Poetic Justice

At the press conference convened yesterday to announce the capture of the Wafi City Heist Gang, Dubai police chief Dhahi Khalfan Tamim may have surprised some observers by breaking out into poetry. Quite rightly celebrating the force's considerable achievement in bringing the gang to book in record time, he once again brings a splash of colour to an event which would have been a drabber affair without his presence.

Today, his poetic words are being carried widely by the Arabic language radio stations and now, exclusively, I can share them with you in English too.

Shortat Dubai takbod 3ala el 3isaba

Wa to3eed el almas las7aba

Wa fee kabdatoha al mojrimeen wal mal li arbaba

(The above is in 'MSN Arabic' - 3 is pronounced a'a and 7 is ha)

In English:

Dubai Police caught the gang
And returned the diamonds to their owner
And the money will go back to the proprietor

Which is nice, isn't it?

Dignity and Robbery

Today, buried behind the headlines announcing the capture of the Dhs 50 million Wafi City Heist Gang, Gulf News reports that the court in Abu Dhabi that's trying the two journalists for accusing two 'dignitaries' of having an award withdrawn from them for horse doping has now ruled against them. The two journalists, as they were originally dubbed, now turn out to be the editor in chief and the CEO of the newspaper. The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of First Instance, Gulf News tells us, ruled that the CEO is not responsible for editorial content so he's off the hook. What a very lucky CEO, you'd be forgiven for thinking.

While the CEO and staff are undoubtedly getting stuck into some celebratory chocolate cake, the editor is getting hit with a Dhs 20,000 fine (about $5,500) and he's, not suprisingly, reported to be appealing today. You can't help feeling that there's a lot more to this case than meets the eye and you'd probably be right. Dhs 20,000, incidentally, is a small amount in the circumstances - a sum reminiscent of Whistler's Farthing. It'll be interesting to see what happens at appeal.

Meanwhile, Dubai's sensational capture of the Wafi Gang (well, three of them) has resulted in the recovery of the jewellery (well, Dhs 14 million of it). This is widely pictured and shows just how little Dhs 14 million (About $3.8 million) seems to buy you these days. See? Life in Dubai IS getting expensive.

The tray's nice, though...

Magic Menon's Revenge

So Mr. Menon and his Magic Marker sniffing team of solvent snorting censors have been busy with the cover art of the Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare, a most enjoyable collection of songs from those highly celebrated young Northern chaps.

The Menon magic appears to have been necessitated by some clever inner art that takes everyday objects and makes them appear rude, although I don't really know because the marker has done its work well. I have to confess to being irritated by this: I bought a product in good faith only to find that it has been wilfully vandalised and I do think that it would be better if this had not been the case. They wouldn't like it if I put splotches of marker all over their walls and toilets, would they? The least they could do is put a sticker on the outside of the (shrink wrapped) box saying 'This product has been intentionally damaged to protect your morals' or something of the sort. Then at least I'd know to buy it from Amazon instead of the local Virgin shop.

It's not as if the effort isn't rendered pointless through inconsistency. We have Buddha Bar albums in Virgin with the Buddha blacked out, yet Dubai's Grosvenor Hotel sports its very own Buddha Bar in the real. We have a sly bit of Arctic rudery obliterated while 'Tokyo: the sex, the city, the music' is on sale with a topless girl on the front cover. And George Bataille's The Story of the Eye is on sale in the bookshops here: as neat a piece of corruption as you'll find pasted to a spine.


Trawling the web to find out what sparked Magic Menon's ministrations, I did discover that bands are now issuing press releases to announce they have revealed their album art as part of their new release teaser campaigns. Oh, the cynicism...

Cack

There's a grand old tradition of unintentionally funny language in the Gulf which, although it's not as strong a vein of humour as it used to be, occasionally still provides some innocent and welcome amusement (the odd 'ray of light' as Archibald Clerk Kerr called it). There's everything from 'Hinglish' to simply misapplied language and even the occasional uninentionally amusing 'transliteration of a non Romance language'.

Gone are the days when you'd find 'cack' on a restaurant menu, replacing the more popular cake, although the sign More Parking in Backside still graces one frontage in Sharjah. And the soon-to-be deleted Karama area of Dubai is still home to the Wanton Chinese and Philipino Restaurant while Sharjah still has Butt Sports and Motley Garments Trading to delight the observant shop-front watcher.

Just in case you thought the day had gone and the skill was lost, Ajman's perimeter road now gives us Nile Fresh Water Trading. Sweet water indeed.

Solvent Abuse and Lewd Pictures

Highly amused to see a piece on censorship in today's Xpress, the weekly tabloid newspaper from Gulf News' publisher Al Nisr, which quotes a Mr. Vijayan Menon. Vijayan is part of the four-man team that black-marks publications for magazine distributor Jashanmal and takes out the naughty bits. "I really have to watch out for the British tabloids," Menon tells Xpress reporter Mohammed Khan. "Publications like the Observer, the Independent and the Sun commonly display lewd pictures."

I'm not sure if it's the mention of the three in one breath or the idea of that famously saucy page 3 of the Independent which made me giggle into my coffee.

Perhaps they all become one tabloid blur of dancing nipples and grey print after a couple of hours' sniffing Magic Marker...

Am I allowed to say nipples?

Dope

The working week ends and the Arab Media Forum's award-winning journalists are off back home or back at work today with a big awardy thing to put in the glass cabinet in the corner of their offices. After two days of calling for more training, education and freedom for media, everyone's pleased that it all went off so well and that the important issues have all been well and truly highlighted.

Meanwhile, undebated by the Forum, two journalists from an Arabic language daily are defending themselves in a court in Abu Dhabi after two local 'dignitaries' sued them for defamation. They had reported, says Gulf News, that the dignitaries had been stripped of a racing award after their horse had failed a dope test. Their lawyer presented the doping report to the court, as well as the 'international sporting court's ruling' that stripped the 'dignitaries' of the award their horse had won: arguably evidence enough for the case to be instantly dismissed. Perhaps interestingly, the 'dignitaries' are claiming that the 'suspects' intended to malign them because they published the story on the front page and not the sports section, according to the dignitaries' lawyer, quoted by GN.

Tabloid magazine, anyone?

Lebanese Takeaway

Houmous
Fattoush
Tabbouleh
Sambousek Jibneh
Sis Kebab
Plate shawarma dajaj
Sujuk

Tonight the two of us eat like little kings for pennies, while the Arab Media Forum delegates continue their portentous declamations on the importance of fostering media freedom to ever smaller audiences until just two are left. Jackets off and staggering along the Madinat's waterways in their shirtsleeves under the early morning starlight, arm in arm, they rage about how it would have been so much better if Gamal Abdel Nasser had got the Yanks behind him instead of the useless bloody Sovs.