Abu Dhabi: Among the seven emirates of the Gulf Abu Dhabi was long regarded as the dowager: dull but rich and sedate to the point of being mulishly slow-moving. The neighbourhood’s Cinderella was Dubai till she lost her silver slipper once the ball ended and is now having to mind the cinders. The construction bubble has burst, the migrant workers are going home, and there are stickers on BMWs and Mercedes’ parked at the airport with discounted prices and cell numbers.
Abu Dhabi, the UAE’s federal capital, on the other hand, with one-tenth of the world’s oil reserves and with $1 trillion of its wealth spread in funds abroad, is the new belle of the ball. It’s where the thinking rich (as opposed to the stinking rich) now jet in, on the $8 billion airline Etihad that its ruler Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan and his half-brother, the Sandhurst-trained Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed, ordered a few years ago. The idea was to give their Makhtoum cousins, the sheikhs of Dubai next door who own Emirates, a run for their money; also to learn from Dubai’s mistakes as a hedonist’s paradise and turn Abu Dhabi the into culture club of the Middle East.
On the heels of Etihad, came Abu Dhabi’s flirtation with a flashy showpiece: the $3 billion Emirates Palace Hotel, on the well-groomed cornice, with 1,000 rooms, 60 kitchens, acres of gold leaf and cornices dripping Swarovski chandeliers. The brisk rivalry between the Al Nahyan and Al Makhtoum families of Abu Dhabi and Dubai respectively, would make an illuminating study of how competing Emirs spend but clearly the Al Nahyans have chosen the loftier path, of learning, high culture, controlled development and planned joint ventures. Last year, for instance, they decided that Abu Dhabi needed a quality newspaper, so literally at the stroke of a pen, The National was created, edited by a former editor of The Daily Telegraph with a 200-strong team of professional Western journalists.
They needed excellent museums and hospitals, so they have outsourced the job to the best in the world. Very soon, the Louvre, the Guggenheim and the Cleveland Clinic will establish their presence in Abu Dhabi. Of the $1.3 billion Louvre-on-the-Gulf deal, $250 million will be pocketed by the Paris museum in franchise fees; the rest will go towards loan of art treasures and the Jean Nouvel-designed building. Architects of the reputation of Frank Gehry, Tadao Ando, Zaha Hadad have been engaged for other enterprises. You need no longer go to Moscow for the Bolshoi, Tuscany for Andrea Bocelli or Stratford-upon-Avon for the Royal Shakespeare Company. All can be seen and heard, live, in Abu Dhabi. Only pop divas like Kylie Minogue or Bollywood stars attend ritzy resort launches in Dubai.
This week Abu Dubai opened Kitab, a joint venture between the Frankfurt Book Fair and the Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & Heritage, that is being established as the big new idea in the Middle East, a bridge between Arab and other literatures. Amitav Ghosh, Vikram Seth, Swedish thriller writer Henning Mankel and Financial Times columnist and sports writer Simon Kuper were among the stars in attendance. There was an ambitious programme of events but both the local population and the Arab world of literature were priority guests. Each child in the Emirate with given 50 Dirhams (about Rs 500) to buy books and the prize money for fiction—the Booker of the Middle East—which went to Egyptian novelist Yusuf Zeydan was a handsome $60,000. Shortlisted authors took home $10,000 each. “It used to look a souk before the Frankfurt Book Fair signed up,” said a writer who has been coming for some years.
Next on the agenda is a film festival, an arts festival, museums, marinas and building developments that will form the 670-acre culture district on Saadiyat Island. The estimated cost is $30 billion. But the invitations are gilt-edged and guilt-free.