Abu Dhabi: Mosque, Jump Shots & Superstitions

A week after playing tourist in my new home city of Dubai on a hop-on-hop-off tour bus, I decided to check out Abu Dhabi itself. I couldn’t think of a better day to visit the capital city than over U.A.E.’s 44th National Holiday weekend.

Over a hundred kilometres of golden desert sand separates the cities of Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

A rest area, you say? Yes please

For someone born and bred in an archipelago, long drives still hold a certain fascination for me. After all, you can only drive so far in Cebu before hitting a watery dead end.

The 2-hour-ish drive was a cheerful one. My well-informed driver doubled as a tour guide and pointed out the roads to Yas Island, Oman, and even Saudi Arabia (2,000+ kilometres away — yikes!)

I made a super quick (pun intended) stop to Yas Island’s Yas Mall and Ferrari World.

Desert? What desert?

Tickets to the theme park, famous for housing the world’s fastest roller coaster, sold for a whopping AED 500+ (Gold entry) and AED 200+ (Bronze entry). With only less than 2 weeks’ worth of salary in my battered satchel, Ferrari World would have to wait. Still, there were plenty enough free photo opportunities in the generous stretch from the park’s grand entrance to the ticket booth inside Yas Mall.

Reminds me of the old Fita commercial: “Sports car! ‘Yung red!”

From Yas Island, I headed straight for the skyscraper-filled streets of Abu Dhabi. With less than 3 hours of daylight left, I grabbed a quick lunch at the Marina Mall and admired the Marina Eye from the worm’s eye view (translation: for free).

I rode straight towards the one place in the whole of the Emirates I dreamed of seeing: the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.

With its domes and turrets carved completely out of white marble and plated with gold, the Grand Mosque is arguably one of the best examples of modern Islamic architecture. It boasts the world’s single largest carpet from Iran and the third largest chandelier from Germany.

The Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque is named after the late father of the current President of the U.A.E. And it isn’t called grand for nothing — it is the biggest mosque in the entire Emirates and the central place of worship during the Eid.

It also just so happened to be my first mosque visit ever. I was smitten! And because smitten people often do very stupid things, I made my travel companion take a shizload of jump shots…

…which consequently got us in trouble with the security. I was belatedly informed that jump shots were prohibited because:

1. I was in a traditional black abaya (mosque orders).

2. I was not allowed to show my hair within mosque premises.

3. I was not allowed to raise my hands in photos (who knew?)

I apologized halfheartedly and ducked into the crowd headed towards the prayer room proper. Said prayer room treated pilgrims and tourists alike with its world-famous carpet and chandeliers. The qibla (the wall facing the holy city of Mecca) was inscribed with Allah’s 99 names and the 96 columns were embedded with mother of pearls.

From the intricately carved ceilings to the magical carpet (which didn’t fly, of course, but still took 2 whole years to complete), I felt as though I plunged into a museum masterpiece. It was surreal!

On the way back, I chanced upon a conversation between a father and a son. The boy was no older than 5, with a head as full of blond curls as it was of childish curiosity. Shortly after the father tried to explain what a mosque was, I heard the boy speculate, “So it’s like a church, right?” Allah bless the little children! If there’s one thing I miss about teaching, it’s the way a child-like mind works (and how frustrating it was for me that many high schoolers who still ought to possess this quality failed to apply it!) This little boy performed the classic learning technique of associating his pre-existing idea of a church with that of a new idea of a mosque.

The final stop was Al Ain, another long drive from Abu Dhabi. It was already dark by the time I got there, and it took a good half hour of driving around and asking at least 10 locals for directions to Jebel Hafeet.

And this is where things take a turn for the weird. There was a huge traffic jam headed down from Jebel Hafeet, while the road headed up was empty and blocked by a police patrol. The two policemen told me, my driver-slash-tour-guide, and my travel companion that there was heavy traffic up the mountain road (Jebel Hafeet is the second tallest point in the U.A.E., thanks Google.ae), and they wouldn’t let anyone through for another 4 hours. An unlikely story at best, considering that there’s been a hushed-up paranoia sweeping the nearby cities after the recent Paris attack. Well, we couldn’t do anything but head straight back home for Dubai.

The weird turn of the story makes a sharp swerve for the creepy: When I reached home, I found my two new fishes (which I bought with my first salary) dead in their murky-watered fish bowl. Okay, before you accuse me of pet owner neglect, you should know that I only bought those fishes the night before, changed their water (bottled drinking water too) the night before, and fed them seconds before I left for Abu Dhabi that morning. They were FINE. They were swimming happily when I left them and their water was clear, but by the time I got home, the water was milky and they were dead. I couldn’t even look at them anymore.

There’s an old superstition that goes that pets often serve as buffers for when bad luck is about to hit you. Maybe, just maybe, something bad would have happened to us had we pushed on for Jebel Hafeet. It is notorious for its dangerous narrow roads and adrenaline-addicted drivers. In fact, my travel companion later revealed (after helping me clean the fish-bowl-turned-tomb), that on her last visit to Jebel Hafeet, she saw a car hanging over the edge of the road. She never found out what happened to its occupants.