UAQ’s old town pays the price of progress
▶ Redevelopment to encourage tourism in one of the UAE’s cheapest areas has its downside for foreign residents
Abdulla Kamaluddin’s house was once at the centre of a crowded quarter of Umm Al Quwain’s old town. For a while it stood alone, the land around it flattened.
Redevelopment of the area has begun with hundreds of homes set for demolition. His was the last house standing in the eastern quarter, and was due to be pulled down yesterday.
“We are already packed,” Mr Kamaluddin, 18, who works at his father’s metalworks company, said last week. “We are waiting.”
UAQ’s old city is a derelict but charming place of oleander and jasmine, littered lanes, chicken and pigeon coops, rusted satellite dishes and streetside couches where neighbours sit in the late afternoon.
Its redevelopment is part of a push for modernisation in UAQ, which has a population of about 80,000 and accounts for less than 2 per cent of national gross domestic product.
The downtown has new government buildings, a mall under construction and a Starbucks that stays empty as people head to coffee houses overlooking the sea.
Development has shifted inland over the years. Emirati families have left the coastal towns for desert suburbs such as Al Ramlah and Al Salamah, growing residential communities on either side of the E11.
The old town’s one-storey courtyard houses were built in the 1970s and ’80s, and are rented by low-income families who pay as little as Dh1,000 a month. It is one of the cheapest places to rent in the country.
Although its homes are regarded as temporary, some foreign families have lived there for generations.
The eastern quarter is the first to be demolished. Mr Kamaluddin’s father bought his house after he arrived from India, 40 years ago. They were told of the decision five months ago, and the family will be compensated with property elsewhere.
“My friends are here and my childhood is here,” Mr Kamaluddin said. “So every one of us is a little bit lost.”
The old town is at the tip of a peninsula, surrounded by sea and mangroves. Some residents said it would be turned into hotels, others into developments that would rival the Dubai Marina.
The UAQ Municipality and the Executive Council declined to comment.
In 2011, the UAQ government launched a diversification strategy centred on tourism. The old town’s heritage buildings include the 18th century museum and coral-stone buildings, which will be conserved in the redevelopment.
Residents are resigned when asked about their own future.
“I’m not a citizen of the country,” said Gulam Rasool, 57, who shares a house with 20 family members, including children and grandchildren. He has lived there for 45 years.
Not everyone is content. Wherever people move, rent will rise.
“I’ve lived here 31 years,” said Abdulkarem Miah, 48, a labourer from Bangladesh. “There were Arabs here first. Then there were the poor.”
Mr Miah and his brothers moved into the house this year when their last residence was demolished. Humble decorations make it into a home. Vines shade the courtyard. A bed’s mirror headboard and prayer mat are fixed to its outside wall for decoration.
“If you lived anywhere else for five or 10 or 20 years – Europe, Canada, Australia – you’d have citizenship,” Mr Miah said. “I do not. I should have citizenship but in the UAE, no.”
He will move again when demolition reaches this quarter. Souq shopkeepers expect demolition but “we don’t know when it will happen”, said Mohammed Ahmed, a general store owner in the old souq.
Mr Ahmed has been clearing out stock since his father died four years ago. He sits at his father’s desk surrounded by stock such as bottles of washing-up liquid, boxes of crisps, toothbrushes, tea, sickles and brooms made of date frond.
He shows no nostalgia. After all, even the old town was once new. About 200 years ago, people moved there from Al Sinniyah Island after the fresh water ran out. A fort was built in 1768 and the town grew around it.
“Praise be to God. God is all knowing and work goes on,” said Saif Awwad, an Emirati in his 50s who was born and raised in the neighbourhood.
“If the houses are torn down, God will provide.”