Emirates Diaries : From Sheikhs to Shakespeare

Peter Clark was a romantic. He did not want to be sent to Abu Dhabi in 1988 to run the British Council in the United Arab Emirates, a country which he felt was brash, consumerist and lacking in history. He preferred established countries, steeped in history with ruins and antique architecture.

Emirates Diaries tells the story of how Peter Clark came to love the Emirates and its people. He got to know Abu Dhabi sheikhs and Dubai merchants and people at every level of society. The country was on the cusp of enormous economic expansion and this book is an affectionate picture of the Emirates when it was still like a chain of large informal villages. The people of the UAE were aware of their good fortune and were, he found, open, generous and innovative. Clark arranged for the explorer Wilfred Thesiger to return to the country he had celebrated before it became oil-rich. Thanks to Peter, Thesiger met up with his old companions who had accompanied him in crossing the Empty Quarter 40 years earlier. Peter embedded himself in the local cultural scene and translated stories by Dubai's best known writer, Muhammad al-Murr. Emirates Diaries tells of opera in Ras Al Khaimah, how Shakespeare was brought to large audiences of young people, how to organize a royal visit, an outbreak of foot and mouth disease among the oryx in the Al Ain zoo, the culture of camel racing and an unpaid bill left by Margaret Thatcher. The diaries sparkle with mischievous humor and acute observation. This book is a prequel to Peter Clark's Damascus Diaries: Life under the Assads, described by The Economist as 'quirky, digressive and indiscreet'.