Arabian dreams come to life
Arriving on these shores, Noorullah was a penniless teenager with little to his name. Yet, despite not being able to read or write, he is now a successful businessman, Anwar Ahmad reports
ABU DHABI // Noorullah Khan’s life was changed the day he set foot in Abu Dhabi.
The Afghan arrived in the capital aged 18, penniless and with little more than the clothes on his back. Fast forward three decades and he now runs a successful shop at the carpet market at Mina Zayed.
Now 51 years old, he has made a life for himself and his family – all the more remarkable for the fact he still cannot read or write. “The UAE has changed mine and my family’s lives, otherwise I was nobody. I loitered back home but my father motivated me to come to the UAE,” Mr Khan says.
“I thought I am uneducated, what would I do in the UAE? But this is the barakah ( blessing or bounty) of the UAE so that I earned what I never imagined.”
The businessman, who is fluent in Arabic, met Founding Father Sheikh Zayed, who bought carpets from his shop.
“Baba Zayed ( Father Zayed) used to visit the market about two to three times a year to buy carpets,” he says.
“Apart from buying our stuff he encouraged us a lot.”
Shopkeepers at the carpet market enjoy the comforts and conveniences of modern malls but it was not that way when Mr Khan set up shop with 47 other traders in a building made of wood and palm leaves. Air- conditioning was only installed after Sheikh Zayed ordered the market be renovated.
Life was tougher in the old days, says Mr Khan.
“When I landed here I didn’t have a single penny,” he says.
“Even the taxi fare of Dh10 was paid by a relative.
“I came to the UAE and joined my father’s business working on construction sites and earning some money. “Then he bought 10 carpets and started selling them from a wooden hut,” said the businessman, who now has more than 500 carpets from Turkey, Afghanistan and Belgium on sale in his shop, Al Noor Carpets.
Being illiterate was never a barrier to his success, says Mr Khan. “My elder brother and my father taught me to run the business and I hired a couple of people who were briefly educated to run the trade.
“Now my ambition is to provide a good education for my children.” The father of 14 children, aged between two and 22 years old, could not go to school because of war.
“I struggled a lot,” he says. “Now I don’t want my kids to suffer and go through the same.
“I regularly finance the expenses of my family and parents as they don’t have any source of income back home.
“God’s blessings are on the UAE so anybody who comes here can get a share of it. Now I consider the UAE my home.”
Despite malls springing up around the capital, Mr Khan still has regular customers who know where to find a bargain.
“A good carpet at the market can be Dh200, but a similar one would go for Dh500 in a shopping mall.”