Archive | October, 2009

Freej

October 30, 2009

I picked up the first two seasons of the television show Freej at one of the duty-free shops in the Abu Dhabi airport. Freej is a 3D animated cartoon produced in Dubai, which has been a big hit in the Emirates since it debuted in 2006. The series depicts the lives of four friends — Um Saeed, Um Allawi, Um Salood, and Um Khammas — older women living in one of the more traditional neighborhoods in Dubai (freej means “neighborhood” in Emirati Arabic). They gather each day in Um Saeed’s house to drink coffee and chat about their lives, and periodically they go off on little adventures. Each of the characters has distinctive traits (as well as color coding) and wears a niqab (veil). Um Saeed is short and highly educated and generally intiates the conversation; Um Allawi is tall and constantly trading stocks via laptop and cell phone; Um Saloom is forgetful and narcoleptic; and Um Khammas, a North African, is an acid-tongued singer and caterer who specializes in weddings.

freej_cast.pngThe show and its creator Mohammed Saeed Harib (pictured below), were profiled in September in the New York Times.  The 31-year-old attended Northeastern University, where he and his peers watched episodes of South Park. Freej has something of South Park’s irreverence, though it embodies Emirati values and foibles rather than North American. The ladies’ talk isn’t obscene, but it is colorful (at least as far as I can tell from the subtitles). A third season was shown, but the series is now on hiatus due largely to the global financial downturn.

I hadn’t expected my children to take to the show. My nine-year-old can read the subtitles, but my five-year-old can’t. I secretly hope that they would though, because it would be a way of exposing them to the culture of the Emirates and the Islamic world.

freej_harib_nyt.jpgAs an experiment, I put on the first episode, entitled “Ramadan,” and began reading the subtitles aloud. The 15-minute show features the ladies sitting in Um Saeed’s house moaning about how hungry they are, anticipating the feast that will come with nightfall, and clicking through television channels in search of something to watch. All they find, however, are shows promoting Islamic values, game shows, and sitcoms with titles like “Pain” or “Suffering.” Finally, they break their fast and, stuffed, figure that there must finally be something enjoyable to watch on t.v. But all they find is that new show Freej. “Overhyped,” Um Saeed complains, “just four old hags sitting around complaining. And that Um Khammas really brings the show down!” So Um Allawi faces the viewer, points the remote, clicks it, and the episode ends.

My kids were captivated and we’ve been watching it together for the past few days, daddy voicing the subtitles. We’re almost done with season one. My younger son can’t wait to start season two, because he’s already figured out that it features Um Saeed’s grandson and his hijinks.

My older son and I were out for a walk last Sunday, and I was telling him a little bit about my trip to Abu Dhabi. It’d be really fun place to spend a year, I told him, because it’s summer there all the time, and we could travel to really interesting places like Egypt and India. And you could even learn a little Arabic.

He looked at me and said: “And then I could understand Freej without the subtitles!”

[Image of Mohammed Saeed Harib from the New York Times.]

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Al Ain

October 23, 2009
al_mezyad_01.jpgThe Al Mezyad Fort in Al Ain

Thursday morning, we headed out to the oasis city of Al Ain, about two hours east of Abu Dhabi, near the border with Oman. There we were met by Brian, an ex-pat who heads up the Emirates Natural History Group, which is interested in both the archeology and ecology of the Emirates. Brian was an incredibly knowledgeable guide to  these aspects  of the region, and he had suggested that, rather than take the typical museum and oasis tour of the city, we focus on the Al Mezyad Fort and the Hafit tombs, which (as he’d written to us in advance) “may be inaccessible soon as development plans for the area proceed.” Our time was limited, because we had a 2:00 meeting with Deans and faculty from the United Arab Emirates University. Looking at those two sites proved to be an ideal excursion, because they were satisfyingly off-the-beaten track and got us out into the desert, away from tall, ultra-modern buildings.

al_mezyad_02.jpgTo get to the Mezyad fort, we turned off the main road and drove up to a closed gate. Visiting the site, while not exactly discouraged, is apparently not exactly encouraged. The fort itself is an early 19th-century structure in the Portuguese style (blocky, with three round towers and one square one) that has been extensively restored — it’ll be torn down and redone at some point, if they can get the Afghan builders who know how to do mud brick properly and if the site isn’t turned into a luxury bed-and-breakfast.

al_mezyad_03.jpgMeanwhile, some pieces of the restoration were carried and used to finish the restoration of the larger Al Jahili fort, built in 1898 by Sheikh Zayed the First (“the Great”) and the venue this weekend for the New York Philharmonic’s concert. We walked into the small living quarters, similar to the one in which the founding president of the UAE, King Zayed bin Sultan al Nahyam, lived as a child. Not exactly the lap of luxury. Brian stressed for us how recently it was that the population of Abu Dhabi lived in conditions that were primitive and how historically the population was always in danger of starvation due to the scarcity of food and water. Standing on the ramparts we could see the distant hills that made the location of the fort a chokepoint: the old  camel route had to come between these two sets of mountains meaning that those who possessed the fort could levy taxes on trade.

Reaching the Hafit tombs at the foot of Jawal Hafit took a little bit of off-roading (we borrowed the 4×4 that belonged to the Associate Dean for Humanities at UAEU, who would be our host later in the afternoon). A the foot of the mountain, we saw three reconstructed tombs — the ones you see in brochures and guidebooks. Also, apparently, incorrectly reconstructed.

hafit_tombs_reconstructed.jpgReconstructed Hafit Tombs

Brian showed us what an unexcavated tomb looks like: basically a pile of rocks, due to the fact that the tombs had been looted in antiquity and subjected to the sands of time (literally). No wonder then that so many were bulldozed during the search for oil in the area. Nevertheless, at other similar sites, there are apparently a multitude of unexcavated tombs — and they’re likely to remain so until someone is willing to spend the money to excavate a past that doesn’t produce golden treasures.

hafit_tomb_unreconstructed.jpgUnreconstructed Hafit Tomb

Standing amidst these tombs, probably 3,500 to 4,000 years old, we were vividly struck by a  sense of the region’s past. These are the kinds of experiences we hope that NYUAD students will be able to have — indeed, we’re hoping that some of the will actually be able to work on archeological sites and help the region recover its ancient history.

We saw some camels too. Our guide had a lot to say about the state of the camel farming industry: apparently, unless your a fast, and therefore prized, racing camel, it’s not much fun to be a camel. The ones we saw weren’t the most regal specimens, and their feet were bound to prevent them from taking long strides and running away. My French Department colleague tried to make friends, but since we weren’t giving them food or water, the camels weren’t much interested in us.

camel_al_ain.jpgWe had lunch with colleagues from United Arab Emirates University, which is funded by the federal government and is a research institution. One of the things that we realized in the course of meeting with faculty from  American University of Sharjah, Zayed University, and UAEU is that these institutions have something that will be in relatively short supply at NYUAD: Emirati students. It’s our hope that we’ll be able to partner with these institutions so that their students and ours can interact in educational settings, thereby providing the students at NYUAD a chance to make local, as well as “global,” connections.

We didn’t make it to the famous Al Ain Oasis. Next trip.

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