The Desert Vet

by Alex Tinson

  In the way of Arab businessmen, Mr Zuhair was superb at relationships. He would frequently talk about anything but business while at the same time making rapid assessments on your qualities as a human. Could you be trusted or not? Were you hiding something? Or were you who you said you were? The Emiratis had lost their innocence when it came to foreigners who washed up in the UAE, attracted to the promise of riches, like bees to a honey pot. If you were a charlatan or a spiv, Mr Zuhair would find you out before you did too much damage.

  Mr Zuhair beckoned us to sit and take coffee with him. He wanted to expand on the Crown Prince’s vision and explain the personal dimension of the task. Abu Dhabi was by far the largest of the seven emirates of the UAE. It held ninety per cent of the country’s oil, so it was also by far the wealthiest emirate. The Ruler of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Zayed, had driven the unification of the seven emirates and was the founding president of the UAE. Abu Dhabi was the capital, but Al Ain was special because it was the ancestral home of Sheikh Zayed and his son, the Crown Prince. They were from the Al Nahyan family, which had ruled Al Ain and its surrounds for centuries. Yet for all this pedigree, when it came to the camel races, Abu Dhabi was not even in the hunt. In the Gulf pecking order, the Crown Prince’s camels ranked number six, pretty well dead last.

  Power was one thing. Camels were quite another. Both the president and the Crown Prince were real camel men. The president had his own racing camel stock, as did some of the other less powerful sheikhs in the Emirate. But the Crown Prince wanted Abu Dhabi to use the best of international practice and western science: His Highness wanted no less than the best veterinary and training facility for camels in the world. He wanted to revolutionise camel racing in the Gulf and he was happy to back the project, whatever the cost.

  The mission was clear. We had to get the Crown Prince’s camels to the point where Abu Dhabi could beat Dubai or Qatar or Kuwait or any other Gulf State. The cash prizes were great, but money was largely irrelevant for the wealthiest of men. This was all about the pride of tribal leaders and the prestige of Abu Dhabi. And that meant winning the ultimate racing prize, the Golden Sword.

  Now it was up to us to make it happen. In addition to our homes, Geoff had sketched out plans for a clinic with offices and blood analysis labs. But, apart from that, there was nothing. It was our job to work out a blueprint for the facilities, supervise construction and get the right equipment.

  There were legions of foreign expats in the UAE, hired on short-term contracts to build hospitals, schools, universities, airports, highways, desalination plants, water systems and so on: all the essentials to make a functioning modern society in a land that only twenty or so years before hadn’t even had reliable electricity.

  But our task was something different. Camels were personal. They were integral to tribal history. Along with the falcon, which the Emiratis traditionally used for hunting, for centuries the camel had been essential for survival in the desert. They were used to wage war, gather food, and carry families from settlement to settlement. Camels were the heart and soul of what it meant to be an Emirati.

  To say I felt underqualified would be an understatement. Yet I would be directing the future of the camel for the tribal heads of these lands.

  I had no idea how long I would be here. For all I knew, I might be judged not up to the task and tossed aside in weeks or months. Luckily, Mr Zuhair was an excellent organiser, spoke good English and was well disposed to Australians. He’d visited Australia many times and was a man of immense goodwill. He wanted us to succeed. But at the same time, he needed this project to work for the sake of his relationship with the Crown Prince. We might be judged on our performance, but he would be judged on his judgements.

  ‘Convince me about your plans and we will back you,’ he said. ‘First I want you to see how our camels race and then get back to me. Hamza will pick you up in the morning. Five o’clock.’

  It was like starting with a blank canvas and the effect was quite liberating.

  Hamza duly presented himself before dawn for the drive out to the racetrack at a small backblock town called Al Wathba, about an hour away.

  The drive took us back along the main road to Abu Dhabi before branching off down a narrow, isolated road. We were tracking away from the new UAE, into areas almost untouched by development.

  As the morning sun rose, it cast a pale light across the still sands of the desert, no sign yet of the heat of the day. Looking out from the back of the car I caught my first sight of the Arabian camel in its natural habitat. They emerged in the distance, in groups of two and three, drifting serenely across the sands. With a slow, elegant gait, they set the pace of life in the desert. This is where they belonged and this was their domain. It lent them an air of arrogance, a sense that they had total control in a place too tough for others to survive. There could be nothing that would hurry a camel. It was at peace with these surroundings.

  In the silence of the early morning it was easy to feel the eternal quality of the desert. It has existed forever and will exist forever after you and I are gone. There was beauty in the nothingness of the endless sand, yet there was menace at the same time. Here a camel is your friend, your companion, your saviour. Without it you would die.

  For kilometre after kilometre there was nothing more than flat desert and small clusters of camels. It was easy to imagine that this was how the Bedouin had lived for centuries before the discovery of oil: a land without borders, where you survived in an unforgiving climate.

  The Al Wathba races were mainly for the local Bedouin tribes, but word today was that the Crown Prince’s camels would also be running.

  We were the first to arrive at the track. It was similar to going to Australian country horse races with one huge difference. A horse track will normally be about three kilometres long at most but camels race much greater distances. In the not too distant past, camels had galloped across a flat, straight track off into the distance, for up to ten kilometres.

  That was changing. Al Wathba was one of the first circular tracks, which meant the race would start and end at the same point. It also meant an enormous track that stretched far out, before turning back for home.

  Like the rest of the country, the Al Wathba complex was a work in progress. A track of compacted dust and sand had been prepared, but there was no grandstand. Instead there was a flat area with an enormous tent about fifty metres from the track, on a slightly raised piece of land. Inside the tent about a hundred chairs were set out in rows. The twenty or so at the front and centre were of the ornate, gilt-edged, high-backed variety, complete with golden tassels, similar to those I had sat in at the airport. This was confirmation that VIPs would be attending.

  I was given few clues as to what to expect, but something told me I shouldn’t sit in the very front row in case somebody more important than me should come along. So I plonked myself down in the middle of the second row.

  Meanwhile, the first of the Bedouin turned up, in a weather-beaten Toyota ute with a camel squatting in the rear, which I soon discovered was pretty typical. Others arrived walking their animals on a long leather lead. These were the men of the desert: lean and sinewy, hardened against the sun and toughened by a centuries-long fight for survival. Some greeted each other by shaking hands. Most greeted each other by rubbing noses, in the way of tradition. They were bursting with life.

  There was a minor stir as the first of the official entourages arrived. This was a local sheikh, the head of a minor tribe and probably ten or more rungs down the pecking order, but still a man to be honoured by those beneath him. There was more commotion as other sheikhs arrived, each one higher up the pecking order than the one before. As each sheikh arrived, he was instantly surrounded by local Bedouin competing to show their respect. Eventually all the sheikhs were seated and their cars driven away by hangers-on.

  By now two hours had passed. For a while nothing at all happened and I kept thinking, okay, that’s it, the race will start now. The tent was full. T
he camels were milling around down below at the side of the tent; there was the occasional roar or grunt or spit. And yet nothing was happening.

  And then in the distance there appeared a massive cloud of dust, ten times bigger than anything else before it. As it drew nearer I could make out half a dozen Toyota pickups with machine guns on the back, held by men dressed in blue-grey uniforms. Out jumped bodyguards wearing long white robes clutching Kalashnikovs, with machine-gun bullet belts strung diagonally across their chests. And behind the first ten or so cars was a massive Pullman stretch limousine. This was the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan.

  Upon his arrival, all the sheikhs rose as one and bustled over to make their greetings. The excitement was enormous. Hundreds of Bedouin pressed around the man they revered as the ‘great sheikh’; everyone wanted a piece of him, to touch him, to have him acknowledge them. The sheikh moved deliberately through the throng. Followers approached and bent their heads to kiss the sleeve of his right arm. In the end there was a melee of sheikhs and Bedouin crowded around this one man. It was the most powerful expression of pure adulation I had ever seen for one human being.

  Not knowing what to do, I stayed in my seat and looked on. I was the only westerner there. And I felt like it.

  When the president entered the official tent he took his seat in the middle of the front row. The face I saw here was very different to the stern visage that stared out at me from the pages of the encyclopaedia I’d consulted before leaving Australia. It was a face of calm authority that would readily break out into a wide smile and a laugh at the sight of a close friend. At the age of seventy or more, his body remained wiry and strong. Above all this was a man who radiated charisma and commanded not just the respect of his people but their love. It was a relationship the like of which I had never seen.

  For all the affection, though, he was still a head of state, and security was heavy. With the president sitting pretty much right in front of me, I ended up spending the morning with his guards next to me and the barrel of a Kalashnikov shoved up my left nostril.

  I had come to watch a camel race, but what I got was an instant education in how the UAE really works.

  This was a tribal society where hierarchy was everything. But at the same time, there was nothing remote about the ruler. With a population which ran only into the hundreds of thousands, it was possible for Sheikh Zayed to know everyone by name, to know their families, who had been born, who had died, who was ill, who needed help, who had excelled, who was lagging behind. It was an intensely personal way to govern a country.

  This is what a desert society produces. You respect your leader, your leader protects you. Without your leader you are nothing. Your leader dispenses favours and works to defend your interests.

  The desert strips you back to the basics of survival. You make alliances. You help each other. You live together or you die apart. You protect what you have. You help strangers who arrive on your doorstep. You give your visitor the last rice on your plate. And you repel danger with a gun.

  Hierarchy extended to time as well. The leader must never be kept waiting for anyone. The least important must arrive early and wait, which perhaps explains why I was the first to be brought to the racetrack that day. And herein lay an important clue for my future: no matter how important I might think I was or how valued my skills were, the welfare of the locals always came first.

  The races were almost an anticlimax after the frenzy triggered by the arrival of the president.

  The camels lined up fifteen or twenty across, with no barrier or starting gate to hold them. At that time, the jockeys were very young boys, aged about eight to eleven, typically from Bangladesh. At the starting shout, the camels heaved off, kicking up a storm of sand and dust. Before long they were so far off into the distance that it was all but impossible from our tent to get any sense of who was in the lead. A full fifteen minutes later the group returned into view to round the final bend and head for the finishing line.

  It might not have been the greatest spectacle and it was only a relatively minor event as far as race meetings go, but even here the prizes were substantial. The winner of every race received a new four-wheel drive, such as a Landcruiser. There were cash prizes all the way down to tenth place, all gifted by the local sheikhs.

  Apart from that, there was no other way for money to change hands at the camel races. The religious prohibition on betting meant the races were a purer form of competition than western horseracing, with far less chance of them being rigged. And anyway the owners all wanted desperately to win.

  It was impossible for me to draw conclusions from the racing I saw that day. I kept a stopwatch on each race, but I had no yardstick to know whether the times being run were good, bad or indifferent. In fact, there wasn’t much science at all around the races. They were a relatively uncomplicated affair with the Bedouin from different tribes simply competing to win, and having a wonderful get-together at the same time.

  But in another way I took home—or rather, to the Hilton Hotel—a treasure-trove of information about what camels mean to this society and, importantly, to my paymasters. There were two societies here: the UAE for expat westerners and the UAE for the Emiratis. Someone had opened the door for me and allowed me to enter a rarely glimpsed world. And the UAE, it was clear, was run by camel men.

  The relationship of Emiratis with the camel went deep. These animals were the glue that bonded the old and the new, and that needed to be preserved.

  Five

  Faster, stronger

  As a regional town, Al Ain wasn’t nearly on the same scale as expat hubs like Dubai and Abu Dhabi, where a newly arrived westerner would merge into the background with all the others. In the big centres of Dubai and Abu Dhabi the westerners lived in sealed-off compounds with each other for company; they might not ever actually work with an Emirati. When they shopped they could buy familiar brands from back home at big western-style supermarkets. They could get fast food from a KFC or dine at an upmarket restaurant, just like in London, Paris, New York or Sydney.

  Consequently, it was possible for an expat to never actually meet and talk to the locals whose country they lived in. They were guest workers and it was largely an arm’s length arrangement.

  Not so in Al Ain. There were no grand shopping malls and giant supermarkets; life was on a more modest scale. The local shops were mostly small family concerns all in a row on the various street blocks of Al Ain, and that was where you bought your groceries, and your fruit and vegetables. Unusually, all the shops of a type were grouped together. There was the block for chemists, the block for tailors or for hardware or fabric shops and so on. Being a rural centre, you could get essentials for a farm, like hosepipes and drums of fertiliser. And when you went up the street you would be walking alongside the locals and sitting down to eat with them.

  In Dubai and Abu Dhabi the expats would tool around in late model four-wheel drives or a new European saloon. In Al Ain you were more likely to see locals turning up in an old ute with three or four baby camels in the rear, alongside the Range Rovers and Landcruisers of the now well-off Bedouin.

  Above all, Al Ain was a town for and by the people of the desert. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world, stretching back perhaps four thousand years. The Bedouin, who had not so long ago roamed the sands and made small settlements here and there, were now clustered together near town in houses provided by the government. It was part and parcel of the UAE’s transition away from the old desert culture and towards something more modern.

  That gave Al Ain the feel of a frontier town, a place where you lived by the traditional rules of the desert rather than the more homogenised ways of a big, westernised city.

  As an outpost town, Al Ain had been the launching pad for some of the great battles of Arab history, the place from which the ruling tribe had ridden off on their camels to repel tribal invaders from present-day Oman or Saudi Arabia. It was als
o a place that attracted its fair share of legendary characters, like the Eton-educated British adventurer Wilfred Thesiger, who crossed the vast expanse of the Empty Quarter by foot and camel with teams of young Bedouin Arabs in the 1940s and 1950s.

  Only days after I arrived I came face to face with one of the huge figures from my university days in the corner of the Hilton bar: it was none other than my ‘Zoo Vet’ hero David Taylor, the man whose books I had devoured as a young student and who had inspired me to pursue a big life with the animals of the wild. This was one of those surreal moments in life; the last time I had seen David Taylor’s face was on the cover of a book in my family home in Glenrowan, Victoria. I walked up and introduced myself.

  David Taylor, too, had been drawn to Al Ain because of the animals. He recounted how he had been hired as head consultant to redevelop the Al Ain zoo. The ruling family had ambitions to make the local zoo the biggest and best in the Middle East and had sought out David to help make it a showcase for the region. I couldn’t believe my luck.

  No matter what I did, it seemed I couldn’t escape wild things, and here they were on my doorstep. Al Ain’s zoo held the regular range of African animals—gorillas, lions, giraffes and tigers. Improbably, given the extreme heat of the Arab Gulf, it also had a collection of penguins. But it was also home to a selection of desert animals you wouldn’t necessarily find elsewhere, animals like the ibex and the oryx.

  I have a rule of thumb that if you land in a country you’ve never been to, go to the zoo and you’ll get a good idea of what’s going on. Maybe it’s a vet thing. Perhaps an accountant judges a country by how well it reconciles its ledgers, but I always believe you can judge a country by its zoos and the way it treats its animals. If you can’t look after your animals, you can’t look after your people.