The Dubai Creek

I lost 2 golf balls in the Creek yesterday. The Creek is a dangerous and very long hazard on our course at the Dubai Creek club. I crept up close, to where the green meets the rocks that lead into the Creek and the smell of my childhood crept from its blue surface.

"What is a creek?" My daughter asked me when I crossed over AlMaktoum bridge once. "Well, I simplified. Imagine playing at the beach and digging a "river" from the sea into the beach. That river is a Creek."

Dubai dwellers cross the Creek at 5 junctions of town, and yet they forget it even exists. In the 80s, all commercial activities were around the Creek. The hotels, the shops, the offices, the rulers' offices, the museums, the souks and ofcourse the infamous Dhow trade.

 We used to drive from Jumeirah for the pleasure of walking by the Creek. That all familiar smell of thick fishy murky water and the constant boisterous noise of maritime activity. Every day, for 10 years of schooling, we used to drive via Deira, by the Creek, for car pooling with the Wong family. The Creek was always a constant in my life.

I therefore always notice the Creek when I cross it, even through its old Shindaga tunnel. I point to its beauty when we ride over a bridge. I interrupt my golf game for a background picture.

And I dream of the Creek, regularly and constantly. I swim in it mysteriously. It is my recurrent dream. Dubai may have moved its center away from the Creek, but my heart is sewn to it.