There are myriad shades of beige in the desert sands of Abu Dhabi emirate’s Western Region and one glittering global branding opportunity – of Gulf Arab culture. The eighth edition of Al Dhafra festival in the dunes of the Rub Al Khali desert ended on New Year’s Day but it’s fair to say that the wider world probably knew little about the owner of the region’s most beautiful camel (of 25,000 competitors) winning a Dh 1 million prize, the best date packaging for the 21st century as determined by judges, that a female Saluki set the fastest time and that millions of dollars worth of prized dark-skinned Majahim camels were bought and sold.
This is a missed opportunity. Madinat Zayed’s 10-day calendar of events should be a world festival, visited by people from all over. The world needs to know Arabs better. And there may be no better tool than the cultural markers that have defined a people for centuries.
The festival showcased a mix of these. Camels, of course, the very soul of the Bedouin, for whom the stately ship of the desert was everything – a portable repository of wealth, a means of transport, food, survival itself. Falconry, which dates to at least 3500BC in this region, and remains popular till today partly because the birds are admired and respected for their power and grace. The techniques used by falconers to build a relationship with the falcon might usefully be taught at Harvard Business School – it is an exercise that requires boundless trust, skill and patience. The Saluki race celebrated one of the world’s oldest dog breeds, one still prized in the region, both for hunting and companionship.
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