A fetish?! …an inanimate object with supposed magical powers or because it is considered to be inhabited by a spirit
I have been living the last ten years in a landscape rich with water, rich with soil and rich with plants, the Berner Oberland in Switzerland. Each day this Berner Oberland landscape inspires me. I am happy in and enthused by this Swiss Alp landscape.
But yesterday, I came across an old folder of images that stunned me. Stunned? Yes, because as I went through all 50 of them, they gradually inserted themselves. Internally, I could not understand how the barren emptiness of the Rub al Khali, the Empty Quarter, could elicit such a strange, such a pulsating attraction.
It was just memories, right? Yeah, ten years ago, I lived and worked there for more than a year as the installation manager for the landscape at this resort destination–that had its own memories–but the desert–the Empty Quarter has its own magnetism.
I feel it; but I don’t understand it.
Shadows on the Tropic of Cancer.
Every once in a while.
Water inside the shelter.
Something imposes itself upon the seductive dunes.
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.
The Liwa Oasis is a 100 kilometer long series of loosely linked sabkha valleys, each valley individually subtended by the sand dunes. The beauty of these Empty Quarter dunes to the eyes of every Western visitor is an undeniable journey into private dreams, hopes…mysteries…breath taking…on infinite levels!
Sustainability aside, the spectacular essence of Erik Chalmers’ new project, a five star destination resort in the heart of the Empty Quarter, is that guests and visitors would be able to safely and securely absorb the sand desert beauty, without fear of death.
This journey, this path…this road into the heart of the beauty, or as some knowledgeable people put it, into the beast of a sand desert known as the Empty Quarter…winds on and on–weaves and weaves deeper and deeper into the awkward, the enigmatic, the mazey sand emptiness. Only the thin, white gatch road remains as the string to take you back, the tenuous cultural connection back to civilization…as you once knew it.
Rudyard Kipling is temporarily unfashionable these days–but a century ago, in these strange, even unfathomable landscapes, he called the West Asian cultures he encountered, as they were–difficult and dangerous for Westerners. On his journey into the Empty Quarter, Erik Chalmers will finally arrive at his project site and meet the white collared mercenaries and privateers who have contracted to work in this difficult and dangerous region of the world.
Following is a short part from Chapter 7: Liwa Qsar to impart some of the landscape feeling of The 23 Club.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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 Dream
The dream is the mirage. In the West, the Empty Quarter has always been an elusive froth, an ambiguous froth, a strangely arid yet attractive froth–whispering mystery and romance, providing an oddly enticing whiff from an evanescent bouquet full of ethereal promise. That is the mirage; and, for the sake of his success on his new project, Chalmers hoped it would be different. He did not need mirages on the Liwa Qsar project site.
Spectacular red sunsets rewarded the end of every day. The project site had been chosen to give the guests a luxury room looking west at a view framed by some of the largest and steepest red sand dunes in the Empty Quarter. The project was about providing shelter, a comfortable, an elegant shelter, protecting from the uncertainties, from the threats in this beautiful landscape.
Now Chalmers would meet the key players, living and working and constructing an iconic resort in this sweaty 50˚C world, in the arid, inland, heart of the Empty Quarter.
