Cotton comes a-calling in Dubai

Thinking of starting a cotton cottage industry in Dubai?

I have just the place and plant for you in the beautiful residential area of Jumeirah.

One of the many pleasures and advantages of walking a dog is to observe the plants, flowers and nature in general along the way in all seasons.

Admittedly, the seasons in Dubai are muddled, with no spring or fall and a warm and short winter. Still, the natural word follows its own rhythm.

My Habibi, Kenzo

Due to work hours, I only walk my friends’ dog on Friday evenings these days. It is an hour walk I treasure for the time spent with the “little one” and the time we share one-on-one outdoors. You can meet “Habibi of Dubai” in a post I wrote a couple of years ago.

It is on one of these walks a couple of months ago that I spotted a strange shrub with some yellow-whitish flowers. A few weeks later, the flowers had disappeared and were replaced with large bolls. This kindled my curiosity further.

I kept passing by this shrub, mingled with other bushes, to see how it was developing.

A couple of weeks ago, the bolls had opened to reveal cotton!

Cottonseeds are usually planted in the spring, and I don’t know how these landed on the side of a villa’s fence, across from the road.

The flower buds take about three weeks to come out. The plant, like this one, grows between two and five feet tall.

When the flower dries and falls off, the boll -- or seedpod -- is formed.  Each branch of the cotton plant might grow several bolls. Inside the seedpod, there are 20-40 seeds plus white fibers. When the pod dries and splits open, the fibers and seeds are ready to pick. 

Cotton, the soft, fluffy staple fiber grows in a boll, or protective capsule, around the seeds of cotton plants of the genus Gossypium. The fiber is almost pure cellulose.

Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.

The English name derives from the Arabic qutn قُطْن, which began to be used circa 1400 CE. The Spanish word, "algodón," is likewise derived from Arabic.

The use of cotton for fabric is known to date back to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated from 5000 BCE were excavated in Mexico and the Indus Valley Civilization (modern day Pakistan).

Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that so lowered the cost of production and led to its widespread use.

It is the natural fiber textile that is most widely used in clothing today.

China is the world's largest cotton producer, but most of this is used domestically. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.

The Greeks and Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great. His contemporary, Megasthenes, told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica."

So how about it? Shall we start a cottage cotton industry in Jumeirah?

Sleeping rough on the beach in Dubai

One of my worst nightmares is not to have a roof over my head and not to have a home to return to every night.

I was therefore in shock to find out a couple of weeks ago, purely by chance, that one of my friends had been sleeping rough on a beach in Jumeirah for the past four months.

It is a testimony to her dignity, resilience, good nature and strength that I, and the rest of her friends, didn’t know about her predicament and experience. Most of them still don’t.

My friend -- who I shall call Eva to protect her privacy -- only told me when she was preparing to move to a studio and I got curious about why she was leaving her current lodgings.

Although a common friend and I begged her to stay with either of us, she refused, saying she did not want to inconvenience anyone.

After a couple of months in a new job, Eva last week moved to a studio.

My friend used to live in Abu Dhabi and work at a restaurant in Dubai. After a failed relationship there and the restaurant closing down (fortunately the visa was extended until she could find a new job), she moved to Dubai with little funds.

She had to put her belongings in storage, which is quite expensive.What little money she had left was invested on renting a car, which would become her home.

Because she had two cats, she decided the best place to park for the night would be opposite one of Jumeirah’s free beaches. That became her “camping site,” as Eva puts it.

The first couple of weeks were difficult, she told me. She had to get some kind of system going.

First was getting the immediate neighborhood used to the sight of her in the car.Then actually sleeping in the car – Eva, a mother and grandmother, is a big woman who had to practically twist three ways in her little Hyundai.

In November (2012) it was lots of fun, Eva told me. The weather still being hot in Dubai, it was easier to cope. “It was a new experience. I treated it as a camping holiday. I would wake up at sunrise, go for a run, roller skate, swim, sit and read on the beach while all the time searching the Internet for a job.”

She says she never felt better or fitter and switched her diet to raw food.

The neighbors, or rather those who were awake at sunrise – mostly drivers, cleaners, and housemaids walking dogs… -- got to know the newcomer. As did the police patrols.

It is a tribute to Dubai Police that they never bothered Eva and seemed to adopt her and keep an eye on her.

At first, they did stop to ask what she was doing. They checked her papers and found them in order. She told them she was looking for a job, then had found a job and was saving up for accommodation.

Once Police knew there was no wrongdoing, they left her in peace and kept looking after her.

She was only once woken up by a new patrol because she had left her car window open. They knocked at the car window panel, and after making sure she was alone in the car, heard the story and moved on.

She has only words of praise for the men in uniform who she cannot thank enough for their understanding, support and protection.

Eva, who slept quite early, says what was most awkward were people peering into the car windows, mostly because of her two cats sleeping in the back window ledge. But she got used to it and would just shut her eyes and drift off.

Another problem to solve while sleeping rough was where to wash and do laundry. Luckily, most weekends she could visit friends in Abu Dhabi and do her machine or pass by a friend with a load full with some excuse or another.

The public showers on the Jumeirah free beaches were also a great convenience as were the mall washrooms. All the mall security personnel got to know their early morning visitor and became friendly too.

I remember when we got together and mentioned the weather, she was always concerned about the night temperature, especially in January when it was quite cold after sunset. I would tell her I didn't care about the temperature at night, as I would be at home!

Her concern made sense later, and I feel so guilty now. It was cold sleeping in the car.

Another indicator I didn't catch was when one day we were out and a friend asked Eva for a lift home. She said there was no place in the car. I had noticed clothes hanging in the back and lot of things in the front seat. But...

Eva, who found a job in December, moved into her studio last week. She misses the fresh air of the beach but is happy to now sleep straight and have a bathroom of her own.

In the past four months, I never saw her rumpled, in the same clothes twice, depressed, bitter or not her usual joyful self.

I tip my hat to her, bow deeply and wish her all the luck.

Olds Classic cools its wheels in Dubai

The Classic "Olds"

You probably know by now how hopeless I am with cars, that I don’t enjoy driving and I am not a good passenger either. But a Classic is something else!

This Classic beauty came to rest on Jumeirah Beach Road in Dubai recently. Always parked in the same spot, I’ve been passing it for a couple of weeks. I finally stopped, had a close look and took some pictures. That’s when I discovered it was an Oldsmobile “Ninety Eight.” A lot of reading followed.

Ransom E. Olds (via Wikipedia)

Oldsmobile, founded by Ransom E. Olds in 1897, was a brand of American cars produced for most of its existence by General Motors (GM). In 1901, the company produced 425 cars, making it the first high-volume gasoline-powered automobile manufacturer. In its 107-year history, it rolled out 35.2 million cars. When it was phased out in 2004, Oldsmobile was the oldest surviving American automobile trademark, and one of the oldest in the world, after Daimler and Peugeot. Oldsmobile's discontinuation presaged a larger consolidation of GM's brands during their bankruptcy reorganization in 2009.

Officially, the cars were called “Oldsmobile automobiles,” colloquially referred to as "Oldsmobiles," popularized in the lyrics and title of the 1905 hit song “My Merry Oldsmobile.”

The Oldsmobile “Ninety-Eight,” like the one on Jumeirah Beach Road, was a full-size automobile and the flagship of GM’s Oldsmobile division. The name first appeared in 1941 and was used again after American consumer automobile production resumed post World War II. As far as I could gather from my reading of different sites and comparing the Dubai Classic Oldsmobile with other models in pictures, my guess is that it probably dates to around 1959, although the model was introduced 10 years earlier.

In 1949, several months into the model year, GM launched three highly styled "hardtop convertible" coupés, the first of their type to be offered on a regular production basis. The Oldsmobile version, called “Holiday,” was exclusive to the “Ninety-Eight” series that year. Available in four special “Holiday” colors, as well as four two-tone combinations, like the Jumeirah Classic, it was priced the same as the convertible, and was similarly equipped, with hydraulically operated windows and seat. In 1950, for one year only, Oldsmobile added a four-door fastback to the lineup, which they called “Town Sedan."

In 1959, Oldsmobile models were completely redesigned with a rocket motif from front to rear, as the top of the front fenders had a chrome rocket, while the body-length fins were shaped as rocket exhausts that culminated in a fin-top taillight (concave on the “Ninety-Eight” models, but convex on the “Eight-Eight” models). This is probably one of them.

Is this the 1959 "Linear Look" model?

The 1959 models were marketed as the “Linear Look.” They featured a bar-graph speedometer that showed a green indicator through 35 miles per hour (56 km/h); changed to orange until 65 miles per hour (105 km/h); was red above that until the highest speed read by the speedometer, 120 miles per hour (190 km/h). Power windows were available on the “Ninety-Eight” models, as was two-speed electric windshield wipers with electrically powered windshield washers. The 1959 Oldsmobiles were offered with "Autronic Eye" (a dashboard-mounted automatic headlight dimmer) as well as factory-installed air-conditioning -- convenient for Dubai -- and power-operated front bench seat as available options.

Who owned this car before it landed in Dubai? Who were its previous owners? What stories does it have to tell? Who’s the current lucky driver? Maybe I’ll see him/her one day and stop to hear the story.