In Abu Dhabi, Beauty Has Yet To Arrive

by Zoe Strimpel
Mon, 17 Mar 2008 at 9:54 PM

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Just back from Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, the greener, more staid alternative to brash Dubai. The emirate is perched atop one of the planet's most extravagant oceans of oil, and it shows — but in the strangest way. There is no street life — no boutiques, stand-alone shops, or good independent restaurants. Instead, there are magnificent skyscrapers, dedicated to such ventures as the Abu Dhabi Company for Onshore Oil Operations, and the world's most shamelessly luxurious hotel, the Emirates Palace, the corpulent cherry on a cake of Sheratons and Intercons. Hotels here are not just for slumbering visitors; they are the mainstay of the social scene. In an Islamic nation such as this, only hotels and select other vendors are granted liquor licenses. Few expats — and these are the throbbing heart of Abu Dhabi's accelerated development — want to eat or even congregate after work without the option of knocking back a few.

Another testament to the underbelly of oil here is the Sheikh Zayed Mosque, which is still under construction but open for tours. This vast space of flower-decorated marble, hand-sewn carpets from Iran (weighing 35 tons), stone cut in China, tiles from Turkey, and the largest chandelier in the world, made from a rainbow of Swarovski crystals, could hardly be afforded by a state any poorer than this. It is not quite the largest mosque in the world, but it has to be the most opulent. Where the 40,000 worshippers who can fit into its prayer halls are expected to come from is a mystery, though, since the mosque is surrounded by highway and empty, parched earth. If they do make it, there's no worry about those at the back hearing everything; a state-of-the-art Bose sound system will see to that. So the mosque is true Abu Dhabi: passionately Muslim, but richly Western at the same time. (Swarovski crystals! Paris Hilton would be jealous.)

The expat community is concentrated and forceful, like a blast of hot air. On Thursday night in the English-style beer garden in the courtyard of the Le Meridien hotel, you couldn't move for sunburned British, American, Italian, and German flesh. The atmosphere was jolly; all seemed in a constant state of disbelief about their current — and, in most cases, new — living situation. Among the group I moved in — journalists on an English-language paper called the Nation, which is to launch in April, and Bell Pottinger PR people — the topic was always Abu Dhabi and sharing fresh discoveries and observations. It is odd to consider hordes of Londoners and New Yorkers trading in their habitual urban paradises for this dusty, boiling, bulldozer-stuffed spit of still-sterile cityscape. Culture and beauty have yet to arrive, but as everyone I met kept saying, they will, they will. The future is what everyone is waiting for here, excitedly. Indeed, outposts of the Guggenheim and Louvre will open on the still-unbuilt Saadiyat Island within five years. As for Arab culture, it seems to be taking a backseat, though there was a hugely impressive "Arts of Islam" exhibition at the Emirates Palace when I was there.

No doubt the city is on the very verge of its big future self — and once the bulldozers go away and the cranes clear off and the smell of cement dissipates, it should be a pretty rad place to be, no matter what city you're from.

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