It was said that the people of Abu Dhabi were once so poor they could not afford to buy rice or wood for cooking fires and so survived on nothing but raw fish.
This was the darkest of times, with the collapse of pearling with the introduction of Japanese cultured pearls and the hungry years following the Great Depression of the 1930s.
This photograph was taken in January 1960 and the man on the right hangs metaphorically between two worlds.
This is the construction of a platform that in two years time would be where Abu Dhabi’s first oil would be exported.
Abu Dhabi Marine Areas, the concession operator, was able to offer employment to large numbers of local men, even if the work was largely unskilled, and brought a measure of prosperity back to the Emirate after decades of hardship.
The caption notes for the photograph, part of the BP Archive, says the work involved: “constant tying and untying of cables, most of it done in the water by a young Persian who was once a pearl diver and a boy from Abu Dhabi.
It adds that: “ Both are excellent swimmers.”
* James Langton
