Some choose to remember the capital by its underpasses. On Friday afternoons and evenings, a few of the dimly-lit walkways that pass under Abu Dhabi's Corniche bustle with Indian and Pakistani men taking each others' pictures with their mobile phones. On a recent Friday, I counted 17 men getting their picture taken in one underpass in less than an hour. To the uninitiated, it might have seemed like a haphazard modelling shoot. A pair of friends, both Indian men in their 20s, took turns posing in different angles. One leaned his right shoulder against the wall and put his left hand in his pocket. His friend copied his stance, but faced the opposite direction. Their photographer, a mutual friend, went about his work; without prompting, his subjects turned towards the cameraphone. More pictures were taken. The taller of the two spontaneously rested his arm on his friend's shoulder. Their expressions were deadly serious; not even a glimmer of a smile broke out.
Being underground, none of these men were posing next to urban landmarks or striking views. They take pictures in the underpasses for the simple decorative mosaics that line their walls: in one, dhows float on a blue sea. In another, camels roam through the desert. Nazimudeen, 33, a construction worker from Cochin, in Kerala, stood next to a mosaic of a dolphin while a friend took his photo with Nazimudeen's mobile phone. "Up there," he said, gesturing toward the Corniche, "that is where I can see my friends, many friends. They are all here. I can come on Friday and I know they will be here with me." All of his friends have posed for their picture here at some point; the dolphin is one of their most popular backdrops.
"This is beautiful, very beautiful. This is Abu Dhabi," Nazimudeen says, pointing at the patterned tiles of sea, ignoring the fact that the real Abu Dhabi sea was a stone's throw away. After the posing is over, everyone gets his phone back. Javen, a Pakistani man who works in a laundromat on Khalifa Street, flipped through the evening's shots. He doesn't plan to print any of them. Nor will he send them to his family, whom he last saw a year-and-a-half ago, as they do not have cell phones and computers. For Javed, the pictures are keepsakes of the days off he has enjoyed in Abu Dhabi, a place he says he will not otherwise remember with fondness. "I do not see my family, my friends here are my family. Today is our day, so together we are happy."
None of the men is able to explain why the crude, stylised mosaics are so popular among them. But one answer reveals itself in a short walk along the Corniche itself. On Friday afternoons, the short strip of seafront near the easternmost underpasses is full of Indian and Pakistani men on their days off. Walk westward, however, and the Indian and Pakistani presence becomes less prominent. No one is getting their picture taken in the underpass through the Family Park in Kahlidiyah, which depicts an Arab mother playing with her children - the park is popular with Arab families. Another 15 minutes in the same direction, by the once-free Public Beach, the Corniche is full of cyclists, in-line skaters and beachgoers, almost all of whom have western faces. Last summer, when Abu Dhabi Municipality started charging men unaccompanied by women Dh10 to enter the beach, they identified labourers as the reason for the alleged overcrowding, claiming they "had been descending on the beach in their hundreds at weekends". Priced out of the beach, they make do with what picturesque turf they have left.
* Roland Hughes
