After completing the tour of Shell service stations in Dubai and the Northern Emirates, my host announced that the second phase of my market orientation would be in Abu Dhabi. He added that the Abu Dhabi company driver would pick me up from my hotel early the next morning and drive me to the UAE’s capital.
A desert sand colored Land rover was parked in front of the hotel when I went down for my breakfast. Perched at the entrance to the lobby was an old Bedouin who looked as if he’d just stepped out of a scene from Lawrence of Arabia, with a hawk nose and tanned, wrinkled face. His eyebrows dusted with desert sand and his red and black patterned kaffyeh (head-dress) on top of the khaki uniform reminded me of the watercolor paintings featuring the Trucial Oman Scouts that adorned the walls of the Shell GM’s office in Dubai.
The young Indian concierge, who had become my friend and Dubai guide, introduced me to Al Sheeba, my driver and Abu Dhabi trip companion. Al Sheeba (The Bedouin Arabic for the old man with white hair) seemed to be very popular amongst the entire staff of the Carlton Tower.
Many years after this incident, Freeda, my sister-in-law, got married and moved to live with her husband Nabil Zakhour in Abu Dhabi. The first job she took was with Shell Markets where she came to know Al Sheeba and told us many of his stories. The most famous of these seemed to be the one about when Shell’s GM asked him to drive the newly arrived British ambassador, on his first visit to Al Ain. This was before a road between Abu Dhabi and Al Ain was built. While driving through the magnificent sand dunes, the Land Rover driver, and his VIP passenger, met a national family going to Al Ain on foot. Al Sheeba stopped and motioned to the ambassador to disembark. He then loaded the man, his mother, his wife and their six children in the company car, and drove away, leaving his VIP passenger standing under the shade of a palm tree in the blazing heat.
By the time Al sheeba returned, after many hours, the ambassador was on the verge of fainting due to the heat, thirst, and his blind anxiety. On arrival to Al Ain, the Ambassador wired his wrath to Shell H.Q. and Al Sheeba got instantly fired.
A week later, Al Sheeba was reinstated to his old job in the wake of a personal call that His Highness Sheikh Zayed Bin Nahayan, Ruler of the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi, made to the General Manager of Shell. The GM explained that a call was passed to him by a trembling phone operator who kept stuttering:” Sheikh Zayed, Sheikh Zayed…” and when he took the call, he heard the angry voice of the Ruler screaming in Arabic and repeating Al Sheeba’s name in a flurry of furious words
Back to my drive from Dubai, Al Sheeba was delighted at discovering that I was not ‘a Khawaja’ and that we could communicate in Arabic. He was a wonderful guide on then- the single carriage road to Abu Dhabi. He was constantly pointing out the desert dunes that he called by name. The occasional glimpses of the seashore during those two hours made him jump out of his seat. He kept asking about Lebanon, for he had met some of the Lebanese staff and visitors to Shell. He pointed out the old border checkpoint, that used to exist at Seeh Shouaib before the declaration of the union amongst the seven emirates. He then pointed the halfway round about and, as we approached Abu Dhabi, he wanted to take a diversion to show me one of Sheikh Zayed’s rest-houses, but I insisted on getting to Abu Dhabi before sunset. We got to Al Maqtaa bridge at the time of Al Aassr (the sunset prayer), so he parked the Land Rover at a natural lay by on the road, where a barrel full of water was kept. He pulled out two prayer carpets and asked me to join him at prayer. When I declined, explaining that I was a non-Muslim, my confession seemed to suddenly breach the psychological covenant that he had built in his mind, with me. We continued the drive to the Beach Hotel on the Abu Dhabi Corniche in total silence.
The next day, he picked me up with his previous day jolly and talkative attitude, as if his night chat with friends, made him remember that all people are brothers and sisters. He was my morning guide amongst the Shell service stations of Abu Dhabi where I discovered that he was a very close friend to all the owners. This made me a friend to these owners by substitution, following my very first meeting with each. By that time, I had realized the importance of personal relationships with clients, and these made me appreciate the comradeship with the company driver that proved to be as important as the valuable impression I was working on grooming with the company’s expatriate seniors.
At lunch time, I was brought back to my hotel because the Abu Dhabi Shell GM was summoned to a sudden important meeting, and Al Sheeba had other assignments to attend to. The Beach Hotel had a black and white TV set in the ground floor lobby so, after lunch, I went to the lobby as it was a very hot and humid day and, having nothing else to do, sat there with my eyes glued to the television, which had an Egyptian feature film showing. At a critical moment, the film suddenly stopped, and a long documentary featuring Sheikh Zayed, arriving to Pakistan, and being welcomed with elaborate festivities. Just as abruptly as it stopped, the feature film continued, followed by a concert for the famous Egyptian diva Oum Kalthoum. When Oum Kalthoum went on stage in Cairo, she had the habit of performing a single song which went on for hours. That afternoon, Oum Kalthoum‘s concert on Abu Dhabi TV lasted for a couple of hours since it got stopped three times to make way for the airing of the documentary on Sheikh Zayed’s visit to Pakistan. To my relief, a western film was shown after the concert and I told myself, “Finally, here is a program I am going to enjoy.” However, the film “Shane” had just as generous a share as it got interrupted five times to allow the screening of the Pakistan visit documentary.
After dinner, I, as well as the other hotel guests, returned to the lobby for our only entertainment, namely Abu Dhabi TV. These were the days of terrestrial TV, Black & White and the hotel set could pick up the local stations only. The daily news opened with the Pakistan visit documentary and when this was screened the next time during the same news bulletin, I retired to my room and forced myself to sleep at eight.
Abu Dhabi’s Shell GM an Arab by the name of Fayed Sadiq was waiting to meet me the next morning. He wanted to know what our agency could do to help make Shell the top-of-mind brand ahead of BP which had a sleeker image, as he put it. He was keen to hear my take on the national station owners and if, following my swift one-day tour, I had collected enough insights to help our Lebanon -based agency do the task. I sensed that my host should have been basically informed by his counterpart and company local policy maker; in Dubai and promised myself to come back with a dynamic plan that would help him overcome his inherited concern.
Over the course of the discussion, he asked me how I had spent the previous afternoon and evening. I explained that I had stayed in the hotel and asked about the Pakistan visit mystery. Sadiq almost fell off his chair, which was rocking by his loud laughter. Then, he remembered that this was my first visit to Abu Dhabi, and he seemed to enjoy explaining.
Keeping in mind that this was well before the introduction of videotaping and players that became available in every home after a few years. Sheikh Zayed would sit in his Majlis, and the tribes of Abu Dhabi came to welcome him back. After the traditional greeting where the tribe’s head man kisses Sheikh Zayed on the shoulder and those tribe members who are personally known to Sheikh Zayed do the nose kissing, the Sheikh asks his visitors if they had seen the film on his visit to Pakistan and they all give a negative response with an inquisitive tone, despite the fact that the tribes who arrive late to the Majlis might have certainly viewed it more than one time. At that stage, the Sheikh called on his assistants to instruct Abu Dhabi TV to run the documentary which will be seen on the TV screen at the center of the Majlis. The TV station instantly obeyed.
This was the state of media in the GCC at the end of the Sixties.