Youssef Rakha nears the end of his Showtime subscription - and of his days in Abu Dhabi.
For some 24 hours now, every time I switch on my television, a message takes up three quarters of the screen: my Showtime subscription has expired. If I do not renew it immediately - so the white-on-grey writing tells me, in no uncertain terms - the service will be discontinued in five days. Five days, I cogitate: Why should this be happening exactly 45 days before I am due to leave the country? It is as if some incredibly ironic force is timing things so that, having decided to leave Abu Dhabi, I must go through the traditional Egyptian mourning period of 40 days, whether I like it or not.
It does not matter whether you are Muslim or Christian, so long as you are Egyptian: the Arbaein (or, literally: the Fortieth) is strictly observed. When someone dies, that person's family and friends are supposed to grieve for 40 days, after which a ceremony marks the point when they finally let go of their loved one. Afterwards, instead of "May your life give you solace," people start saying "May you live and remember." But in the meantime, no festivities can take place; if a wedding has been scheduled, the wedding has to be postponed. Often - whether out of respect, ill humour or moroseness - people also refrain from switching on their TVs.
I am thinking that perhaps, by depriving me of Showtime, Abu Dhabi is asking me to mourn it - or, more precisely, to mourn the person I have been while living here. After all, in the course of the last 24 hours, during which I kick-started the pre-departure procedures at work and at my bank, that person (my Abu Dhabi avatar) more or less officially died. And my finances and professional schedules being what they are - among other things, I have a lot of reading to do for outstanding books reviews - I will not renew my subscription. Mourning, then, my last 40 days shall be.
Yet there is a cheerier way of reading the situation: I have been released of my bondage to the screen. For nearly a year now the television has been on in my living quarters far more frequently than I ever thought possible. I am hard pressed to say whether this is directly related to Abu Dhabi, but the person I was before I came here (my Cairo avatar) hated television. AD-me is a TV addict; C-me is not. So it startled me to hear my Ethiopian cleaning woman remark, on meeting AD-me at the beginning of the end of his lifetime, that I do not watch enough TV. She didn't seem to appreciate that I spend more time with Jerry Seinfeld, John Stewart, Mitchell and Webb and the cast of Married with Children than with real people.
Elena entered my life through my preferred Ethiopian Jebena coffee shop, a few steps away from my apartment. This was several weeks after the great Senthil - my podgy Tamil bellboy from the Ramee Garden who, after I found my apartment, I hired to be my indispensable purveyor of general order - went home to Madras, where he has ended up staying far longer than he said he would. (Will he ever come back? I doubt it.)
I did what I could in his absence, "could" being a euphemism for "could be bothered to do". When the disorder became unbearable, I began to ask my Ethiopian waitress friends over Jebena if they could introduce me to someone who would "sawwi tandhif," as I said in pidgin Arabic: do cleaning. Enter - eventually - Elena the Eritrean:
Reticent, efficient, spick-and-span and outwardly severe, Elena comes and goes under the cover of an Emirati abaya heavily scented with Arabian aromatic oil, which she takes off to work, revealing a T-shirt and sweat pants. Sometimes, if she is not in too much of a hurry and I have asked her enough times, she takes a TV break, drinking Nescafé while I sip my Turkish coffee (which she deems so inferior to Jebena that she brings her own instant coffee along) and telling me a little about her life and TV preferences.
I suppose it is only natural, given how the television is always on at Ethiopian cafes and homes, that Elena finds my television watching insufficient. But she also takes issue with my preference for comedy channels, regards Family Guy as just another children's cartoon and once told me that she sees action and horror as the only genres worth exploring. This suggested to me that she was far less severe than she seemed, and I rushed for the remote control, but Fox Movies had neither Alien vs. Predator nor I, Robot - two films that channel seems to show on a loop and I thought she would like - and ShowMovies Action was showing a mawkish 1970s number in which the monster, as Elena pointed out with a pitying smile, looked like a blow-up toy.
In the end, AD-me switched back to Family Guy, and Elena left the room.
That night, C-me appeared in my dream. He was a sort of superhero hunting down his double, whom he identified simply as "my TV twin" (as in "where is that renegade TV twin of mine?"). The chase was like an action film and a horror film in one, complete with video-game sound effects and sudden shifts of viewpoint. The double, whom I knew to be AD-me, never appeared until the very end when he fought C-me in a laser-beam duel on what looked like the roof of the Hilton Baynunah. AD-me was about to lose irrevocably when he leapt from the roof, held onto the rampart and cried out: "Eleeenaaaa!"
An Ethiopian-looking, black-clad superwoman flew onto the scene holding a silver shield that kept C-me's beams in check while AD-me recovered to fight another day (or, more accurately, another five days); "I told you," the superwoman kept telling the panting, all-but-vanquished, cartoon-loving survivor. "I told you to watch more action movies."
yrakha@thenational.ae
Singham Again
Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
Rating: 3/5
Joker: Folie a Deux
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Todd Phillips
Rating: 2/5
COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
The specs
Engine: 3.9-litre twin-turbo V8
Power: 620hp from 5,750-7,500rpm
Torque: 760Nm from 3,000-5,750rpm
Transmission: Eight-speed dual-clutch auto
On sale: Now
Price: From Dh1.05 million ($286,000)
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Navdeep Suri, India's Ambassador to the UAE
There has been a longstanding need from the Indian community to have a religious premises where they can practise their beliefs. Currently there is a very, very small temple in Bur Dubai and the community has outgrown this. So this will be a major temple and open to all denominations and a place should reflect India’s diversity.
It fits so well into the UAE’s own commitment to tolerance and pluralism and coming in the year of tolerance gives it that extra dimension.
What we will see on April 20 is the foundation ceremony and we expect a pretty broad cross section of the Indian community to be present, both from the UAE and abroad. The Hindu group that is building the temple will have their holiest leader attending – and we expect very senior representation from the leadership of the UAE.
When the designs were taken to the leadership, there were two clear options. There was a New Jersey model with a rectangular structure with the temple recessed inside so it was not too visible from the outside and another was the Neasden temple in London with the spires in its classical shape. And they said: look we said we wanted a temple so it should look like a temple. So this should be a classical style temple in all its glory.
It is beautifully located - 30 minutes outside of Abu Dhabi and barely 45 minutes to Dubai so it serves the needs of both communities.
This is going to be the big temple where I expect people to come from across the country at major festivals and occasions.
It is hugely important – it will take a couple of years to complete given the scale. It is going to be remarkable and will contribute something not just to the landscape in terms of visual architecture but also to the ethos. Here will be a real representation of UAE’s pluralism.
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
The biog
Name: Maitha Qambar
Age: 24
Emirate: Abu Dhabi
Education: Master’s Degree
Favourite hobby: Reading
She says: “Everyone has a purpose in life and everyone learns from their experiences”
Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5
Jigra
Starring: Alia Bhatt, Vedang Raina, Manoj Pahwa, Harsh Singh
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
Company%20Profile
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COMPANY PROFILE
Founders: Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Maximo Tettamanzi
Total funding: Self funded
Tree of Hell
Starring: Raed Zeno, Hadi Awada, Dr Mohammad Abdalla
Director: Raed Zeno
Rating: 4/5
TRAP
Starring: Josh Hartnett, Saleka Shyamalan, Ariel Donaghue
Director: M Night Shyamalan
Rating: 3/5
APPLE IPAD MINI (A17 PRO)
Display: 21cm Liquid Retina Display, 2266 x 1488, 326ppi, 500 nits
Chip: Apple A17 Pro, 6-core CPU, 5-core GPU, 16-core Neural Engine
Storage: 128/256/512GB
Main camera: 12MP wide, f/1.8, digital zoom up to 5x, Smart HDR 4
Front camera: 12MP ultra-wide, f/2.4, Smart HDR 4, full-HD @ 25/30/60fps
Biometrics: Touch ID, Face ID
Colours: Blue, purple, space grey, starlight
In the box: iPad mini, USB-C cable, 20W USB-C power adapter
Price: From Dh2,099
Thank You for Banking with Us
Director: Laila Abbas
Starring: Yasmine Al Massri, Clara Khoury, Kamel El Basha, Ashraf Barhoum
Rating: 4/5
Our legal consultant
Name: Dr Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
How to protect yourself when air quality drops
Install an air filter in your home.
Close your windows and turn on the AC.
Shower or bath after being outside.
Wear a face mask.
Stay indoors when conditions are particularly poor.
If driving, turn your engine off when stationary.
More from Armen Sarkissian
Squads
Pakistan: Sarfaraz Ahmed (c), Babar Azam (vc), Abid Ali, Asif Ali, Fakhar Zaman, Haris Sohail, Mohammad Hasnain, Iftikhar Ahmed, Imad Wasim, Mohammad Amir, Mohammad Nawaz, Mohammad Rizwan, Shadab Khan, Usman Shinwari, Wahab Riaz
Sri Lanka: Lahiru Thirimanne (c), Danushka Gunathilaka, Sadeera Samarawickrama, Avishka Fernando, Oshada Fernando, Shehan Jayasuriya, Dasun Shanaka, Minod Bhanuka, Angelo Perera, Wanindu Hasaranga, Lakshan Sandakan, Nuwan Pradeep, Isuru Udana, Kasun Rajitha, Lahiru Kumara
Earth under attack: Cosmic impacts throughout history
- 4.5 billion years ago: Mars-sized object smashes into the newly-formed Earth, creating debris that coalesces to form the Moon
- 66 million years ago: 10km-wide asteroid crashes into the Gulf of Mexico, wiping out over 70 per cent of living species – including the dinosaurs.
- 50,000 years ago: 50m-wide iron meteor crashes in Arizona with the violence of 10 megatonne hydrogen bomb, creating the famous 1.2km-wide Barringer Crater
- 1490: Meteor storm over Shansi Province, north-east China when large stones “fell like rain”, reportedly leading to thousands of deaths.
- 1908: 100-metre meteor from the Taurid Complex explodes near the Tunguska river in Siberia with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima-type bombs, devastating 2,000 square kilometres of forest.
- 1998: Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 breaks apart and crashes into Jupiter in series of impacts that would have annihilated life on Earth.
-2013: 10,000-tonne meteor burns up over the southern Urals region of Russia, releasing a pressure blast and flash that left over 1600 people injured.
'The Sky is Everywhere'
Director:Josephine Decker
Stars:Grace Kaufman, Pico Alexander, Jacques Colimon
Rating:2/5
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
Result
Crystal Palace 0 Manchester City 2
Man City: Jesus (39), David Silva (41)
Company%20Profile
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Building boom turning to bust as Turkey's economy slows
Deep in a provincial region of northwestern Turkey, it looks like a mirage - hundreds of luxury houses built in neat rows, their pointed towers somewhere between French chateau and Disney castle.
Meant to provide luxurious accommodations for foreign buyers, the houses are however standing empty in what is anything but a fairytale for their investors.
The ambitious development has been hit by regional turmoil as well as the slump in the Turkish construction industry - a key sector - as the country's economy heads towards what could be a hard landing in an intensifying downturn.
After a long period of solid growth, Turkey's economy contracted 1.1 per cent in the third quarter, and many economists expect it will enter into recession this year.
The country has been hit by high inflation and a currency crisis in August. The lira lost 28 per cent of its value against the dollar in 2018 and markets are still unconvinced by the readiness of the government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to tackle underlying economic issues.
The villas close to the town centre of Mudurnu in the Bolu region are intended to resemble European architecture and are part of the Sarot Group's Burj Al Babas project.
But the development of 732 villas and a shopping centre - which began in 2014 - is now in limbo as Sarot Group has sought bankruptcy protection.
It is one of hundreds of Turkish companies that have done so as they seek cover from creditors and to restructure their debts.