“Awake! For morning in the Bowl of Night, has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight; And Lo! The Hunter of the East has caught the Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light”.
Omar Khayyam
Well, not quite a turret, but the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world at 828 metres high, took just over 5 years to build. Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill (SOM) of Chicago, it was built by Samsung C & T of South Korea. Dubai is the most populous city in the United Arab Emirates, embracing Islamic culture and heritage with spectacular modernity.
The skyscraper has a triple-lobed footprint, the “Y” format allowing maximum light and views for all those who live or work there as well as for those staying in the hotel or using either of the two swimming pools. The construction statistics are bewildering – for example, it holds the record height for pumping concrete of 601 metres. A more local example of SOM’s work can be found in the City of London: 10 Exchange Square (completed 2004), 201 Broadgate and the Broadgate Tower (completed 2009).
The height of Burj Khalifa is best appreciated from a distance - from the sea or perhaps from Port Rashid (Why? Please read on…). The noose of light picks out the uppermost parts of the structure, rising above the early morning mist and haze hovering above the city. Dubai was originally two towns, Deira and Bur Dubai, separated by the Dubai Creek . This, along with the Palm Islands and the World reclamation projects, combine to confirm Dubai’s reputation as the Venice of the Persian Gulf. One wonders what else can be seen in that same early morning Turneresque scene (or imagine the opening moments of Visconti’s film, Death in Venice, with the vaporetto gliding across the lagoon to the Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth Symphony).
Well, there are other iconic structures in the vicinity. The building that looks like a spinnaker – the Burj al Arab, a seven star hotel, is next to the Jumeirah Beach Hotel, with its wave shape design complementing that of its neighbour. [As a “local” aside, Robert Welch, the cutlery supplier to the Burj al Arab hotel, is based in the heart of the Cotswolds, in Chipping Campden].
What would the tent-maker have made of it? Yes, I know that Fitzgerald’s translation of the Rubyiat has been criticised for its departure from the original Persian, and yes, Omar Khayyam was Persian – but Iran is only a celestial hunter’s stone’s throw away and the Straits of Hormuz is a mere 54 kilometres wide (just over 33 miles – known as a choke point as 35% of the world’s seaborne oil passes through it) at its narrowest part, separating Dubai’s northern neighbour Oman from Iran, so it does not strain unduly the metaphor. Perhaps his: “Ah, make the most of what we yet may spend, Before we too into the Dust descend”.
Talking of tent-makers, in the Al- Fahaidi Fort (now a museum) in Dubai is a funnel-like tent (looking rather like a periscope) showing an early form of ventilation with an opening at the side at its top facing the direction of, and capturing, the wind, and causing it to flow down into the living quarters – rather like a wind scoop on a boat.
Back to Port Rashid, and there we find the former Cunard liner, RMS Queen Elizabeth 2, the QE2, still gracious, stately, but not going anywhere, the graceful catenary of its mooring ropes belying the forces of wind and tide. Now a floating hotel, guests can capture the essence of the last scheduled transatlantic crossing.
And with ships in mind, we join a caravan of the ships of the desert, camels cresting the dunes at twilight, and conjure up, Scherazade-like, a tale of an Arabian night - or Omar Khayyam’s reflection for the New Year:
“The Moving Finger writes: and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it”.
