The Village in the Dunes: Dubai Before the Oil Boom

The sun had not yet crested the turquoise horizon of the Persian Gulf when Ahmed’s calloused fingers closed around the frayed edge of his father’s fishing net, the rough hemp biting into the soft skin of his palm where the blisters had not yet hardened from a week of hauling silver sardines and plump grouper out of the creek. It was 1957, and the air over Dubai Creek carried the sharp, briny tang of low tide, mixed with the sweet, cloying scent of drying fish laid out on woven palm mats along the shore and the faint, smoky drift of frankincense burned in the homes of the Persian merchant families who had lived in Deira for three generations. The sand under his bare feet was still cool enough not to burn, but he knew it would be searing by mid-morning, hot enough to blister the soles of even the thickest shwail boots if you stood still long enough. At twelve years old, Ahmed was already as tall as most of the men in his fishing crew, his dark hair bleached pale gold at the ends by months of squinting into the sun, his shoulders broad from pulling nets heavy enough to drag a small boy under if he lost his grip. His father Khalid sat cross-legged on the sand next to him, his face lined with a worry that had been there since the last pearl dive two weeks prior, the creases around his eyes and mouth deeper than they had been the year before. The pearl season was winding down, as it did every summer when the Gulf water grew too warm for oysters to produce the lustrous, wild pearls that had made Dubai famous for a hundred years, but this year the worry was sharper, heavier. For generations, the men of Ahmed’s tribe, the Al Bu Falasah, had dove for pearls every winter, holding their breath for two minutes at a time to pry oysters from the seabed, risking shark attacks and decompression sickness to bring up the perfect white and pink pearls that traders from Bombay and Paris paid a fortune for. But for the last decade, the price of natural pearls had been falling, driven down by cheap, perfect cultured pearls mass-produced in oyster farms in Japan. The last haul of pearls Khalid had brought back had only bought three sacks of dates, a kilo of rice, and half a bottle of the fever medicine Ahmed’s mother needed to fight the chest infection that had kept her bedridden for two weeks. “The merchant in the souk says he can’t sell the big white ones at all now,” Khalid said, running a rough finger along a tear in the net, his voice low so the old diver Hamad, who was napping against the side of the dhow, wouldn’t hear. “He says the Japanese are selling perfect pearls for a few rupees, and no one wants our wild ones anymore. If the sardine haul is bad today, we won’t have enough to pay for the new net, or the school fees for your sister.” Ahmed nodded, not saying anything. He had seen the pearl traders in the souk the day before, haggling over strings of pearls that his grandmother had told him used to be worth enough to buy a whole house, now being sold for pocket change, their lust dimmed by the glut of cheap imports. He wanted to stay in school, wanted to learn to read and write English like the other kids in the new British-run school, wanted to hear Miss Evans tell stories about London and its tall buildings and cars that drove on paved roads instead of sand. But every time he thought about leaving the boat early, he thought of his mother, coughing in the dark of their barasti hut, the thin blanket pulled up to her chin, and he knew he couldn’t. The rest of the crew woke up as the first light turned the water pink, and they pushed the dhow Al-Noor off the sand, the wooden hull creaking as it hit the shallow water of the creek. The sail caught the morning breeze, and they glided past the other fishing boats, past the dhows from India and Iran tied up at the shore, their sails patched with colorful cloth, their decks stacked with crates of spices and cloth. Ahmed sat on the edge of the boat, his legs dangling over the side, watching the city wake up: the men heading to the souk with crates of dates, the women carrying water jars on their heads, the kids running after a stray cat, their laughter loud in the quiet morning. Half an hour out of the creek, they saw the strange motorboat, its engine roaring loud enough to scare the gulls into flight, three men in khaki clothes standing on the deck, holding binoculars and pointing at the shore. One of them held a metal box with an antenna sticking out of the top, and every few seconds, the box let out a soft beeping sound. Hamad squinted at them, spitting a stream of betel nut juice into the water, and grunted. “Oil surveyors,” he said, not sounding impressed. “They’ve been poking around the desert for months, looking for black mud. My cousin says they found a little seep near the empty quarter, but it’s not enough to bother with. We have the sea, we have the camels, we don’t need oil to live.” Ahmed had heard the rumors of oil for as long as he could remember, whispers that passed from merchant to Bedouin to fisherman, that there was black gold under the sand of the Trucial States, that the British were looking for it, that the sheikhs were making secret deals with foreign companies. But no one had ever found oil in Dubai, and most people thought it was just a story, like the tales of jinn that lived in the desert, or the pearl divers who turned into mermaids. They fished for three hours, hauling in enough sardines to fill three large crates, then turned back for the creek. The surveyors’ boat was gone by the time they got back, but Ahmed saw one of the men standing on the shore, talking to Saeed, his best friend, who was herding his father’s camels along the beach. Saeed was a year older than Ahmed, his skin darker from spending all day in the sun, his fingers calloused from holding the camel reins. He ran over to Ahmed as soon as the surveyor left, his face lit up, holding a chocolate bar wrapped in red foil, something Ahmed had never seen before. “The surveyor gave me this,” Saeed said, breaking off a piece and handing it to Ahmed. “He paid me five rupees to show him where the old Bedouin well is, the one out in the desert near the border with Abu Dhabi. He said they have a machine that beeps when there’s water under the sand, or oil. Can you believe that? Water under the sand, just waiting to be found.” Ahmed took the chocolate, it was sweet and rich, unlike anything he had tasted before, and he nodded, even though he didn’t believe it. The desert was just sand, endless sand, with nothing under it but rock and heat. Everyone knew that. They walked into the souk together, the air thick with the smell of spices, dates, and roasting lamb, the sound of merchants haggling in Arabic, Persian, Hindi,

and English, the din of copper-smiths hammering brass pots outside their stalls, the tinkle of donkey bells as porters hauled crates of dates from the creek shore to the souk’s central square. The packed-earth path under their feet was rutted by thousands of bare feet and camel hooves, dust rising in thin, ochre clouds with every step, sticking to the sweat on Ahmed’s neck and the crumbs of chocolate still smudged on his lips from the bar Saeed had shared. The air itself was a thick, living thing: sharp salt from the creek, sweet rot of overripe dates spilling from woven baskets, smoky frankincense curling from the Persian merchants’ stalls, the greasy tang of roasting lamb turning on spits outside the food stalls, and underneath it all the faint, ever-present scent of fish that never quite washed out of the creek-side neighborhood.

They passed the pearl souk first, the row of stalls where traders sat cross-legged on woven rugs, their fingers running over strings of pearls laid out on velvet cloth. Ahmed’s father slowed his step, his eyes landing on a man he recognized: Ali, the Iranian merchant who had bought his pearl hauls for ten years, who had once paid him enough for a single large pink pearl to buy a new dhow sail