Samir Fares, who was acting as a consultant for the Hong Kong Trade Development Council in parallel with his main responsibility as Intermarkets’ vice president, asked me to accompany and assist a trade delegation that was to visit Abu Dhabi. They landed in Dubai – because it was on Cathay Pacific flight route – and we drove to the Abu Dhabi Hilton, where they set up a mini-exhibition in the lobby. When they retired to their rooms, I drove back to Dubai, since my wife was due to deliver at any moment. The next morning, I used a taxi to drive back, and the journey took longer than usual. According to the driver, a sandstorm was about to hit the UAE. When I walked into the hotel lobby, C.T. Leung, the Chinese gentleman who was heading the delegation, dashed towards me saying that I needed to turn around and rush back to Dubai, because my wife was about to deliver. The sandstorm had passed along the Abu Dhabi to Dubai motorway, and it took me the longest two-and-a-half hours to reach the Oasis Hotel and accompany my wife to Sheikh Rashid Hospital. My second son, Rani, was born before I had time to sit on the hospital’s balcony and light my first cigarette of the day. It was 6 April 1976.
After two days, I took my wife and our new baby back to the Oasis Hotel, as we still had no luck in renting a flat. But then one day, Abdallah Humaid, who was aware and concerned about my accommodation predicament, gave me the contact of one of his friends. This friend being a senior accountant at the Real Estate Department of the ruling Maktoum family, hailed from Abdallah Humaid’s native village in Palestine. Luckily this man proved to be extremely helpful. Without any middlemen, he arranged a two-bedroom apartment for me at Sheikh Hamdan’s new building in Abdel Nasser Square. We quickly moved, furnished, and settled in. Our neighbors on the same floor were Mr. and Mrs. Fouad Bardawil, a senior Lebanese couple who, like us, had fled Lebanon because of the war.
My apartment being walking distance from the office encouraged me to work late, since I was the only client-facing Jack of all trades at Intermarkets UAE. One evening, while I was walking back home at 9pm, I was stopped by a policeman who wanted to verify my identity and know where I had been and where I was going. I was not carrying my passport, so I suggested that he accompany me additional few steps to the Sheikh Hamdan building where I would bring down my passport for him to inspect. He refused, so we ended up at Naif Road Police Station, where the officer called Juma Al Majid at home to double check my identity, as Abou Khaled was my guarantor in the UAE. Only then was I released and – from that moment on – I always kept my passport on me.
A short while after our move into the Sheikh Hamdan building, the Bardawils hosted a party to introduce us to their circle of friends. Amongst the guests I was introduced to be an American who was the general manager of McDermott Middle East, which Mr. Bardawil explained that they are the builders of offshore drilling platforms and oil rigs, and whose construction yard was located over a long stretch of land on the bank of the creek, close to the Dubai Sheraton Hotel. When McDermott’s general manager learnt that I worked in advertising, he invited me to come and meet his people as soon as I could, so I did.
They needed Intermarkets’ help in producing a catalogue that showed the type of work they did. Obviously, this needed photography, and the moment I mentioned that my first step was to identify a good photographer for the task, my host alerted me to the fact that their building site was considered a high-security location, hence outsiders were not welcome. He asked me to go and talk to the man in the last container (their offices were all housed in metal containers), as this was their in-house photographer. There I met a young Palestinian by the name of Bassem Issa, who was operating a mini-photography studio that captured every step of the rig-building operation and the floating of the giant drilling platforms along Dubai Creek. Bassem’s photo archives were instrumental in producing a catalogue that was very much liked by the general manager and all seniors at McDermott. This allowed me the opportunity to go back to the general manager and ask him if he would allow Bassem to help me with a freelance photography assignment at the agency. After insisting, I secured his agreement that this privilege would not be abused. From that day, Intermarkets became the first agency in Dubai to use photography for its ads, rather than cutting photos from international magazines – as was the custom in the mid-Seventies – or drawing and sketching what the creative directors wanted to feature.
English was the most common language in Dubai at the time. The only English language newspaper published in the Northern Emirates was a memo-graphed (stencil duplicated) sheet called The Recorder, which was put together in Sharjah by the Motiwala family who had settled in Dubai after fleeing Aden in Yemen, which was their business base. Ads were printed on glossy paper and inserted (clipped within) The Daily Recorder. Modelling was neither common nor available, so we resorted to tabletop photography using Ken, GI Joe, and Barbie dolls as our models and Bassem Issa developed unique skills doing this.
More and more Lebanese were arriving in Dubai daily as the civil war spread all over our home country. The news that Dubai was a peaceful, accommodating, and promising destination became an attraction for my countrymen. Since World War I, the Lebanese had gotten used to immigration, and the trend seemed to have been revived in April 1975. Dubai Airport had a balcony overlooking the flight arrivals. This became our nightly pastime activity, when the only MEA flight from Beirut arrived, and we went there in groups to see who the newcomers were.