Being given the opportunity to live here for a while means that if you are so inclined, you can try to see and learn a little bit more about the history and culture of the UAE. Yesterday we managed to experience some of both.
We had heard from friends about a couple of abandoned villages in the area, but details on how to get to these places were sketchy. There doesn't seem to be an equivalent of the National Trust here so you don't see roadside signage saying 'This way to the derelict town'. You have to adopt the attitude that part of the fun is getting lost while finding the place, which is why if you want to do that sort of thing you need to get the right car. If I digress and explain what I mean by that, it will also give you an insight in to the Emirati way of lateral thinking!
Much of the road system here is excellent. We have two motorways linking us with Dubai, one of which then continues to Abu Dhabi and beyond. They are wide and smooth and often un-congested, until you get to the suburbs of Sharjah and Dubai when they become like any other city expressway, which is not very express at all. Likewise the main roads around RAK are pretty good. Some of the planning is a bit confusing when you first arrive, but once you get the hang of the thought process behind driving here you realise it all seems to work.
Here is the 'however' though.. However once you get off the main strip the situation can change in a couple of meters, and you can be on a rutted, sandy track or even just sand. Sometimes excellent road surfaces can have sections of up to a couple of hundred meters of rough track randomly spaced along their route. Hence a lot of people buy SUVs and 4x4s to give them the ability to get through the light off road sections you often have to negotiate. However if you buy a really capable 4x4 it's not so comfortable on the highway, and if you get an SUV it can cope with the light rough but will get stuck when the going gets tough. Your own personal usage dictates which side of the compromise you choose, but not if you've got a few quid. The view is often that if the roads are not going to get better you need to consider cars as you would your shoes. You have one for the country, one for the city, one for long drives, one if you're going on your own and another if the family are coming along. It is not unusual at all for people to have five cars and think nothing of it!
Back to the ghost town.. We manage to find roughly the right location for the deserted village and kept going until the road ran out, then pushed on a bit further. Firstly it looked like any other small suburb of RAK and clearly was predominantly inhabited by migrant workers from the Indian sub-continent, many of whom were enjoying their day off and playing a bit of cricket or hanging out with their friends. There were the usual small shops and houses, nothing remarkable until we realised that immediately next to this scene of normal life were a collection of buildings which were ram-shackled, and then the fort appeared.
We tried to drive around what was now obviously our destination but it soon became clear that the design of the village pre-dated the popularity of the car, so we parked next to the fort (easy landmark to navigate back to!) and set off on foot. The 'keep out' sign seemed only to apply to the fort, which was fenced off!
The first thing to strike me was that we were alone in the rubble strewn streets. Just a few hundred meters away people walked past and carried on with their daily lives, but there was no-one else taking a tour of this part of town. Some of the paths had the appearance of having been cleared but the smaller ones, which were passages in between the houses, were covered in rubble. There was a mosque, shops still with stands outside where their wares would have been displayed, and a lot of houses. We've been to a deserted town before, one which had a sad tale to tell, Oradour-sur-Glane in France. Hundreds of people had been massacred in Oradour during WWII so naturally it had an eerie feel, even though there were lots of visitors. Jazirat also had this feeling. There is something strange when you are in a village and there are no people about. You keep expecting someone to walk out of a house, or to hear a phone ring or dog bark. The silence is unusual and unnerving. On one trip to the Somme we stayed in a converted barn adjacent to a farmhouse, and if I was ever going to have a spiritual encounter I would have thought this would be the place. Savage fighting had taken place in the immediate vicinity and during recent building work the owner had found human remains. The poor souls who perished there would have had every reason to be restless, but my nature is to think they would not be malevolent, just sorrowful.
It soon became apparent why the buildings were is such a poor state of repair. OK, they were not being maintained but why did everything seem to be falling down? A closer look at the bricks and mortar gave the answer. They were made out of sand and material from the nearby beach, there were shells and fossilised coral in abundance and without regular maintenance it was all returning to its natural state. This meant that some of the walls were precariously balanced and others just fallen heaps.
It was getting late in the day so we headed back to the car and once home, I looked the village up on the internet. This is where we learned the various rumors and speculation about why it is abandoned and how it is commonly thought to be haunted! I'm normally an i's dotted and t's crossed sort of guy and tend to research places that we visit beforehand, so finding this out afterwards was a bit of a surprise! Just in case you want to know more, here is one of the many websites which feature Jazirat:
http://thepurplejournal.wordpress.com/2011/02/07/jaziratalhamra/
Would we go back again, knowing the history of the place? Probably, but in daylight! I'm not sure if I believe in ghosts or not, never having seen one, and I have a sceptical view of mediums. If a relative who has passed away wants to get in touch with me I kind of understand how the spirit world would only allow this through the talents of a medium. But why they have to go through the whole charade of 'I think there is someone trying to get through... Their name begins with B or it could be P? ..... It's something to do with paper and plastic....' is beyond me?! If they said 'your recently passed away Uncle Brian says he's left a million pounds in cash in a plastic bucket under the sink' then I'd be easier to convince. And before you send any begging emails, I didn't have an Uncle Brian and I don't have a million pounds..
Next week, Arabic hospitality. How I fell out of my comfort zone and into the metaphorical arms of the most welcoming people I've ever met.
No comments:
Post a Comment