Dubai [antikvár]

IntroductionIn the early hours of the final day of my last photographic trip to Dubai my daughter, Eloise, arrived at Dubai International Airport and was driven through the night to Al Maha Desert Resort Spa so that I could photograph her for a fashion feature. She arrived before dawn just in time for our first shot.Some time later, disappointed that she had to fly straight home that night and would not be able to see or experience anything of Dubai other than its airport and Al Maha, she asked me to describe the city.This was a difficult question. Dubai is unlike any other place that I've visited and there was so much I could say and so many characteristics to describe that I found it difficult to answer her. Indeed, after several visits to this particular emirate, I may have had the photographs for this book but I still felt I wanted to get to know the city better and was planning further working trips to the UAE and a return visit to Dubai on a family holiday.Dubai is always something of an enigma even for those who feel they know it well.I have been coming to Dubai for some 30 years, the first time in 1975 when it was little more than a small settlement on a creek with one reasonable hotel. In the intervening years the change has been meteoric and it has been a fascinating exercise to observe its development from small trading post to a destination in its own right. I feel particularly privileged to have witnessed the change as I have always been attracted by the sights, sounds and smells of the Arab World.My first visit to the Middle East was as small boy in the late 1940s when I flew out with my sister in a BOAC Hermes to Tripoli, in Libya, to visit our father who was then an officer in the Grenadier Guards. I can well remember the braying of the donkeys, the smell of dung, thesqueak of the pumps, picnics in the ruins of Leptis Magna, trips into the desert to Gharyan andYafran, and the excitement of a culture where Arab, Southern Mediterranean and African strands all came together.On our first day we went to the local market to buy a donkey that I then shamefully tethered to my sister. In revenge she bet me her entire pocket money that I couldn't eat every fig off a tree in our garden, resulting in a short spell in