Bahri Bar Revisited

I'd arranged to meet a mate for after-dinner drinks at BarZar, but it's not really my scene so we adjourn to the Bahri Bar.

The Bahri Bar has to be one of my all-time favourite watering holes in Dubai. Along with a chic interior and stunning views of the Burj Al Arab, it has a long and innovative drinks list. Sometimes all you crave, though, is an old favourite. On a sultry summer's evening, I knew exactly what it was I wanted.
'Can I have an "Arabian Summer" please,' I say, without bothering with the menu.
'A what, sir?'
'Maybe it was an "Arabian Sunset", I forget.'
'Ah – no more, sir,' said the cocktail waiter with regret. 'No more kumquats!'

I suppose the thing with an innovative drinks list is the need to refresh it from time to time. All the same, I mourn the passing of a great signature cocktail... Wish I remembered what else went into it, other than crushed ice and kumquats!

Dubai World Cup 2010

'Of course there are fireworks,' squealed a friend in delight. 'This is Dubai – they have fireworks for the opening of an envelope!'

True to expectations, there is a light and sound show – and some pretty spectacular fireworks – to round off race day at the newly-refurbished Meydan stadium. They must have announced the winner of the last race – the one with the extraordinary US$10 million purse – by this stage, but quite a bit of champagne has been quaffed, and I have no recollection of which horse has won. Someone somewhere was probably celebrating in style, but it wasn't me, and I decide to sneak out quietly before the Elton John concert to get what fitful sleep I can before my flight out early the next morning.

Dubai Festival of Literature: William Dalrymple

Somewhat unexpectedly – as none of the other authors has done it – Dalrymple reads to us. In a delightfully expressive voice, he treats us to an extract from In Xanadu, written when he was just 23, describing a comic outing to the cinema in Kashgar, and a charmingly moving account from the City of Djinns in which two old muhajirs, reminiscing on old Delhi before Partition, 'swam together through great oceans of nostalgia before finally coming ashore on a strand of melancholy'.

For Dalrymple, of course, India 'changed just about everything'. Until the age of 18, life revolved around the family home in the east of Scotland, family holidays in the west of Scotland ('even greyer, drearier and drizzlier' than home), and school in Yorkshire. 'I didn't have a particular interest in India, and probably even had a mild aversion to it,' confesses Dalrymple, although that would all change when, by a series of happy accidents, he ended up visiting a friend there and found the impact 'explosive'.

Dalrymple's latest book, Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India, is his first travel book for more than a decade. Likened to a Canterbury Tales of the sub-continent, it records his encounters with various adherents of India's 'dying religions', amongst whom are a Jain nun whose every meal must carefully be sifted to ensure no ant or other living creature has fallen into her food, rendering it impure; a devadasi or temple prostitute dying of AIDS; and a gathering of tantric musicians at the Makra Sakranti (who 'make the Kumbh Mela look like a Rotary lunch'). A timely chronicle of traditions and practices pushed to the fringe by the country's rapid modernisation, and a general move towards the 'hyper-masculine gods' of the Hindu pantheon.

Dubai Festival of Literature: Robert Lacey – Inside the Kingdom

'Great to be here in the "sink of sin", as we see it in Saudi Arabia,' says Lacey, aiming his laser penlight at Doha instead of Dubai. It is not, perhaps, the most auspicious of starts, but the remainder of Lacey's talk is an enthralling canter through the modern history of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, with its 'two enormous resources' of oil (in the east) and holy places (in the west).

We are given a brief introduction to Mohammad ibn Abd-al-Wahhab ('servant of God the Giver' and founder of the strict Wahhabi sect - whom Lacey describes as an Islamic Luther or Calvin), before picking up the narrative proper in the early twentieth century, when the Persian Gulf was a 'British lake' vital to the security of India, but the scattered tribes in the interior of the Arabian peninsula were slowly being conquered and unified under the charismatic Abdul Aziz ibn Saud of the House of Saud. Lacey's talk is accompanied by a series of slides, amongst which is a magnificent archive photo (taken by William Shakespear, British Agent in Kuwait) of ibn Saud's militia on camelback, galloping under a green standard emblazoned with the shahadah (Islamic proclamation of faith) – similar to the flag of Saudi Arabia today.

The relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US is tracked from the grant of the oil concessions in the 1930s and the production of first oil in 1938, through the Arab oil embargo and the oil boom of the 1970s, to 9/11 and beyond. The giant oil concessions went to the Americans as opposed to the British in part through the 'treachery' of Harry St John Philby, an English adviser to ibd Saud who was in the pay of the Americans, and in part through ibn Saud's own (mistaken) belief that the Americans, being a long way away from the Middle East, were less likely than the British to meddle in Saudi affairs. The boom years of the 1970s had a complex effect, leading to a rising fear of Arab wealth in the west ('just six hours' pumping, and the Arabs could buy up Buckingham Palace; give them another day, and they'll buy up half the City of London') and a religious reaction at home, as a deeply conservative populace searched the fundamentals of their faith to cope with change.

Today, Lacey views the House of Saud as being in a 'paradoxical' position, demonised as a 'repressive clique of old men' by the west, while being criticised for its 'modernising' and 'progressive' stance at home. He leaves us with an intriguing thought: was 9/11 the dawn of a Saudi glastnost – an event which finally brought home the need for change within the Kingdom? If so, where will it end? With the collapse, as in the former Soviet Union, of the old regime which tried to reform itself, or with a modern state like Qatar or the UAE?

Dubai Festival of Literature: Kate Adie

I am delighted to find myself back in Dubai for the second literary festival, and to start the day with Kate Adie – a 'national treasure on loan to us for an hour', as Rosie Goldsmith (who introduced the session) charmingly put it.

Adie talks of her career as a frontline reporter with wit and warmth, modestly stating that journalism was something she 'fell into' rather than pursued. 'I come from a generation where all women were expected to do was a spot of light cooking and to have 2.3 children for England, and your destiny was sealed. Importuning strangers with impertinent questions was not something I was brought up to do.'

Prior to frontline reporting, she spent seven years in local radio, which she regarded as a formative experience. 'You learn that life is full of extraordinary people. Any group of people has within them the most amazing range of attitudes, knowledge – or lack of knowledge. There will be some who will be experts on anything from nuclear physics to chicken rearing, and some who will be positively deranged. Every group of individuals will have something interesting to tell you, if you know how to approach them the right way. In them there will be gold somewhere, which will fascinate you. There's no such thing as a totally dull group – apart from BBC management.'

Did she enjoy travelling to dangerous places? 'I like sandy beaches with a bar, but they tend not to be places where revolutions happen. People think war is terribly exciting, but they've just come from the movies. War is hell. It's tragic. The wrong people – the generous, the kind, the decent – get killed, and the thugs often survive.' As a frontline reporter, 'you don't go to take part in war, or to manage events. You are this little flea landing on a live body of events – you go to watch, and listen, and witness.'

Somewhat surprisingly, Adie is ambivalent about the rise of 24-hour news, which she sees as being driven more by a desire for novelty than for information. She also deplores the trend towards the 'show-bizzy' informality and trivialisation of news reporting. 'News is moving into the entertainment world – hi there! – and entertainment by its nature has to appeal, but news has to convey dreadful things.'

Her advice to young journalists? 'I'm boringly puritanical about journalism. If you want to be a journalist, you have to be fair, truthful and honest.' And, at the end of an interesting and insightful session, one can't help but wish that there were more boringly puritanical journalists about.

SMCCU Iftar

Beneath a tent outside the Sheikh Mohammed Centre for Cultural Understanding sits a man in the sticky heat, roasting coffee over a small open fire in the time-honoured Bedouin tradition. We crowd the air-conditioned doorway of the Centre to watch, awaiting the appointed hour.

At around half six in the evening, we are led into the courtyard of the Centre. Our hosts – volunteers who have given up their time with family and friends to break their fast with us – prostrate themselves for the Maghrib prayer. Afterwards, they come round to offer us dates and water, before inviting us to tuck into an authentic iftar supper complete with Gulf specialities like hareesa (lamb with buckwheat) and fareeda (a rich breadsauce with lamb and vegetable gravy), which you wouldn't get anywhere else in Dubai - at least not as an expatriate or visitor on the corporate iftar circuit at the five-star hotels.

After dinner the womenfolk are wrapped in headscarves, and we embark on a short walking tour of the Bastakiya district followed by a quick '101' on Islam at the Bastakiya mosque.

All in all, a very satisfying way to share in the Ramadan experience. Ramadan kareem!

Kurta Carousel at the Art Oasis

I came across Zain Mustafa's 'Carousel' quite unexpectedly at the Art Oasis at the Wafi in Dubai this afternoon. At first glance, it wasn't particularly exciting: eighteen plain white kurtas, each emblazoned with a word from Allama Iqbal's poem from the Bang-e-Dara (Call of the Marching Bell). The transliteration from the Urdu read, 'Hazaroon saal nargis apni bey noori ray rothi hay, Bari mushkil say hotha hay chaman mein deedawar paida'. This was accompanied by a rather cryptic English translation which read, 'For thousands of years Narcissus weeps at her ugliness. It is with great difficulty that someone is born in the garden (of Eden) with eyes'. What was intriguing was the story behind each kurta, written in English in a neat cursive hand on a large yellow label attached to each garment. Difficult to tell if these were true or simply made up – they were certainly plausible enough to be affecting.

A random selection:

"Name: Muna
Age: 22 years old
Nationality: Emirati
Sex: Female
Recent graduate in architecture. Just married. Killed in a fatal car crash on Sheikh Zayed Road – was not her fault. Kurta was bought for her by her brother. Found in car at crash scene. Muna had dreams of becoming an internationally acclaimed architect."

"Name: Antonio
Age: 38 years old
Nationality: Spanish
Sex: Male
Financial analyst at the DIFC (Dubai International Financial Centre). Collector of ethnic items of clothing. As part of his collection, a kurta was hanging over his bed on his bedroom wall as a piece of art in his villa in the Meadows. During the rains last January, his house leaked, flooding his bedroom. Much to his sadness, he had to throw away the kurta."

"Name: Michiko
Age: 18 years old
Nationality: Japanese
Sex: Female
Fashion photographer's assistant. Travelling with a well-known international fashion photographer in her first time out of Japan. She was on a yacht for an editorial photo shoot wearing her kurta as a fashion statement. A sharp turn of the yacht and turbulent waters caused her to fall off and drown. Her kurta was found floating."

"Name: Luke
Age: 35 years old
Nationality: Australian
Sex: Male
Lived in Dubai for six years with his wife and two kids. Deported along with family for indecent exposure on the beach. Accidentally picked up someone else's shopping bag with kurtas at the mall. Kurta found in his home being used as a cleaning rag."

Dubai International Festival of Literature: James Waterson

Not one of the big names of the festival (Waterson is charmingly surprised we have turned up at all, given that Jung Chang and Robin Sharma are speaking at separate sessions during his slot), but the topic is tantalising: 'A Mongol Khan of Europe?'

The battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 is not one I am familiar with, but Waterson manages to weave together the central theses from his two books, The Knights of Islam and The Ismaili Assassins, into an amusing and compelling narrative. In defeating the Mongols and preventing the fall of Cairo, Waterson argues, the Mamluks inadvertently also save Europe (then a 'cold, forested peninsula full of sheep, on the rump of Asia') from Mongol devastation.

With the aid of a broad and engaging selection of slides (including stills from PlayStation's 'Assassin's Creed'), Waterson takes us through the rigorous training of the Mamluk slave soldiers, including instruction in the arts of the furusiyya (horsemanship, archery and swordsmanship); the covert use of Assassins by the courts and caliphates of the near East (Polo's accounts of the use of hashish by the sect is dismissed as 'romantic nonsense'); and the rise of Baibars from the slave markets of Damascus.

Both Mongol and Mamluk were ultimately war machines, and in some ways more similar than dissimilar. Waterson cites a contemporaneous account of the defeat of the Mongols at Ain Jalut which observed that 'to everything there is a pest of its own kind', and uses details from the baptistry of Saint Louis (once used to baptise infants of the French royal family, but an object of Mamluk origin) to demonstrate the distinct oriental facial features of the Mamluks.

The difference in their legacy, Waterson argues, lay in their creed. Whereas the Mongols razed the great Islamic centres of Herat and Baghdad, the Mamluks had been steeped in the precepts of Islam from their earliest training and, having usurped the Ayyubids in Egypt, needed religious legitimacy - hence their contribution to some of the great classical Islamic architecture of Egypt.

Dubai International Festival of Literature: Robert Irwin and Sir Mark Tully

'The Camel: Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know... and Plenty that You Didn't' by Robert Irwin could have been a great session. It starts off promisingly, with lines from a pre-Islamic poem describing the slaughter - in almost sensual terms - by a traveller of his favourite racing camel in return for sexual favours from a 'fair virgin', but then loses its way somewhat.

All very well to learn that the camel is a retromingent animal, and that the Grand Union Pub on Westbourne Road in London serves meat from feral camels culled in Australia. Given the setting, however, Irwin might perhaps have dwelled a little longer on the rich camel lore and cultural significance of the animal in the Middle East.

Another session which didn't quite live up to promise was Sir Mark Tully's talk on 'India's Unending Journey'. It was clear that the audience - a capacity crowd of Indians and Indophiles - was there to listen to his sometimes maddening and sometimes profoundly moving experiences on the subcontinent. His little vignettes of Indian life (a frustrating but amusing journey on Indian Railways from Patna to Bangalore, the inconveniences of dealing with the neta-babu raj (the petty bureaucracy and corrupt officialdom), the intricacies of the caste system) were well-received, echoing - to a greater or lesser degree - the experiences of anyone who has ever travelled or lived in India.

His theme - the 'uncertainty of certainty' at the heart of Indian civilisation, its ability to absorb and indigenise external influences (such as languages and religions) and its syncretic spirituality (in contrast to the dogmatic fundamentalism of the monotheistic traditions) - is a grand and wide-ranging one, so it is a little perplexing that Sir Mark chooses to use that as the basis primarily for a diatribe against unrestrained consumerism for most of his talk.

Sir Mark supports the Indian cricket team and admits to passing the Tebbit test in reverse.

Dubai International Festival of Literature: Alexander Maitland on Sir Wilfred Thesiger

I start the second day of the festival with Alexander Maitland in conversation with Ian Fairservice on the travel writings of Sir Wilfred Thesiger.

Maitland (Thesiger's authorised biographer, literary executor and friend) is an angular, scholarly man. He begins the session by describing his first meeting with Thesiger, recalling Thesiger's nasal voice, stylised way of speaking, and odd habit of emphasising prepositions ('This is utterly meaningless to me', Thesiger would say). (Thesiger also apparently smelled of Brylcreem and mothballs at that first encounter.)

We move on to Thesiger's writings and photography, which both Maitland and Fairservice assert were the by-product of his travels, in that he never travelled with a book or a photo project in mind. Seeking 'savagery and colour', Thesiger travelled instead to be with the people he came to love, and to experience (as Lawrence did) the 'keenness' of the desert. The tale is told of an encounter between Thesiger and Sheikh Zayed, following Thesiger's arrival in Abu Dhabi after crossing the Empty Quarter.
'But why did you take such a long way to get here?' asked the Sheikh.
'Your Highness,' Thesiger replied, 'I wasn't travelling to get here. I was travelling.'

Those of you familiar with Thesiger's writings will know them to be spare and lyrical. There is not much humour in 'Arabian Sands' or 'Marsh Arabs' (both widely regarded as Thesiger's finest works), but Thesiger the man (though 'farouche and unpredictable') could be very funny. Once, when an expensive car sent to ferry him around on a return visit to the Gulf broke down, he reputedly quipped 'At least when your camel breaks down, you can eat it'; and, on another occasion, to a dowager regaling him with tales of society cocktail parties, he reputedly said, 'Madam, last week I was at a party where all the guests arrived naked and we ate one of them before leaving'.

The session is accompanied by a slideshow from Thesiger's photo-library. Thesiger hated colour photography, and worked almost exclusively in black and white. He had a 'tremendous eye', and insisted that his pictures were published as the 'photographer's composition', without editorial cropping. I find myself mesmerised by his work - here are mementoes of Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Sharjah from a vanished era.

'How would Thesiger have reacted to the Middle East today?', asks a member of the audience.
Maitland and Fairservice both agree that Thesiger would have found the Gulf today 'an Arabian nightmare'. The Gulf had begun to change during his latter years, and Thesiger was never one for modernity. Although he accepted the need for people to enter the twentieth century, this didn't prevent him from feeling a 'tremendous sadness and nostalgia' for the way of life he had known.

His works, however, stand as a 'literary, visual, historical and very human imprint' of a bygone world.

Dubai International Festival of Literature: Sir Ranulph Fiennes

So here is the man who has circumnavigated the world on its polar axis, run seven marathons on seven continents in seven days, and rediscovered the lost city of Ubar. Viewed from the side, from where I'm sitting, Sir Ranulph Fiennes (or 'Ran' as Adrian Hayes, who introduced the session, insisted on calling him) bears an uncanny resemblance to the Duke of Edinburgh.

His talk this evening is entitled 'Living Dangerously - Lessons Learned from a Lifetime of Adventure', but Sir Ranulph isn't a bore and leaves the didactic life coaching to another occasion. Instead, he chooses to take us on a highly entertaining romp through an extremely eventful and colourful life. Some gems:

On the motivation for his expeditions:
Mostly 'to pay the gas bills - I didn't have the A-levels to find a job in London', but also to 'get there first and plant your flag before anyone else does, particularly the French'.

On old Etonians:
Most of them 'end up as wine merchants in the West Country'.

On chameleons:
'You all know, of course, that if you put one against a green leaf it turns green, and if you put it against a red flower it turns red. People say that if you place one on a Tartan blanket, it will explode.'

On learning Arabic:
'The Ministry believed that, in order to lead a group of Arabs into battle with the communists at night, you had to learn Arabic, and the best place to learn Arabic was Beaconsfield, near London. [...] When I got there [to Dhofar in southern Oman], I found that most of the men were Baluchi and spoke Urdu, some were from Zanzibar and spoke Swahili, and the few who spoke Arabic hadn't been to Beaconsfield.'

On the hovercraft expedition along the White Nile in 1968/69:
The hovercrafts 'held the record for running eight hours without breaking down in a gravel pond in Peterborough'. They could lift themselves three inches off the surface, but 'there are a lot of obstacles about four inches in height down the length of the Nile'.

On avoiding hidden crevasses during his Antarctic crossings:
'I developed a very careful policy of watching [what happened to] the chap in front of me.'

On being cast adrift on an ice floe during an Arctic summer:
'Charlie [Burton] had a small radio which caught the BBC world service for about two minutes each day. One day we heard that Britain was at war. We thought that it had to be with France, and were disappointed to learn afterwards that it was with Argentina.'

On Scott versus Shackleton:
'Scott was the greatest polar explorer of all time. He wasn't very good at racing [...] but he learnt a lot from Antarctica. It was Scott who taught Shackleton everything he [Shackleton] knew, and who carried Shackleton back from the South Pole when he fell ill.'