Robes of justice

As promised back in January, by Justice Minister Mohammad Bin Nakhira Al Daheri, the laws has been amended to allow women on the UAE bench:

Abu Dhabi: The emirate of Abu Dhabi has appointed its first ever female judge, WAM reported.

The appointment of Khuloud Ahmad Al Dhaheri as a judge in the court of first instance was announced in a decree issued by His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan,
President of the UAE, Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces and Ruler of Abu Dhabi.

According to WAM she is the first ever female judge in the history of the UAE.


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The Golden Journey to Dubailand

In tribute to James Elroy Flecker, who died well before his time.

At the Gate of National Paints Roundabout, Sharjah. Blazing humidity.

THE MERCHANTS
(Together)
Away, for we are ready to drive far!
Our camels sniff the traffic roaring by
Lead on, O Taxi Driver from Sharjah,
Lead on the Commuter-Pilgrims to Dubai.

THE CHIEF DRAPER
Have we not Carrefour rugs of nylon fine?
Cheap shalwars for a worker's salary
And Versace of Karama design,
And keffiyahs from Al Jaber Gallery?

THE CHIEF GROCER
We have shawarmas, we have shish kebabs,
Hummous and pickles ready for our meal,
And Umm Ali in great big sloppy slabs
And chocolate-coated dates bought from Bateel

THE PRINCIPAL JOURNALISTS:
And we have newspapers of Tecom style
By weary expat hacks; we have words
And adjectives and adverbs to beguile
And turgid press releases for the herds

THE MASTER OF THE CARAVAN
But you are nothing but a load of hacks

PRINCIPAL JOURNALIST
Sir, even dogs have daylight, and they paid us cash in brown envelopes.

MASTER OF THE CARAVAN
But who are ye in rags and rotten shoes,
You blue-boilersuited, blocking up the way?

ISHAK
We are the labourers, master; we shall work
Always a little longer; it may be
Fifty degrees in shade but we won't shirk
High up our scaffolding beside the sea,

Sharing a dirty squat in Sonapur
Unpaid and weary in the endless sand
Every day another to endure
Building the Golden City of Dubailand

HASSAN
Sweet to drive out from Sharjah every morn
When gridlock is gigantic on the sand,
And loudly through the traffic honk the horn
Along the Golden Road to Dubailand.

ISHAK
We surf the internet in the free zone;
For blocks and bans are more than we can stand:
For lust of knowing what should not be known,
We bypass the Golden Proxy of Dubailand

MASTER OF THE CARAVAN
Open the gate, O watchman of the bachelor-free apartment block!

THE WATCHMAN
Ho, sandlanders, I open. For what land
Leave you this dim city of no delight?

MERCHANTS
(With a shout)
We take the Golden Road to Dubailand!

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Rolling stones

Dubai's most thrilling legal saga rocks on, with the billion dirham bulletproof onyx now on trial in the Court of Appeal. The stone's owner is willing to take a bullet to prove his magic pebble is effective:

"I am willing to prove to the world that it's a bulletproof onyx stone... I am ready to face a death sentence if that's what will take me to prove that the stone is doubtlessly bulletproof... I didn't con anybody's money, but the police tricked me and filed a malicious case against me," the 52-year-old Yemeni dealer, Q.M., told the Dubai Appeals Court on Monday.

Meanwhile his defence lawyer hopes that modern science can prove the rock's miraculous nature:

"Defence lawyer Saeed Al Ghailani, of Saeed Al Ghailani Advocates and Legal Consultants, asked the Appeal's Court judge to assign a physics expert or Dubai police's criminal laboratory to test the stone and decide whether it contains any electromagnetic powers which deviates the bullet before it hits the stone wearer."

Any test-tube waggling white-bearded boffins out there willing to take up this challenging experiment? Sadly Wikipedia, the usual source of all necessary human knowledge, isn't much help in this instance.

The Village Voice

A heated debate is taking place on Dubai Media Observer over Dubai's media freedoms and human rights and so forth, which it seems worthwhile to respond to.

Part of the problem in Dubai is that far too many senior officials have no perspective when it comes to local press versus international coverage. They have a very "village green" attitude, and will obsess over a perceived impertinence in a local rag read predominantly by Jumeirah Janes and Tecom commuters while ignoring serious social and political problems that get picked up by global heavyweights such as the FT and the Economist.

Around the time of the 7Days=Satan era (when the paper quite innocently published an interview from AFP with Sheikh Khalifa, and the Arab papers - clearly acting out of spite or on official instructions - beat it up into some great "insult" to Khalifa when anyone with half a brain could see that 7Days was actually trying to suck up rather than offend) we held a media training session with officials from a supposedly world class international financial institution.

The aim was to coach them for international media, since what the FT and the Times and the WSJ print about Dubai is aeons more critical than what 7Days with its Lime Tree-Jumeirah Jane readership prints.

But these officials were simply obsessed with 7Days. They kept repeating: "but they cannot print these things". It's hard to be certain to this day if they even knew what "these things" were, if they had even (ever) read 7Days, just that it represented some huge nebulous insult to them according to the majilis grapevine.

No matter how much we tried to position 7Days to them as a very minor, "village gazette" style rag and emphasise the importance of having a wider perspective, these important, educated officials just couldn't see past their own garden fence. Dubai has so much self-importance contained in such a small village-style society that too many senior people - people who really matter for the country's future - are missing the bigger picture.

Part of the reason that the US ports decision was so stunning to many people here was because Dubai - like other upcoming cities, perhaps - believes its own hype to a dangerous extent. Dubai is not as much on people's radars as we as sandlanders are led to believe. Sure, people notice The Palm and the Deathspire but they don't think about it every day of their lives as they go about their business in Peterborough or Wisconsin. But the bad stuff: they remember that quite a bit more.

How many glitzy mega projects does it take to blot out a toddler camel jockey? How many World's Biggest Whatevers does it take to erase unpaid, indentured labour? It is impossible to say. But certainly more than Dubai has got at the moment.

So until the dishdashes-that-be understand the difference between 7Days posting an expat whinge about bad traffic in Barsha, and the New York Times printing 1000 words about human rights abuses, it is impossible to foresee any speedy or significant improvement to media standards or media freedoms in the UAE.

Sharjah purity test

In the 1980s there was a popular UK sitcom called The Two of US starring Nicholas Lyndhurst and Janet Dibley as a couple who lived together. The comedy would be somewhat incomprehensible by today's more enlightened mores, but the entire source of the humour derived from the fact that the couple was "living in sin".

There's one place that The Two of Us would still create shock and awe: modern-day Sharjah. Along with supposedly gentle comedies such as Man About The House, How I Met Your Mother, Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place and even Frasier. Because police from the stone-age emirate are busy raiding "mixed-sex" housing. Note that this does not specifically mean couples, but any house-sharing arrangement with mixed gender flatmates and so on:

"The majority of shared apartments were in Al Majaz, Al Nahda, Abu Shagara and Al Mamzar.

"Shared villas were found to be dominant in low-cost Arab homes in Maysaloon, Al Nabba'a and Um Khanoor, which were mostly inhabited by Asians and Africans."

Those that can't resist the idea of having "Abu Shagara" as their address should first take the Sharjah Purity Test. Here's the female version:

SHARJAH PURITY TEST

1. Have you ever shared a car with: a male schoolfriend (-1) a male cousin (-1) your sister's husband (-1) your father's male cousin (-1) a male work colleage (-1) a male friend (-10) a male boyfriend (-100)

2. Have you ever gone to the mall wearing: knee-length shorts (-1) three-quarter length sleeves (-1) a t-shirt (-2) a tank top (-10) hotpants (-10) a crop top (-20) a bikini (-50) a thong bikini (-100)

3. Have you ever: drunk alcohol (-1); drunk alcohol without a licence (-5); bought alcohol from duty free (-5); bought alcohol from the Hole-in-the-Wall (-20)

4. Have you ever been in a private place, such as an office or hotel room, with: your male boss (-1); your male doctor (-1); your male cousin (-1); a male work client (-1); a male colleague (-1); a male schoolfriend (-1); your aunt's husband (-1); your fiancee (-50); your boyfriend (-100)

SCORING: 0 to -10: $3,000 fine; -11 to -50: six months in Al Slammer; -100+ stoning/beheading/deportation

Mall marriage

It really is Mad March in the UAE: here's a newlywed groom abandoning his wife in an Abu Dhabi shopping mall and going home to sleep:

Apparently, the man only realised his folly when his mother asked where his wife was. He, then, rushed to the shopping mall to find his wife weeping, surrounded by curious onlookers. The hapless woman did not have the contact number of her husband nor the contact number of her in-laws.

However, after some heart-burning and arguments, followed by conciliation efforts by elderly people, the woman forgave her husband... and the couple are reportedly living happily ever after!

Wrong kind of "blow" job

Sometimes a story is so exquisite that no further comment is necessary:

Dubai: Two lovers are standing trial for having an illicit relationship and exchanging blows after the man broke wind while in bed.

The Dubai Public Prosecution charged the Asian man with having consensual sex with his compatriot female who was also charged with allowing him to sleep with her.

The Beast of Badiya

Something is munching sheep on the East coast. Is it:

(a) a mountain lion
(b) an (extinct) Arabian cheetah
(c) a wolf
(d) a lost mountain tribe of sorcerors
(e) a blood-sucking vampire-like creature

The smart money's on the latter. In other news, a judge has denied Dubai the chance of holding a trial more momentous than OJ Simpson or Lady Chatterley. The magic bullet-proof onyx man has got six months in Al Slammer:

In a lively court case, the guilty man’s lawyer asked the judge to allow a test to be carried out, where the defendant would have worn the onyx and been shot at to test its powers. The judge refused.

Fair cops

Dubai Police are among the best in the world.

According to... Dubai Police!

A huge round of applause to Lt General Tamim for winning such an outstanding self-accolade.

Meanwhile is anyone else slightly disturbed that "causing death to others" has only just been made a road rule?

Laissez-faire driving in the city is a thing of the past — something that has been made clear by the UAE government's new road rules which came into effect on March 1. New rules include "Causing death of others" to "Driving a noisy vehicle" and "Driving without spectacles or contact lenses."