The first of Intermarkets’ international clients to welcome me to Dubai was Phil Cooper, the resident manager for Unilever in the Lower Gulf. Phil instantly became a wonderfully cooperative client, a coach on the region and a friend. He introduced me to the British business community in Dubai, where I soon found other clients. He guided me on where to shop and he initiated me into scuba diving. We spent many Fridays diving for the wreck of the MV Dara three miles off Dubai, towards Sharjah. Almost a year after establishing Intermarkets UAE, Phil received his transfer instructions back to the UK. Before leaving, he offered me a most precious gift, persuading the principal of the English-Speaking School to accept my son Reda at the kindergarten in place of his son.
My second international client was Cable & Wireless, the British multinational telecommunication services company that was running the telephone and telefax service in the UAE at the time. My client was an ex-British army officer by the name of Bill Bird, who, before long, arranged a seat for me on its management committee’s monthly meetings. I was asked to come to the Cable & Wireless head office half an hour before the meeting started and, on arrival, one of their senior officers conducted a strange type of interview, asking mainly about my family’s political affiliation in Lebanon and if I had ever been a member, or had trained with, any of the warring Lebanese militias. At the end of the interview, and to my further surprise, he asked about my religion, then took a Bible out of his desk drawer and asked me to put my hand on it and swear not to reveal any of the topics discussed in the meetings.
Now that more than 40 years have passed, I have no guilt recalling that the meetings were attended by Cable & Wireless seniors, as well as diplomats from the British Embassy, representatives of the British Bank of the Middle East, BOAC, and other large British companies. On the agenda of the first meeting, I attended was an update about the business environment and Cable & Wireless’ plans to offer new services. When these topics were presented and discussed, the company’s security officer took the podium to report that the Pakistani workers at McDermott’s rig-building yard had staged a sit-in the previous day, labelling it the first ever labor action to be staged in the UAE.
Cable & Wireless’ new product announcement during that meeting led to the installation of the first telefax machine in Dubai at our office. This helped us immensely in sharing creative work between Bahrain and Dubai. To service our clients’ creative and design needs, assignments were sent to Intermarkets Bahrain because by then it had developed into a full-service agency. Urgent design jobs and the re-sizing and amending of ads were processed in Dubai, where I had agreed with the in-house designer at the Dubai InterContinental to come after he had finished his work so he could be briefed. I used to lock Howard Paul in the office, where he worked throughout the night. By the time I came back the following morning he would be ready to deliver the finished work. This young man became a pillar of our new agency, although, beyond being our freelance all-night designer, he continued to be unaffordable because we couldn’t match his package at the InterContinental.
Then one day, Dahlia came into my office to announce that there was a young, blond-haired young Lebanese by the name of Samir Salem waiting to see me in reception. The only Samir Salem I knew had been a media dispatcher at Intermarkets Lebanon and could not have arrived in Dubai on company assignment without someone from the Beirut agency alerting me. I asked Dahlia to invite him in and the moment he saw me he instantly hugged me with tears in his eyes.
As the fighting on Beirut’s streets had intensified, Samir found himself jobless, as he could no longer get to his place of work. He desperately needed a job, so he ended up working on one of the ferry boats sailing between the Port of Jounieh, north of Beirut, and Larnaca in Cyprus. This was the only gateway to the outside world. Beirut Airport continued to be shut and the overland crossings into Syria were very risky. Samir was miserable but counted his blessings because he had a safe place to sleep and food to eat. Then one day he met Salim Sednaoui on his way to Bahrain via Larnaca. When he enquired about Intermarkets, Salim told him about the budding operations in Bahrain and Dubai. Samir instantly resigned and used his entire savings to fly to Dubai. I asked him to accompany me, descending into Dubai’s old souk just behind the Samir Al Mahmoud building, from where we purchased a camp-bed, blanket, towels, toilet, and shaving kit, as well as some clothes for the visitor, who made the agency his temporary home. Samir could not believe his good fortune, and from that moment on became the media man at Intermarkets UAE.