.

But the other day, I had cause to post a bunch of tweets about what's around us, here in the UAE. And an awful lot of people perked up and said things along the lines of 'Really? I didn't know about that!'.

And, for reasons which shall become clear in the weeks and months to come, I have had reason to explore many of these things and places myself, often with a depth you'd not normally, reasonably, afford 'em. Added to that, one of my favourite things is taking friends and family around the place - I confess to greatly enjoying the role of tour guide.

So I think I might take to posting about the UAE that's around us, often hidden in plain sight. Let's see where that takes us...