Suit yourself

A trip to Abu Dhabi's new beach raises some sartorial anxieties.

Walk this way: The new beach has been divided into two separate areas, one for families and the other for single men.

The bikini, that 20th-century symbol of freedom, has always also been a source of anxiety - about looking fat in one, about being leered at, about being caught leering. So it comes as little surprise that, less than a week after the opening of the new public beach on the Corniche, the municipality announced plans to divide it into a separate section for single men and another for women and families. After all, people were worrying about bikinis on the beach before it even opened.

One of the people worrying was Claire Cochrane, a young Scottish mother who was speedwalking a stroller around the fountain near the refreshment area as workmen in green jumpsuits put the finishing touches on the Baskin Robbins stall. She thought the new beach was "brilliant" but was concerned about wearing a swimming costume so close to the centre of town. "I mean, just now, walking by those men in this," she said pointing to her short denim shorts, "I felt like I was naked. Can you imagine what it's going to feel like once we are walking around in bikinis?"

Apparently, this very thought had begun to cross the minds of the beach's designers. That morning, Osama Samy, the hard hat-and-tie-sporting resident engineer for Hyder Consulting, was on his way to a meeting at the municipality to discuss whether to charge an entrance fee to reduce the number of prying eyes. "Originally, it was going to be free, but we are thinking to put a little fee to control the single people," he said. He held up a map showing four control points along the two-kilometre stretch of beach where fees of about Dh10 could be collected.

In the end, the fee idea was scrapped and the beach opened a few days later to great fanfare, free and open to all. But the question of bikinis remained. So the morning after the opening, I donned one, along with a cover-up and heavy coating of sunblock, and headed out onto the foot-burning sand. I scanned the shore for creepy lurkers, but saw only children playing in the waves as their parents looked on from parasol-shaded tables. So far, so good. Then, near a line of factory-fresh jet skis, I saw the answer to my question. Three British ladies stood talking in a huddle, two of them in two-pieces.

"We were a bit worried about whether we could wear bikinis," said Vivien Bell, a deeply bronzed Surrey, England, native in a floral number. For the moment, those worries seemed unwarranted, but, she added, "let's see what it's like on Friday". Not far away, two even more scantily clad German doctors stretched on towels, celebrating one's final day in the Emirate after two years of working at Sheikh Khalifa Medical City. The soon-to-be-repatriating Wolfgang Lachmair smiled in the kind of wild, unhinged way people do when they have suddenly been released from responsibility and declared, "If this public beach had been opened one year earlier, I would have stayed."

After talking to a young mother from Uzbekistan, two teenagers from Somalia who seemed to be cutting class and a Muslim Filipina in a coral-coloured headscarf who had called her friends to join her in getting "some Vitamin D" - all of whom thought the beach was the greatest thing to happen to Abu Dhabi since they struck oil - there was just one test left. Warily looking in both directions for nonexistent thieves, I tucked my cover-up into my bag and waded out into the bath-warm water. It was silty, but undeniably pleasant. As I backstroked toward boundary of the swimming area, the skyline rose before me in a perfect semicircle of chrome and stone. The roar of traffic gave way to the insistent banging of pile drivers, and from out there, I could finally really see this city being born. Like any brand-new thing, it seemed perfectly innocent. As I strode back dripping toward the road, it was clear that no one had taken any notice of me or my bikini.