Landscape Story–what is it?

July 13, 2015 by eflaherty

Between 14-18 July 2015, on each day, I will be making a post in celebration of International Authors’ Day, featuring review of works by Kenneth Grahame, J.L. Borges and Algernon Blackwood, authors whose works have been formative inspirations for me.

These posts will be made as part of a Blog Hop as can be seen and visited through the links at the bottom of each post.

Today is 14July2015.

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Landscape Story–what is it?
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These landscape stories are classic quests–journeys. Maybe a landscape story should start with some context, some definition.

On the earth, humans see the surface and what they see is landscape. The difference between landscape and garden is that a garden is cultivated by humans, is protected by humans and is relatively safe from threats of death to humans. Whereas in the larger landscape, the threat of death, by other life forms including humans, known or unknown, may be just ‘around the corner’, or even ‘in your face’.

Myself, I always have looked at it like this from a larger historical perspective: in the beginning humans moved in the landscape–hunting and gathering, I think is the currently popular way to describe their activities. When humans found the dangers in the landscape, when they found the threat of death in the landscape too great, they built shelters–the realm of architects today, shelters.

Then humans put fences around their shelters, cultivated plants and called those outdoor areas, gardens. Gardens are places dominated by plants, places where humans offer some personal service to plants. Gardens are places relatively safe from the danger of death. In the garden, there is protection. In the garden, the intense human energy for self defense can be suspended, enabling finer instincts of humans to be accessed.

Gardens and landscapes both are essentially the environment of plants. And plants are the domain where the most dynamic interactions remain to be discovered by humans. Landscape stories explore dynamic interactions between humans and plants in gardens and landscapes.

A landscape story moves beyond furniture and setting. The plants, gardens and landscapes begin to have lives of their own…kind of like real life…and beyond. In the works of literature, arts and music, plants, gardens and landscapes have forever been the source of seemingly unlimited human inspirations. Of particularly rich inspirations for me have been works by Kenneth Grahame, by Algernon Blackwood, by J.L. Borges. Inspirations of sensual thresholds, of emotion, of intellect, of design, of beauty, of spirit, of existential uncertainty, of connecting essence, of source, of…

In The 23 Club, Erik Chalmers, a landscape architect, follows his obsession to build beautiful and captivating gardens in strange places…this time to the Empty Quarter in the Arabian Peninsula. On his way, he stops over in Bahrain and, in a kismet moment, bumps into an old friend, Jean-Claude Thibaut.

Jean-Claude Thibaut, an ethnobotanist, was born in the Belgian Congo and had built his career around exploring ‘borderline’ human cultures, Bedu, Gypsies, Berbers and their interactions with plants and landscapes. Erik finds out that Jean-Claude had recently been to the Empty Quarter to advise an Emirati on his masters thesis–a study of how people from the Liwa Oasis traditionally used plants in their extremely arid sand desert environment.

In the following 4 minute sound clip, Jean-Claude explains some of the unmappable experiences he had during his nine months driving everyday from Abu Dhabi to the Liwa Oasis, in the heart of the Empty Quarter–the very location of Erik’s new Liwa Qsar project, a five star resort destination series of courtyard gardens.

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Then there is another facet to these landscape stories. They are fiction, but they use geography, history and botany to give the stories some ‘real life’ anchors, as in the following three minute clip where Erik Chalmers and Jean-Claude discuss the Spice Route over a plate of biryani at a truck stop in the middle of the ‘almost’ Empty Quarter.

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This Blog Hop is hosted by Debdatta, please visit.

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…where is it…

Plants: how do they inspire you?
Please answer that question because on the last day of this International Authors’ Day Blog Hop, I will randomly select a winner to receive The 23 Club, Beta 6, a free giveaway for your reading enjoyment.

The Press

May 5, 2015 by eflaherty

Rarely does dew manifest itself in the Empty Quarter. Trying to get water from dew in the Empty Quarter is like trying to get truth, or even certifiable facts from the ‘Press’–anywhere in the world.

The English ‘Press’ in the Gulf Region is suffused with people from so many different countries and cultures, each trying to make a difference, each trying to earn a living, all overlaid with the moral fabric and traditions of the Region–it is filled with strange combinations of ambiguity and things that should not be said–and things that must be said.

Newspapers are newspapers, right? Hard copy or digital, right? Buried in each country’s news media are cultural clues waiting to be discovered, waiting to be puzzled out. How else can you understand these words from Saheeh Al Bukhaaree: ‘Whoever has seven Ajwat Al Madinah dates every morning, he will not be harmed that day by poison or magic.’

Following is a short narrative piece from Chapter 12: Long and Short, to impart some of the landscape feeling of The 23 Club.

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The 23 Club

Immersed in the contemporary culture of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, against the backdrop of the Empty Quarter, The 23 Club tells the inside story of how an iconic project gets built in the oil rich, Gulf Region of the Arabian Peninsula.

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis
Library Majlis
Villa Majlis
Long and Short

The Press

Mid-December 2010, and Chalmers had just settled down into his business class seat on his flight back home. With a certain trepidation, he was looking forward to Christmas in the mountains with Madge. As he sat down, he couldn’t tell which troubled him more, the stiffness in his back from the automobile accident, or the mental and physical weariness of eight months, everyday in the Empty Quarter, under the relentless sun, cajoling, arm twisting everyone on the team, or…the uncertainty of seeing Madge for the first time in eight months.

Liwa Qsar was completed, even without Theuns. The project had made headlines in the press numerous times–good and bad. Nevertheless, the Liwa Qsar project opened on schedule. The soft opening was 2 October, and the official grand opening was 1 December. It was grueling. It was accomplished, another project under his belt. But, by Chalmers’ point of view, the Empty Quarter, being what it was, could never be considered conquered by this project, or by any project. Even after eight months living and working every day in the Empty Quarter, Chalmers found it too large, too old, too unapproachable, and too unknown.

Chalmers lived on site for the first three months before relocating to Abu Dhabi for the rest of the project. He couldn’t live 24/7 in the heart of the Empty Quarter. He needed to get to the water’s edge–to the city. He needed a certain kind of human space–space the Empty Quarter denied to him. So, he commuted to and from the site every day.

Despite the successful project, his Empty Quarter experience had been one of strange, impending suffocation. The Rub al Khali was always trying to take something from him, trying to constrain something that should not be constrained. He couldn’t really put his finger on it.

Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Sustainable Rimal

May 1, 2015 by eflaherty

The open forum of majlis functions from small groups of close friends, up to and including the largest groups of people speaking directly to the rulers of each Emirate where anyone can speak with the ruler at majlis. It is relaxed as is traditional at majlis–relaxed as the four Emiratis in the above image–note that three of them are wearing aqal headresses and one is wearing a hamdaneya headress.

Erik Chalmers, Jean-Claude Thibaut and Theuns van der Walt share a social night of conversation over dinner and televised football with a small group of Emiratis who have a special interest in the Liwa Qsar Project under construction in the Empty Quarter.

Following is a short part from Chapter 11: Villa Majlis to impart some of the landscape feeling of The 23 Club.

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The 23 Club

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis
Library Majlis
Villa Majlis

Sustainable Rimal

What happens when popular jargon meets a larger than life, a larger than time landscape? What is sustainable about something that is ‘always shifting’ Or, rather, is ‘always shifting’ the most fundamental component of sustainability? Is sustainable larger than time, is it larger than eternity? Ha!! The more attention paid to popular jargon, the more folly suffered!

Fairuz, an Emirati from Liwa Oasis taking personal interest in the Liwa Qsar project, Jean-Claude, the Belgian Ethnobotanist, and Erik Chalmers had much in common. They shared interest, yet with varied perspectives, on the sands (rimal) and on the Bedu life style.

They sat down together. Fairuz asked for dates and kaouwa, Arabic coffee, which was then roasted, ground and prepared on a side table next to him. Chalmers and Jean-Claude joined him. Traditionally taken in restrained amount, kaouwa and dates were a sweet, soft, tender, buttery, room temperature date washed down with a thimble full of the hottest, bitterest, freshly brewed, cardamom and clove flavored coffee.

Following the kaouwa, Chalmers took the opportunity to explore a topic which had been on his mind since hearing Kelvin Isley the other day describe his experience of an almost unearthly, powerful rhythm of the heat emanating from the sands. He drew on Thesiger’s recognition of the exceptionally strong power of the sands. Thesiger had observed in the Bedu, people intensely occupied with the sands, they never commented on the beauty of the sands, the sky, the night, or the sunset.

Chalmers asked, “In books from both before, and, since the coming of Islam, I have read that djinni, spirits, have resided as unusual forces in the sands. Fairuz, I’m curious, is there anything about the djinni in the sands that could be a good reference for landscape architects these days, sustainability, or otherwise?”

Jean-Claude listened carefully to the question and internally put it into a larger context. He could see the desire among certain social groups for sustainability as a desire for secular eternality, a contemporary replacement for the stability traditionally supplied by religions. As far as he was concerned it was short sighted, a passing fad, ignorant of powers greater than the human mind and intelligence, ignorant of the powers that moved the sands, that put the sands in place. But, at the same time Jean-Claude valued these social efforts, seeing them as an opportunity to get more people in touch with their ethnobotanical roots.

He re-focussed and interjected some facts, “If I may, on the sustainability part, for centuries, it can be concluded that without oil and electricity, this Abu Dhabi Emirate region sustains at most about 25,000 humans, but with very significant, serious hardships.”

“Interesting this concept of sustainability,” Fairuz started, “I agree with your numbers; but, the quality of their life, the tenuous nature of the supply of food and water made life here almost like a, a penal colony.”

Fairuz suggested, “Current environmentalists, mostly from the temperate Western world seem to romanticize a simpler life style–pre-oil–pre-industrial. Life here was hell, even fifty years ago, a day in-day out major struggle for existence.”

Jean-Claude added, “Along the same line, I recently read a novel written by an Emirati lady, born in the 1940s. SandFish was the title and the lady’s name was Maha Gargash. She described her life as a youth and their small herd of goats in the foot hills of the Hajar mountains. She went on, writing that after marriage, her move to the Dubai region, with its dependence on pearling–was nothing but impossible hardships, her whole life–absolutely impossible hardships!”

Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Jean-Claude Thibaut, Ethnobotanist

April 28, 2015 by eflaherty

Dates and coffee together tell social history of the southern Arabian Peninsula–rarely is there majlis without dates and coffee.

Majlis is a simple Arabic word that has always been a part of the sands–a part of the human matrix over the landscape of the Empty Quarter. Majlis describes people getting together to talk.

Majlis–so, my friends, which language should we use–Esperanto? French? Classical Arabic? Gulf Arabic? Levantine Arabic? Urdu? Malay? Hindi? Or, Farsi? Forget political correctness. The practical language of choice is English, of course–the international language of business. It is the practical reality…but…under the surface…?

Erik Chalmers preparing for majlis with his South African boss, Theuns van der Walt, arrives early and first meets with his close friend, Belgian Ethnobotanist Jean-Claude Thibaut. They sit in a private club, known as the Library, a place of cultural, of artistic stimulation and climatic relief, to compare natural and social notes–landscape, plants, people, desert culture–as it has been, and is, in the Liwa Oasis region of the Empty Quarter.

Abdul Qader Al Rais, his works adorning the Library, is one of the most acclaimed artists from the UAE. Of many talents, he paints, photo realistically, traditional Emirati architecture and landscape. Underneath his images, he existentially addresses the unusually strange changes between inside and outside.

Following is a short part from Chapter 10: Library Majlis to impart some of the landscape feeling of The 23 Club.

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The 23 Club

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis
Library Majlis

Jean-Claude Thibaut, Ethnobotanist

Chalmers had lingered, a dalliance to say the very least, as he had walked through those gardens. He was now a bit late when he reached The Library. Entering, he was immediately calmed by the mingling fragrances of agar wood, sandalwood and amber, blended in a bukhoor, an incense…an incense that lightly infused the cool, dry and comfortable library air. He inhaled deeply two, three times, then felt simultaneously relaxed and focussed. Jean-Claude sitting, reading the local newspapers, saw him enter. He arose. They shook hands.

After exchanging greetings and sitting down, both agreed the best drink would be Moroccan fresh mint tea, especially since the fresh mint was grown locally in The Library gardens. Along with massive amounts of fresh mint leaves, the mint tea mix included a pinch of black tea, and refined white sugar chipped from large blocks, all to be prepared in front of them. The final presentation according to the menu, should include a seasonably available layer of fresh orange blossoms, floating on the top.

Proper Moroccan tea in a restaurant was always theater. The drama arrived as the waiter poured the tea from the pot to the small tea glasses, elongating the threadlike stream of tea to almost a meter, before closing it down so that not a drop was spilled during the pouring.

As it was poured, the smell of the steaming, fresh mint tea captivated. After the pouring ceremony, a cloth was removed from a small, colorfully hand painted, Moorish style earthen bowl. Inside the bowl were pure white and fresh orange blossoms, along with freshly picked, young green mint sprigs. The waiter gently tonged them into the tea. The orange blossom fragrance overlapped the mint, and by scent alone refreshed nearly to sweet intoxication.

After sampling the hot tea and quietly appreciating the fulsome, blended aromas, Chalmers began to review with Jean-Claude all the key project and business players he had met over the past couple days. Jean-Claude explained how those players were related to the top members of the Abu Dhabi ruling family.

He pointed out, “While these relationships are never really obvious to many of the business people and workers here in the Emirates, behind the scenes, these are the relationships that keep everything ticking over–the relationships with roots deep into Bedu history, that guide the morals and ethics of this Emirate and the UAE.”

Jean-Claude explained, “The unification of the Emirates started with Sheik Zayed bin Khalifa bin Nahyan the First, in the nineteenth century and was consolidated by his great grandson, Sheik Zayed bin Sultan bin Nahyan, who, in the twentieth century, the late 1960s to be exact, successfully coordinated the unification of the seven Emirates. Leadership by the Nahyan family still continues today. These are the rulers of Abu Dhabi. And these are the rulers of the UAE. The leaders of the other six Emirates and the Nahyans interact through majlis as has always been the tradition. Even though national government institutions and administrative procedures have been overlaid, underneath you will find the strong, fundamental bond is the evolving Bedu majlis tradition born from shared longterm hardships.”

Jean-Claude’s eyes fell upon some botanical drawings of Phoenix dactylifera displayed on the wall across from him. He paused, thinking about their simple beauty. He looked over at Chalmers, a dedicated landscape specialist who, in his own way, also loved the beauty of plants. In Chalmers, Jean-Claude saw an international fortune hunter–or a storm chaser if you will–justified because he was here to bring more plants to the lives of Emiratis and he was above all else, good hearted–always been that way through all the years of their association.

Jean-Claude took another drink of mint tea, then looking again at the date palm botanical drawings, he thought of the date palm’s many uses in a transient oasis based culture–uses both simple and also complex. He thought about their position in an austere Emirati culture before he explained further to Chalmers, “The success of the Emirati tribes, enduring and working through the climatic hardships, and the shortage of water has built a strength of character extremely unique.

“Based upon these strengths, the Emiratis, have an internal pride that is rarely examined by the world’s mainstream media. You can find references to it in books, written by authors like Wilfred Thesiger and Frauke Heard-Bey; but most mainstream writers, expat workers and businessmen alike choose the easy way–accepting the centuries-old, negative stereotypes of the Bedu character and overlaying them onto all contemporary business and workplace relationships. That stuff is good to know, but it will not get you to the core of people’s motivations here, mon ami.”

Jean-Claude always spoke in a soft voice in public. Chalmers had to strain to hear Jean-Claude’s next point.

“In public, the Emiratis do not talk about it; but they do have a self consciousness about this modern world, its communications, and, its values.” Jean-Claude, sitting up in his chair and drawing closer to Chalmers, continued, “Emiratis think that modern, Western world values are not based on the strength of austerity, but rather, based on the relativity of excesses.”

Chalmers thought about cultural understandings and the ambiguities of cultural differences, then added, “This kind of cultural gap is a fundamental challenge in all work out here, at least that’s how I’ve found it. For me, a three stage process has always worked: inform myself, then trust, but verify.” They both sat back, took a drink of mint tea, and relaxed, as the conversation paused.

Villa Majlis
Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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The Heat…and the relief

April 24, 2015 by eflaherty

Who would not want to walk here? But, you can not feel the temperature, you can not sweat the heat in this photo. Can you imagine, while you are sitting comfortably in your temperate climate–can you imagine 18 hours a day outside with the ambient air temperature higher than your body temperature?

Yet, here in the United Arab Emirates, on the blazing edges of that aggressive sand dune desert, the Empty Quarter, with the addition of top soil, irrigation water and proper maintenance for carefully selected and protected plants, beautiful gardens have been built; and for short walks they are wonderfully inspirational, as Erik Chalmers discovers and shares.

Following is a short part from Chapter 9: Finding Majlis to impart some of the landscape feeling of The 23 Club.

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The 23 Club

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis

The Heat and the Relief

Early in his expatriate career, Chalmers had a mentor–a mentor who had for decades already been working in Iran, Turkey and the Arab Middle East. He told Chalmers not to overestimate his professional position, that their white collar management, their consultancy positions in the pecking order here were exactly the same as the sweaty laborers on site. White collar, blue collar–no difference–hired, manipulable and replaceable. They were all ‘no counters’.

In time, experience in this part of the world had taught Chalmers that strict plans and aggressive adherence to them would guarantee the cross cultural undoing of any Western professional. But, he also knew that without a plan, these large projects could never succeed in the time frame required. He always kept an overall plan foremost in his mind. That gave him big picture guidelines such that he could always revise the details in real time, according to the unpredictable vagaries of time, circumstance, people. Including cunning and masquerade, nothing was left out of his box of tools to build inspirational and beautiful gardens and landscapes. This was performance art in action. That is how Chalmers thought of his work–performance art.

It was Thursday. Theuns van der Walt wanted his update and briefing at 9PM at The Library, a place, part of a spa in a large hotel where he sometimes met a couple key Emiratis who had interest in his Empty Quarter Project, Liwa Qsar. To prepare himself for that briefing, Chalmers planned to arrive earlier than usual to sit with his old friend, the Belgian Ethnobotanist, Jean-Claude Thibaut. Chalmers wanted to review his own findings, to cross check them against Jean-Claude’s knowledge of political and social contexts in this region.

The Library, where Chalmers was to meet Jean-Claude, and later Theuns, was a refuge, carefully hidden, deep, within a mysterious sequence of intimate, private gardens. Chalmers looked forward to walking through these gardens. He fancied a dalliance.

Library Majlis
Villa Majlis
Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Desert Sirens

April 17, 2015 by eflaherty

The Empty Quarter, how can beauty be so…empty?

In Desert Sirens, Jean-Claude Thibaut, the Belgian Ethnobotanist, describes what many ‘feel’ in the presence of these odalisques–these seductive sand dunes…their beauty simply overwhelms.

Following is a short part from Chapter 6: Rub al Khali Inland to impart some of the landscape feeling of The 23 Club.

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The 23 Club

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland

Desert Sirens

If there could be a ‘Twilight Zone’, an ‘X-files’ event on this trip, this next area would be the setting. Chalmers and Jean-Claude appeared to leave contact with civilization behind when, after enduring thirty more kilometers of increasing shamal, the wind and sand storm, they took the Hameem turnoff. There was no other traffic. The road was well asphalted, two lanes, one in each direction and two full asphalt shoulders. The verges on each side had the Sheikh Zayed shelter belt tree plantations, as always, laid out linearly in agricultural fashion. These trees were young, in their first two or three years. More noteworthy though, was the desert, it was stirred, riled, mad with wind. Reduced visibility now limited their maximum speed to less than 70kph.

Jean-Claude said, “Over nearly a year when I was regularly making this trip, I may have seen only two or three shamal storms like this. Most of the time, I could enjoy the alluring forms of these dunes…on each dune my eyes could discover feminine curves…the feminine curves that throughout time have melted man’s intelligence…where the turn of the waist sweeps into the hip…and the hip line so gracefully slides into the thigh…and on and on…from every angle to every eye…these timeless curves call out from each dune, like a siren to Odysseus–no, stronger still…from the dune landscape is a hareem of siren calls…each beautiful, sweet, alluring…all promising…exquisite satisfactions…fulfillments of secret…”

“Hold on Jean-Claude, I’m sure I don’t need to remind you that sexual proclivities are not subject for public discussions here in the UAE; and as far as I’m concerned your personal proclivities are your own…so kindly…”

“Have some patience, mon ami, it always takes a while for me to settle in, to absorb the aura of this strange sand desert.” Chalmers squirmed and looked across, querulously, at his friend.

Jean-Claude continued. “You really don’t understand…you’ve worked here before, you should have felt this landscape. It begins by seducing you through your eyes–then grasping your emotions–it manipulates your body…then bit by bit if you let your inner lust prevail…it will take your life–it isn’t mental–it isn’t your imagination run wild–it isn’t a mirage–it is truly visceral! This desert grasps…”

“Ok, ok, steady on!” Chalmers butted in. “Enough dreaming! Look at this weather! We’ve a real weather event today–you were the one who said this desert reminded you of the ocean! Well today, all around us the desert is threatening like the wildest ocean storm. This wind is whipping–scrambling the landscape, like a roaring hurricane–furious wind, furious sand!”

The sun–the sun was a dim disk–by the storm nearly blotted out of the sky. Their visibility was reduced to less than 200 meters and the sand was swirling, drifting, dancing, racing over the asphalt. As they drove on, the previous mini dunes of the sabka coast grew larger, and each dune, being forcefully reshaped by the relentless shamal wind, had a roaring top.

After driving with buffeting winds and poor visibility for an arduous eighty kilometers, they came to the first paved intersection. It had barely readable signs for oil and gas rigs–Asab to the west–Saafi Al Naar thirty four kilometers to the east, in the direction of the Saudi and Omani borders.

They could see just by the side of the road, a small one story white stucco building. Stopped in front of the building, on the road shoulder were seven or eight large, heavy duty construction hauling trucks–because of sandstorm poor visibility, their warning blinkers flashing.

Chalmers and Jean-Claude stopped, too.

Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis
Library Majlis
Villa Majlis
Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Desert Street Trees

April 15, 2015 by eflaherty

The founder of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed, understood the hardships of the sand desert landscape. His intent for trees along all major routes of travel was eminently practical–his selection of drought tolerant, evergreen and fruit bearing trees more so.

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The 23 Club

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM
Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal

Desert Street Trees

The weather in combination with the landscape, overwhelmed. Winds and sand swept continuously. Urban development anomalies in this desert were embarrassingly exposed in this kind of weather. Driving along Sheik Zayed Road in the Emirate of Dubai, Chalmers observed a noteworthy absence of any trees, any street trees, anything green. Nothing impeded the winds and sand flowing across the road.

After he and Jean-Claude passed the signs marking the end of the huge empty Waterfront site, they entered the Emirate of Abu Dhabi. Immediately street trees began–actually a planting thicker than street trees, more like a shelterbelt planting began–two rows of trees up the median and four rows on either verge.

The big infrastructure of irrigation water provision–hundreds upon hundreds of kilometers of pipes, valves and tubes with emitters, with controllers, with electrical supply, with pumps, pump stations, reservoirs, desalination and sewage treatment plants–always broke down at the lowest common denominator, the last meter before arriving at the plants. Chalmers looked carefully. He could see irrigation lines–the thin tubes of generic poly pipe running between the trees.

Poly pipe tubing may be UV resistant. It may be buried at the time of installation–but the incessant blowing sands always uncovered it–and the value engineering often saved money by suggesting a supplier that did not provide the best rated tubing. The flexible tubing looked like a snake rising up out of the sand and going down into it again and again. Sun exposed brittle and splitting pipe–then partially clogged outlets–both and more contributed to an irrigation of impossible efficiencies and irregular applications–wastage everywhere.

Recalling having seen these problems for more than twenty five years, Chalmers sighed with disappointment–as if he had just been kicked in the gut. At the same time, Madge’s comments about the quality of local contractors’ work and materials came searing back into his memory. Before he could sigh again, he looked hard at the trees, trees obviously straining under the wind and drought conditions.

Chalmers roughly estimated 90% of the trees were alive–that could only mean two things: that drought tolerant tree species were used, and that laborers were regularly walking these lines to assure delivery of water to the trees. Spaghettis of pipe ran for kilometers to drip out that life giving fluid–so fragile was life for plants in this region.

On previous projects, Chalmers had seen tens upon tens of huge water tanker trucks rumbling 24/7 to supplant failed irrigation water infrastructure–causing untold stress on resources, on transportation networks and on the plants themselves. This issue would be a major point that he must control on his new project.

Offering historical background, Jean-Claude interrupted Chalmers’ thoughts, “When you mentioned Electra and New Dubai, you hinted there might be some kind of competition between Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Well, that’s true. On every level there’s competition between the two emirates, even street trees.

“Listen, throughout his life, Sheik Zayed of Abu Dhabi, the very same Emirati who united the Emirates in 1970, was a major supporter of the practical benefits of shade trees and fruit-bearing trees, especially the date palms. So he chose the most useful and tough trees, Phoenix dactylifera, Ziziphus spina-christi, Prosopis cineraria…and with supporting irrigation, planted them for desert shelterbelt buffers, along all major highways. And that, that’s what we’re seeing out there right now.”

Chalmers said, “It’s pretty clear Sheik Zayed not only had common sense, but also the wealth, resources and will power to apply it.”

“Exactly, he was special. He and those around him have been quoted numerous times on the subject of trees, saying things like…farmers grow date palms in hareems…a date palm must have its feet in the water and its head in the fires of heaven…dried dates and camel milk on land–dried dates and black tea for the pearlers. C’est vrai, it’s clear Sheik Zayed had the intelligence to demonstrate the better of human qualities–humans caring for plants that in turn themselves serve humans.”

Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis
Library Majlis
Villa Majlis
Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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Kismet

April 4, 2015 by eflaherty

Whether visiting as a tourist, on business or a white collar mercenary–hard to tell the difference between them in the public realm–everyone who comes to the Gulf Region inevitably looks for fun; and, everyone is reminded there are rules for expatriates, business people and tourists. The warnings are there.

In this Gulf Region world of international development, design, construction and facility management, the white collar mercenaries, like many of the characters in The 23 Club, build up–in a loosely linked community–a broad network of international contacts. Among them, from time to time, kismet meetings occur.

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The 23 Club

Table of Contents

Desertification
It’s 2AM

Kismet

Chalmers was strangely ruffled. More than his rift with Madge, more than these last couple hours, it was the last twenty four hours that were now too vivid, almost visceral in his head. His thoughts drifted back to the blood in the streets, to Jean-Claude, to Bahrain, to Ashura. His thoughts drifted back as he recalled yesterday, about mid-day.

On this trip to the UAE, he had had to make an overnight stop in Bahrain. He didn’t think much of it, an extra overnight. He had not checked the Hegira calendar. It was the Day of Ali. He had read about this special Shiite day; but, he had never seen it, and had no reason to think about it until he was at the hotel breakfast buffet that morning. He bumped into an old friend, Jean-Claude Thibaut, who, on his way from Papua New Guinea, coincidently had also stopped over in Bahrain.

Chalmers had first met him nearly twenty years ago, while they were both speakers at a national conference sponsored by the American Society of Landscape Architects. They shared an educational background in Brussels, a landscape fondness for the Alps, and a fundamental agreement on the importance of integrating ethnobotanical cultural roots into contemporary landscape design.

When Chalmers explained he was on the way to the UAE to fix a project in the Empty Quarter, Jean-Claude told him about related research he had done there in the past five years. For both, this was a welcome coincidence. Jean-Claude adjusted his schedule; and they agreed to meet up in the next week to visit the Empty Quarter together and compare notes.

Jean-Claude Thibaut, a forty nine year old Belgian, was a confirmed bachelor who found his pleasures in the ‘hair-shirt’ explorations of cultures, of marginal groups just outside the edge of mainstream society, people still in contact with the land, with the old ways–Bedu, Berbers, Calusa fisherfolk descendants, true Gypsies.

He examined human relationships with plants, through landscape, language, music, life. He was a very broad scale ethnobotanist. He did not write for publication, did not have a PhD; but, he did maintain extensive multimedia digital archives, all collected first-hand: stories, songs, movies, images, along with plant related artifacts, such as amulets, charms, talismans.

Born into a wealthy entrepreneurial Belgian family, he took birth in the Belgian Congo where he spent the early years of his childhood. He was a polyglot graduate of international schools in Brussels and Gstaad. Following formal education at the University of London, he had travelled and visited all major botanical institutions in Africa and South America, gathering ethnobotanical information before his first post with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Ultimately, he became a director there. He had since retired to focus full-time on his personal research activities.

At five foot eleven and 165 pounds, he looked popularly slender and athletically lean. He had a self-effacing presence, and a manner of dress and hygiene uniquely making him as at home meeting and greeting in a five star Monte Carlo resort, as in a majlis tent on the edge of the Empty Quarter. He was not shy about sharing the realities of the groups he studied–‘over the edge’ would be the polite way to describe his unusual first hand experiences of old, almost forgotten ways of human interactions with plants in the landscape.

Between Chalmers and Jean-Claude, despite their substantial grounds of agreement, were interlaced threads of ambiguous tension, mostly friendly, mostly the subtleties of hidden cross-cultural joking. Those subtleties were built from Jean-Claude’s obsessive frequenting of the boundary edges between humans and plants, inspired originally by his attraction to the writings of William Blake, Aldous Huxley, Carlos Castenada.

Jean-Claude was an explorer. Chalmers was a builder. They were friends, even though their clatteringly different approaches to the landscape often belied that friendship. Nevertheless, Jean-Claude was happy to see Chalmers and greeted him saying, “Well, my old friend, here we are together in the Middle East! Do not tell me you are about to become, once again, the ‘Surveyor of Fabric’ on some new mind boggling landscape extravaganza?!”

Spike Lounge
The Walk
Rub Al Khali Coastal
Rub Al Khali Inland
Liwa Qsar
The Nursery
Finding Majlis
Library Majlis
Villa Majlis
Long and Short
Pilgrimage
Wanderweg
Appendix 1: Berner Oberland Back Story
Author’s Notes
Plant List
Colophon

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(to be continued)

**Blatant Plug: If you find this writing about humans and landscape intriguing, please share it with your like-minded friends. Thank you.**

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flahertylandscape

about landscape journeys…

Tag Archives: Jean-Claude Thibaut

Landscape Story–what is it?

The Press

Sustainable Rimal

Jean-Claude Thibaut, Ethnobotanist

The Heat…and the relief

Desert Sirens

Desert Street Trees

Kismet