"You are a modest queen, that knows her true worth by keeping her modest heart secure with shyness."
-Herhiddensoul
"Hijab is a symbol of modesty it includes the way a person walk, talks, looks and thinks, All of it should be done modestly ...... and it's to protect yourself from evil eye."
-Mursaleen (A man)
The sky is mostly white here due to a sandstorm coming in off the desert. Since many of the buildings are white or a pale color it gives the whole place a desolate look. And, I learned today the Mike Pence is heading our government’s response to the coronavirus.
So, it seems clear that at least two of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are on the way.
Below is a stock photo from google. The sky was so hazy today I couldn’t possibly get a shot like this and drones are very illegal here. But, on a really good day, this is what Abu Dhabi looks like.
We spent the day doing some touring here in Abu Dhabi, the most important city in the United Arab Emirates. The reason for it’s dominance is it sits on 90% of the oil reserves of a nation that is roughly the size of South Carolina. Prior to 1976, this area, like Qatar we visited earlier was sitting a a piece of flat blasted desert as a fishing village. After the oil was discovered, it has rocketed into the modern world with currently over 1.3 trillion dollars in assets.
The UAE isn’t just oil rich. Under the leadership of these 4 guys, mostly the guy on the right, Mohammed bin Zayed, the country has diversified into everything from military weapons, real estate, financial products, mines, infrastructure projects, stores, to even ice cream parlors. They have no national debt either.
The population of the UAE is 2.7 million people, but only 500,000 are actually Emirate nationals. The rest are guest workers and receive no benefits other than salary from the enormous wealth. They are the workers for the Emirates and are from poor countries all over the world who come here on contracts and then must leave.
The money can be good, compared to what they make back home, but this is a Islamic country. There are no bars, no nightclubs, no alcohol, no mixed sex fraternizing , etc. It can be a lonely tour of duty for the thousands of single men who come here to work for their families back home.
Since the sky was blasted white, we headed for one of the listed highlights here in the city. Everything here is new and in pristine condition. Sky cranes are everywhere.
We traveled to ‘The Louvre Abu Dhabi’. Opened recently, this is a spectacular museum on the bay. Inside, thank to the enormous foundation the center can spend, are priceless relics and art from over 8,000 years of human history.
It presents the works in a unique manner. The works are presented when they occurred in time. So you would see a sarcophagus from Egypt along side a Buddha statue from the Tang Dynasty in China. Both happened at approximately the same time in history so they are presented in such a manner that you can appreciate that things were happening all over the world, not just the west as we commonly see in our museums.
We were there with a school group. The girls were kept seperate from the boys and shepherded to various works and given lectures. They were all in their black abayas and veils.
You know why they are always black? I didn’t. It is to prevent any visualization of their bodies by men even if light passes through. The men are usually in all white or whatever color they choose and do not need head coverage.
That seems totally fair....
Colleen and I wondered, with all respect to their faith, if the young girls longed to wear fashionable clothes like other girls. Or do they view Colleen and other western women they pass with derision. We passed store after store of clothes with all the latest in girls and women’s fashions. Do they purchase it and then cover it in black? It seems odd to say the least.
Yet it was fun to see that girls act like all young girls do all over the world. The were laughing, chatting, holding hands, teasing each other. It could have been a field trip in any American town.
The boys? Well they seemed to be completely unsupervised and running around the museum getting into trouble. No one seemed to mind.
Here are just a few of the works we saw today.
Despite the conditions for the girls, at least they were in school. Furthermore, Abu Dhabi prides itself in being one of the most progressive countries in the Arab world. In the Lourve, side by side were priceless Islamic, Christian, Hindi, and Jewish texts. Works of art by all faiths were present. Despite being a dictatorship, that is a good thing.
The air still being bad, we left to go see one of the giant Malls they have here. Here was a throwback to the our Malls of the past, except on a much larger scale. We found giant stores filled with piles of the latest merchandise all for conspicuous consumption. All of the employees were foreigners brought into work. The prices were high but when you have this much money to throw around, as the Emirates do, no one seemed to mind.
Again, store after store of the most expensive ladies fashions with shoppers dressed in all black looking over the products.
You have to admire what this little country has accomplished in so short of a time. Even if it feels like the fake city in the classic movie “The Truman Show” at times.
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