Celebrations and Silly String

For the past few weeks, Abu Dhabi has undergone a transformation of sorts.  The UAE flag has been increasingly growing more and more visible throughout the city, more so than usual.  The streets have become lined with small flags hanging from every pole.  I begin to see entire homes draped with 40 foot flags on my way to work and just driving around the city in general .  I start noticing the dress of the Emirates: black, red, green, and white accent their khandoras and abayas .

But I really see it in the cars.  The usual fleet of upscale, fancy cars that I see on a daily basis is replaced with a slew of cars deck out in red, green, and black.  I’m talking full paint jobs with these colors. Pictures of Zayed, the “father” of the city, are plastered on hoods and car doors.  UAE stickers are scattered all over the vehicle; little red hearts with a “40” in the middle of it (and for those with the more colorful imaginations let me take a moment to specify that there is not a picture of a bottle of liquor at the center of the heart, but the actual number forty).  

But if I happened to be blind to all of that I would definitely notice something was up by looking at the buildings.  Huge 300ft flags hanging from the sides of skyscrapers, colorful light (just like Christmas lights) are strew over buildings, or better yet the lights are actually built into the building, as is the case with a building directly visible when you step outside my apartment.  It flashes the colors of the flag over it moving upward.  The lights are mesmerizing to look at, reminding me the time late at night I used to stay up and just look at the Christmas tree as the lights flickered on and off in their various patterns and sequences.  Some buildings also have the huge “40” in flashing lights blaring out into the world. 

Well if you haven’t already guessed it (and I don’t know how you would have because if you are like me you probably didn’t even know this existed until now), it is National Day in the UAE.  National Day celebrates the founding of the country and is celebrated not just in Abu Dhabi, but also in Ajman, Dubai, Sharjah, and all the other Emirates as well.  The holiday is comparable to the 4^th of July in the States, but believe it or not they take it even further here.  You would think that the country had gone through five wars and a depression the way the celebrate, but I will get into that shortly.   Obviously the country has an obscene amount of money to spend on festivities and so they do.  There were festivals, ceremonies, and parties all over Abu Dhabi.  We ended up getting a day off from school, which is always a good thing. 

This National Day is particularly a big deal because it is the 40^th anniversary of the UAE.  That’s right, chances are that you the reader are probably just as old or older than this entire country.   This city is ridiculously young when you think about it, and on top of the that, the “modern” city, all the buildings and skyscrapers, malls and shops, apartments and hotels, all of these pictures that you see when you google Abu Dhabi, has only been around for the last 10 years.  

Well the Emiratis definitely got the memo that this should be a great big celebration.  Natova and I got to witness it first hand.  As I mentioned before, the city had been doing different smaller celebrations, I use the word loosely, over the last couple of weeks.  For instance for the last couple of days I here fighter jets flying past in formation going toward the corniche (the coast/ beach near downtown) In fact on National Day itself, December 2, I saw a tight formation of three fighter jets fly past headed downtown.  Then I hear another set of three roar past a few seconds later.  Then another. Then another.  Then another.  Five sets total flew past me and over to the corniche. 

 Anyway, we wanted to make over to the Corniche for the finale fireworks show.  You can imagine what that would look like in a place the goes over the top the way Abu Dhabi does.   So we head down there and our adventure began.

It started with the cab driver that I noticed was very irritable.  I had initially written it off in my mind as he was having a bad night.  However, shorty after we got in his taxi we found out why he was so irritable. While at a stoplight, a car full of young men, the car decorated in the customary red, green, black, and white, rolled down its window and with impressive accuracy managed to silly string the windshield of our taxi.  The silly string wasn’t even good silly string; it was more foamy than stringy, which made getting it off even more difficult.   Our taxi driver, frustrated threw up an exasperated hand at the boys who had sped off when the light turned green.  The taxi driver put on his wipers and had the water spray onto the windshield to clean it, and watched the kids drive off.  After a second or two we saw him make up his mind. 

Once he got his windshield decent, he roared out of the turning lane we were in and exploded down the street looking for the boys.  I saw him slowly reach into the glove compartment, and for a minute I thought to myself “Oh no, our taxi driver is an Indian Gangsta.  Those boys didn’t know who they were messin’ with.”  It turns out that the taxi driver pulled out a black can of silly string of his own.  However, he did have every intention of making those kids pay.  As he sped past the other cars, he peeked inside each on to see if they were the ones that violated his taxi then would blow past them looking into the next car.  When I tell you this man was dead serious about finding those boys, you could see it on his face.  He was ready to do a drive-by.  

Unfortunately he did not find the hoodlums so he wasn’t able to exact his revenge.  He took his frustration out in his driving, which became erratic.  There was a point where someone flashed him and he didn’t like it.  When the car got in the other lane to pass him he sped up not to let the guy pass, so the other car sped up, our taxi sped up, then the other car sped up, etc.  Pretty soon we were involved in a full on drag race for about 10 seconds doing at least 180km/h (112 mph).  It concluded when came around a bend and approached traffic that was stopped at a light.  He hit the brakes and we skidded for what seemed like forever.  It was one of those skids where you aren’t really sure if you vehicle is going to stop before you hit the vehicle in front of you, so all you can do is look at this stationary car grow bigger and bigger in the windshield until you are right on it.  Luckily we did stop short and Natova and I exchanged glances that said “Okay, I am legitimately scared now.”  

So after we got out of the taxi of doom, we made our way down to the corniche.  There were tons of cars on the strip.  It was basically a parking lot.  There was music blaring from cars, people, kids and grown ups alike, trying to silly string each other and run away before the other could retaliate (no one was above a good walk by silly stringing.  We actually got hit a couple of times.  And there is a mechanism in you that says “I don’t know you so you have no right to bother me.”  To be honest your first instinct is to bash his face into the ground.  But no one knew each other out there but they still played.  That just seemed to be part of the celebration.  If you were down here you just have to expect to be silly stringed.  For the most part, its all in fun, though some people did take it too far).  There were guys revving their engines to pop their mufflers.  At times I thought someone’s engine was going to explode.  There were kids standing on top of the cars while it crept down the streets.  There was dancing, laughing, and general chaos.   I tried to capture all of this in the videos I have here the best I could.  

We were downtown for about an hour and a half.  At 9:30 we then decided that the fireworks show, which was scheduled for 8:40, was not going to happen.  We left and knew we would have to walk a ways away to distance ourselves from all the traffic so we could catch a cab.  Taxis were staying away from downtown like the plague because while they are stuck in traffic, they could be earning some money.  After walking the ins and outs of the Abu Dhabi streets for an hour trying to get away from the traffic, which we never did, we finally came upon a taxi stuck in it himself.  He was reluctant at first because he thought we wanted to go toward downtown.  As it turns out he has been on the same street for about an hour and a half going maybe 50 feet.  We hopped in once he saw that we were trying to get away ourselves.  We managed to do a u-turn and a half and hour later were walking into the door of our apartment.   

Crazy night.  We had to go to at least one National Day, but it is unanimous that we won’t be attending those downtown festivities again next year.

(I have a few videos but for some reason I can't upload them to blogger.  I will keep trying so you might want to check periodically to see if they are here.)