On Friday, March 6, we reopened the doors of Cinema Akil after a brief shelter-in-place order across Dubai. At noon, Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away was about to begin. Popcorn was popping, karak was brewing and the projector was humming upstairs. Momo waited at the box office, Vik in the projection tower, Ansu by the door – scanner in hand – ready to welcome our community back.
No one came. Ten minutes later, just as we were swallowing the quiet disappointment of a failed comeback, a figure appeared at the entrance – exactly as the alarm sounded again. We gestured for him to join us in the warehouse’s secure corner, waiting for the all-clear.
“Are you okay?” I asked, worried about our lone cinephile. He smiled shyly, ticket still in hand. “I’m from Kabul,” he said. “This is not new to me.” He had lived through years of war before moving to Dubai. When the notification to resume activities finally lit up our phones, he nodded politely, thanked us and walked into the cinema alone, taking a seat in the middle of the room.
Our first guest back. Our devoted Studio Ghibli fan.
The next show, the Lebanese comedy Arze, starring Diamand Abi Abboud with a cameo by Shaden Fakih, brought back a handful of familiar faces. By 5pm, as Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother approached, our expectations remained modest. Then, slowly, an unco-ordinated gesture of togetherness arrived: a duo; a group of three; a lone spectator; then another and another, all reminding us of who our community is.
Through the quiet alleys of Alserkal Avenue they came: a Lebanese designer; a Palestinian curator; a Saudi-Pakistani horticulturist – long-time residents, happy to be here, unperturbed and committed to life. Row by row they filled the room, our house and our hearts — a picture of community and resilience.
There is the “200 nationalities” statistic that has become a kind of shorthand for explaining this otherwise inexplicable city. Well-intentioned and earnest, the tidy number attempts to paint a portrait of people living together in improbable harmony. But this number’s tidiness is deceptive.
Reducing a vast and complicated human tapestry to a single figure obscures the intricate details that give this place its life. For in it lie the details and the faces of a population well-versed in survival. This is a population that carries tragedy in the pit of its stomach yet refuses to be defined by it. An untold story of Dubai’s resilient communities, another line of defence under its sky.
Our work at Cinema Akil, the UAE’s arthouse cinema, brings regional film and its stories to their rightful audiences. This means taking a keen look around us, at the people we call our community and the stories they hold within them. One community member at a time, one film at a time. Through cinema, our life’s work has been to bring the etched details of our region into full focus on the big screen.
On our screen, our community comes alive in its laugh lines, its heartbreaks, its ambitions, its trespasses, its imperfections and regrets. In the songs of its forefathers, the lullabies of its aching mothers, the pulse of its percussion. Here, it resists obscurity amid Hollywood’s generalist machinations, demanding the dignity of detail, insisting on its humanity. Names against the numbers of those who refuse to be rendered invisible.
Broken down, the UAE’s “200 nationalities” gather bitter flesh and breathe through the specifics: Sudanese; Palestinians; Lebanese; Iraqis; Iranians; Afghans; Yemenis; Somalis; Syrians and Kashmiris. No easy prey. War and its echoes shadow in their veins through ancestral trauma or lived experience. People to whom even celebratory fireworks may not spark joy at first.
When the sounds of interceptions overhead shook some into panic, the instincts of this mosaic of calamity kicked into full swing. Some immediately dismissed it as nothing, while others prepared a grab bag by the door, moved their children to the hallway, calmly sat back and waited. These are trained, ready generations at war in waiting. Preparing automatic responses to “Are you ok?” or “Is your family safe?” All too familiar, all too second nature.
Amid the noise of the kumbaya generalists to pick-me attention seekers flooding our feeds and tabloids live the stories of the hundreds of thousands of hearts forming the beat of this city.
These include the Gazan founder of the Mama’eesh bakery who shuts his doors for Friday prayers while mourning the loss of yet another child back home. There is the mobile shopkeeper from Kerala, now 35, who arrived here at 18 and is finally close to building their family home. There is also the Iranian gallerist who single-handedly expanded the global appetite for Arab and Iranian contemporary artists.
We have the Iraqi editor-in-chief, staying up all night, setting the record straight. There is the southern Iranian polyglot shopkeeper selling 200 varieties of ribbon in colours you didn’t know existed. We have the “foodstuff” vendor handing you the freshest mandarin from the lot. There is the Pathan trucker who can move your entire household across the country while tending to a bougainvillea with a maternal caress. There is also the Ghanian security guard at the airport, awaiting a BOTIM call to see his newborn child, whom he will meet a year later. There is the Lebanese nightclub owner whose village was flattened last night.
Another missile intercepted, another jet in the sky, another story demanding a closer look.
Emirati society is a patchwork of triumph over rougher times, now largely forgotten. The women who raised generations while their men went out to sea; the traders who crossed the waters to begin again; the tribal warriors who traversed the Empty Quarter with only God, nature, and the stars for company; the hardened hands of the mountain people in the north; the seafarers and pearl divers. They are the forefathers and mothers of the soldiers we honour today.
We look, simultaneously at the screen and our little screens where we see the bravery of our soldiers, the smoke-filled skies of our neighbours, our colleagues’ villages being flattened, our friends’ PTSD camouflaged by the hustle and bustle of everyday life, their trauma tucked away, quelled between their ribs.
Through the small vector of a single-screen cinema, we made space for these communities and the spectres that followed them – ancestors, colonised lands and wars barely escaped.
In my city live a 1,001 untold stories – all beautiful, all heartbroken, resilient, woven into uninterceptible fabric. All showing up and calling this place home.
In cinema, our bet is on stories, in order to live. The children of Ghobadi, the fields of Kiarostami. The rigor of Annemarie Jacir, the gaze of Suzannah Mirghani and the romance of Khader Ayderous Ahmed. On our humble screen, one screening at a time, one film at a time, we project stories that move like us, love like us, inspire hope and teach life to us.
In scene after scene we can see an old Iranian woman feeding a cat; a bird feeder in Kabul; Palestinian stop-motion animation; Lebanese lovers embracing; a Sudanese teenager’s beauty routine; an Emirati beekeeper’s love for the mountains.
That is the kaleidoscope of our society – a beautiful, full-coloured, sometimes black and white, thick-skinned, inedible, tragically magical people.
In the wise words of our country’s leader, President Sheikh Mohamed: “Everyone is Emirati through their love for this land”. Here they live, our beautiful resilient peoples, trained in heartache, fuelled by love, heads high.
When the credits roll and the lights come back on, let’s not forget that these stories live among us – the resilient children, hand on heart, choosing to live, choosing to stay. A beautiful defensive layer. No easy prey.
