Refined living

Rosemary Behan

• Last Updated: May 29. 2008 11:55PM UAE / May 29. 2008 7:55PM GMT

We and the moon are neighbors: Hashem Othman, who teaches English at the refinery in Ruwais, stands on the stage of the recreation centre’s empty theatre. “I love classical music and I am always hunting for concerts. There is none of that here.” Lauren Lancaster / The National

The sound of Fairouz is depressing at any time of the day or night, but Hashem Othman’s impromptu performance in the theatre of the Ruwais Housing Complex recreation centre is particularly sad. Mostly it is down to the treatment of the grand piano and the emptiness of the theatre. Squashed into a corner beside the stage, the piano looks like an abandoned piece of second-hand furniture. There is no space for a chair, so Othman crouches awkwardly over the keyboard. The sound he delivers is beautiful and passionate, and Othman’s eyes sparkle as he plays. But it is also fittingly melancholic, because Ruwais is not a passionate place.

The Ruwais Housing Complex is a privately-owned, self-contained community of 10,000 people, 240 kilometres west of Abu Dhabi off Highway 11. It houses staff who work at the Ruwais Industrial Complex – the UAE’s largest oil and gas refinery – and plastics and fertiliser plants belonging to subsidiaries of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc) including Takreer, Gasco, Borouge, Fertil and Irshad.

The most surprising thing about Ruwais is how few people know about it. Amid the gleaming towers and cosmopolitan beaches of the UAE’s capital, it is easy to forget the stark industrial landscape which lies in the emirate’s hinterland – the machinery of petroleum extraction and production that finances the ambitious plans of Abu Dhabi.

The oil refinery is visible for miles around and is surrounded by dust, sand, grit and electricity pylons. Yet inside the housing complex seven kilometres away workers live in a parallel universe. The approach drive is lined with trees, flowers and grassed lawns. Large blocks of stylish 1980s villas are arranged off a scattering of well-cultivated roundabouts and there are several shops, mosques, supermarkets, banks, a post office, schools, a fire station, recreation centre and a clinic.

But despite the laying-on of all necessary services, something is missing. The town’s central plaza, a striking concrete square containing offices, apartments and shops, is spookily quiet. With its overhead pedestrian walkways and stairwells, it has all the charm of a south London housing estate. The recreation centre is the cultural hub. Apart from the theatre, there is a cinema, billiards rooms, tennis courts, a bowling alley, a library, a gym and a couple of restaurants. In a beige-brown corridor, Othman, 50, continues his lament. “It doesn’t suit me here,” he says. “Look how they treat this instrument. Look how it is dumped here. They don’t know the value of these things.”

Until we entered, the door to the theatre was chained and padlocked. A dim half-light illuminated the dark brown seating and it was hard to imagine shows ever taking place. At the cinema on the opposite side of the hallway, a single film is shown each night at 8pm, in similarly musty surroundings. At the Cinema Cafe next door, a 1970s-style confectionery counter dispenses chocolate bars and cups of coffee at decades-old prices.

Othman, who is from Beirut, has taught English to employees of the refinery for the past five years. He arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1987 and worked for the Ministry of Education before teaching at the Adnoc Technical Institute and Abu Dhabi University. Like many people in the UAE, Othman’s main motivation is to earn money for his family – and to buy a house to retire to in Lebanon. He is soft-spoken and politely humorous, and his hopes for his 17-year-old son are palpable. “I hate to say it but my son is brilliant. He is going to university in Canada in June. He will do a BSc in mechanical engineering, and then, hopefully, a PhD – he needs money.”

Othman he gives me a teacher-like overview of his responsibilities teaching at the refinery: general English, technical English, report and letter-writing and oral skills. He has a subsidised apartment at the complex, but his wife and son live in Abu Dhabi, where he returns at weekends. “I can’t ask them to move here because my son is at school in Abu Dhabi,” he says. “This is a good place only for work. Occasionally I use the library to mark assignments and sometimes I go upstairs to play billiards, but I love classical music and I am always hunting for concerts. There is none of that here.”

Along the beige-brown corridor is the small, brown-coloured library with yellowing light and a sparse rationing of books. The English-language section is taken up mainly with dog-eared airport novels by Patricia Cornwell and Ruth Rendell, although Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Jane Austen’s Emma sit alongside multiple copies of the Sweet Valley High series.

The streets of Ruwais are empty and eerily silent. Inside the recreation centre I meet a group of disgruntled young Emiratis on a Gasco training course. Sweidan Ahmed, a 25-year-old from Al Ain, says: “Life here is bad. There is nothing here. Nobody is happy because we are outside the city. I work 12 long, boring hours and then come home to sleep. I want to be near Abu Dhabi because it’s the same people here, the same faces. Nothing changes.”

In growth terms, Ruwais is a success story. It has been constantly expanding since it first opened in 1982. According to the Ruwais Housing Division, there are now 2,193 housing units of which 1,981 are villas and apartments for families; the rest are so-called “bachelor” flats. The units house people from 44 different nationalities; each is identified by a separate code number and allocated according to people’s marital status and number of children. The perimeter wall is guarded by three checkpoints and an on-site security guard has a master key to every property.

The complex is remarkably self-sufficient. Announcements are made via its own TV and radio station and a large nursery cultivates a staggering 12,000 varieties of plants. In all there are 33,000 trees and some 225,000 shrubs; there are also children’s parks, a garage and a man-made pond with ducks in it. Over 2,500 children attend 14 schools and an internal bus service serves 50 stops.

And it is set to get bigger. The complex is surrounded by building sites urgently trying to accommodate Adnoc’s plans to double the capacity of the Ruwais refinery to 800,000 barrels of oil a day by 2013. Soon it will have a new shopping mall and its own slaughterhouse. By 2010, there will be over 6,000 housing units and there is currently a waiting list for people wanting to be housed there. Just outside the western edge of the complex, on a flat, dusty plain, hundreds of Asian construction workers are fenced into their own, far less salubrious living environment – a ramshackle collection of dwellings surrounded by a sturdy barbed-wire fence.

Some people seem to enjoy living in Ruwais. Faisal Abri, 50, from Mombasa, Kenya, who works as a safety officer for Gasco, has lived at the complex for 15 years. A father of four, Mr Abri says Ruwais is “Better than anything anywhere in the world. Sometimes I ask my family if they want to go to Abu Dhabi and they say ‘Why? All facilities are here’. We have everything we need and it is all free. My son was born here and my children were educated here. We have a three bedroom villa and free tickets home. It is safe and clean. I will stay here as long as possible.”

Similarly content is Mohammed Salem al Hajari, a 26-year-old father of three who is the compound’s security shift leader. He has lived here for five years in a bachelor apartment; his wife and children will shortly join him in a villa. “It’s good here,” he says, smiling. “There are a lot of different nationalities and I’ve made a lot of new friends.”

but for some the tranquil environment envisioned by the architects and planners at Ruwais is a nightmare. Axel Mantey and his wife Melanie, who arrived from Munich with their three-year-old son Leon on a three-year contract with Borouge last year, are leaving early. Mantey, 35, says he had already resigned and planned to move the family back to Germany in July. Despite their well-designed, spacious villa, with verandas, gardens and a covered garage, Mr Mantey says: “It’s boring here and we are happy to leave. There is no social life here and my company has not provided enough support for us. We came out here thinking there would be a strong international community but there isn’t. Everyone stays with their own nationalities and as we are the only Germans it’s been difficult.”

The Manteys outlined an ever-so-slightly Orwellian lifestyle of segregated communities and an air of quiet surveillance. Melanie, 30, says: “As the wife of a working husband, I’m lucky if I meet other wives each day for origami, squash or coffee sessions. But we have to watch what we say because my friend’s husbands work with my husband. Even if you are unhappy, you can’t tell anyone.” The Manteys were also unhappy with the schools on offer and lamented the lack of coffee shops or restaurants. “The schools and other facilities are not what we were expecting. There is a ladies’ club but it isn’t comparable to the Abu Dhabi Ladies’ Club. There are restaurants but they are not what we would call restaurants. You just sit here on your own and there’s nothing to do except wait for the weekend.”

Most worrying of all, Melanie ads: “My brain is not working anymore. If I want to start using it again, I will have to leave this place.”


rbehan@thenational.ae