New Experiences

I don't really know why, but when I flew to Abu Dhabi at the end of December 1970, I had to start on a solo basis. Arrival at the airport was reassuringly different than the hateful transits of Tripoli — the locals were polite and welcoming! There was a company compound beside the office which was beside the sea. There may have been 16 houses on it. One of them, a three-bedroom, was given over to bachelors. Initially I had one of the bedrooms, the other two being occupied by a dour young Frenchman and the other by an old Raj type who wandered about in voluminous khaki shorts. The house was called a "chummery" — the first of my "learnings"! Next evening I was invited to the Ops Manager's house for New Year's Eve where I became "First Footing". Of course, I was dark-haired then. But again, my first experience of this tradition.

The company was called Abu Dhabi Petroleum Company (ADPC) and was a "sister" of IPC, the Iraq Petroleum Company, which apparently had been of major benefit to the UK after the war by constructing major pipelines, ports and refineries in the Middle East with all contracts and workers coming from the homeland. There were about 25 expatriates and one Arab in the office. The Arab was a nice old fellow who wandered about in his dishdasha with two tiny cups and a silver Arabic coffee pot all day, offering the coffee as a ritual. Most of the more senior people had come down from Iraq, but the younger folk were direct hires from England, predominantly Oxbridge. As I was soon to discover, the bulk of the work was done in the field by a large number of Indians (skilled) and Baluchis (labourers). The currency was the Indian Rupee, the region was called the Trucial States, and the company vibe was very much "Raj". By the way, my salary was around Stg £1,400 a year, but the idea was that there was no living cost in Abu Dhabi so the salary was saveable!

Abu Dhabi town is on an island which was bridge-connected to the mainland. What was there? Mainly just sand. There was one blacktop road, recently constructed, which ran from the ADPC office to the airport and on to the bridge. The ruler, Sheikh Zayed, lived in an old mud-walled fort. There were two four-storey commercial buildings, two markets, two booze outlets, and the suq. There was also an apartment building where I was destined to get a flat, and some privately built houses. As more people were being brought into the town there was a real shortage of housing — probably the reason Liz could not travel out with me.

Apparently I was hired as a Drilling Engineer, so my job was in the desert. I believe we got there by flying to a company base along the coast about 45 minutes away, then Landrover through the sand dunes for about another hour to reach the area being actively drilled. In contrast to the flat desert of Libya this was a wholly different proposition — the dunes were large and grew larger as one slogged south into the Empty Quarter. It was dangerous, and people had died after their vehicles became stuck. Another stark contrast with Libya: where all my colleagues had been American and we had worked our arses off, now everyone was English and the slow pace of work was excruciating. They used to shut down the drilling rigs for afternoon tea — an absolute no-no for Mobil.

After a few rotations in the desert I was assigned an apartment and Liz came out. Another experience, setting up our first home without the normal family support. The real advantage of the location was that it was above one of the booze suppliers — I could just call the order down and up would come the delivery. Because of the Islamic ban on alcohol it was believed inappropriate to charge a tax on it, so a bottle of whiskey cost $1. Needless to say there was a significant amount of drinking. There were some six young couples in ADPC and a couple of others in service companies. In addition to frequent dinner parties there was frequent bridge playing and occasional tennis. One of the surprising things was the working hours — 7 to 2, six days a week with Friday off. It was said that the first GM of ADPC was a sailor who noticed that winds picked up in the afternoon, and so set the office hours to allow him to sail! Strangely, these hours became the standard for all government and commercial offices. And so I took up sailing at the weekends. There was actually a sailing club with a dozen or so dinghies.

Being away in the desert for weeks on end was trying for a newly married couple. One day Liz was dressed for a fancy-dress party and had a problem with her car. I had bought an Austin A40 from someone leaving — a piece of junk, but all that was available at the time. An Indian man, I think, offered to help her back to the apartment, but it turned out she had to fight off his advances. As a result she told the office I had to come in from the desert. I did, and took up a new job in the office. Sometime after that Liz took up a job with a Lebanese contractor named Joe who was larger than life and drove around the sands of Abu Dhabi in a monster Cadillac. And speaking of cars, I bought my first new car — a white MGBGT — which we picked up from the factory in England and drove back to Qatar. Crossing the Saudi desert from Syria was in itself a major undertaking, made somewhat unpleasant when, thirsty and covered in dust, we tried to cross into Saudi and the Saudis wouldn't let Liz step out of the car! At that, she said: you're never going to accept an assignment in Saudi Arabia. We got the car as far as Doha, Qatar, from where it had to go by local dhow — there being no road from Qatar to Abu Dhabi. A problem then arose because the Arab states had a boycott on BMC products. After a couple of months Joe somehow managed to get it shipped and imported. Later on I was in Houston, found a kit to air-condition the MG and managed to successfully fit it. Bliss.

Around about this time the company leased a number of houses and one, a two-bedroom, was allocated to us. It was called House X, just around the corner from the office and next to the little market. Once we had it organised, Liz's mum, sister and nephew came to stay. By this stage also, myself and two others had imported a speedboat, so we used to spend a lot of time on a nearby sand spit. We became exceptionally good waterskiers, but mostly it was a way of staying somewhat cool and drinking lots of beer. Mind you, there were some days it was so hot that it was impossible to touch the boat without getting burned, so we just stayed home.

By contrast, during our home vacations we did cool things like skiing in Austria and going by canal barge on the Shannon with the Sheridans. The barge carried a little sailboat which was fun to sail on the lakes. We also made a couple of visits to Beirut and south Lebanon, once visiting Joe's family in Sidon. A number of times we went on safari to the Indian Ocean by Landrover with friends. There were no roads and the track eventually led through the Oman mountains along spectacular gullies and ravines. I remember once we stopped for a break and a number of fully garbed women came up to Liz and touched her face and hands — they had never before seen a white person.

So, the first three or so years in Abu Dhabi were really new and exciting. Mostly English colleagues with a Raj overlay; witness to an amazing Bedouin culture; ability to travel to a variety of destinations; and a work environment which was less than demanding. No wonder my mother said: "Be sure you enjoy this unique experience, because it won't last." She was right.