Most people of a certain age remember their local grocery shop. In the US they were called five-and-dimes, dépanneurs (literally "to help out of difficulty") in French-speaking Canada, corner or village shops in the UK. There is an iteration of the local grocery in every culture. With the advent of the big box supermarket or its even larger offspring, the hypermarket, corner shops have either died or become stale shadows of their former selves, the convenience store.
The UAE has managed to avoid this trend. Our neighbourhoods are full of tiny stores with amusing names like the Unicorn or the Spike of Prosperty (sic), selling everything from soft drinks to sweets, from hair gel to toothbrushes. They are part of the fabric of Emirati life and culture. National business columnist Manar al Hinai sang the praises of the "dekkan" for their "retro look" and a taste of nostalgia.
A dirham or two short? The owner will let it slide, or you can pay later. They remember you, and know what you buy. Children come by after school to buy sweets or trinkets, and the shopkeeper will bill the parents later. Children in the Emirates might be among the few in the world for whom the song "The Candy Man," from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory still resonates.
That may change, at least in Abu Dhabi. This month, the Abu Dhabi Food Control Authority announced plans to modernise the corner shop, make it more hygienic and enforce food safety measures. All of these are good things. Stories of expired foodstuffs on shelves, refrigerators being shut off at night, or, as this reporter witnessed on one occasion, frozen chickens being left to defrost on top of bags of rice are enough to send you to the nearest Lulu permanently.
Many are already slowly dying; choked by the pace of development and chained by rising rents to ageing buildings while customers move on. Most people now shop at hypermarkets or have moved outside the city centre to Musaffah or the suburbs. Shopkeepers are concerned they may not survive the transition, which would be a shame.
These shops have a character and convenience hypermarkets lack. They are a focal point for the community, children play impromptu cricket or football matches outside their doors. Need a dozen eggs and a loaf of bread? Most corner shops will deliver it to your door free. According to a recent study by the Abu Dhabi Government, there are more than 1,300 such stores open an average of 16 hours a day and generating income of Dh1 billion a year.
The concern is that the UAE "dekkan" will become an Adnoc convenience store, handy for a quick refuelling but devoid of soul.
And what of the corner shopkeeper? Who are they? They smile, when they see us, and they know our flat number by heart, but do we know anything about them? The men behind the counters of those 1,300 corner shops no doubt have interesting stories to tell. These are just a few.
The Cheese and Pickles Centre, King Khalid Street near Elektra
The store certainly lives up to its name. Outside, it's advertised with a garish green and yellow neon sign; inside is a dizzying number of pickles, more than 40 types from all over the Middle East and North Africa, and an even wider selection of cheeses - from fresh, unpasteurised, locally made varieties to imports from all over Europe.
In the pickle aisle, Amar Basanboul sells five assortments of mixed pickled vegetables. One is made with harissa, a North African paste made with chilli peppers, one without chillis, and there are two made with beetroot, tinging the pickling liquid purple. "This one is an Egyptian recipe made with preserved lemon. This one is made with cucumber; it is from Lebanon," Mr Basanboul explains. "What they eat, we provide."
It was Mr Basanboul's father, Mohamed Basanboul, who started the store. He came to Abu Dhabi from the Hadhramaut region of Yemen. The Hadhrami have long been known as sailors and traders, and their descendants are found as far away as India, where they established some of that country's oldest mosques, and in Singapore. In more modern history, the region is known as the birthplace of the bin Laden family.
Like his forebears, Mohamed Basanboul left looking for business opportunities. He established Cheese and Pickles after spotting a gap in the market. "When my father set up the store in 1980 he found that no one sold traditional Arabic cheeses, no one sold pickles or cheese," Amar Basanboul says. Now the store sells three types of labneh, fresh local goat cheeses among others.
Amar, who is 41, took over the store after his father died in 1996, but its raison d'être never changed. "These are Arabic cheeses that you can't find anywhere else." He has to have so many varieties to please the Arab diaspora that wants a taste of home.
Then there is the olive bar: 27 sorts from Italy, France, Greece, Syria, the Palestinian territories and just about every other country that has ever grown olives. He has olives stuffed with cheese, green olives stuffed with tiny, whole chillis. "Westerners love these ones, but they are spicy," he says.
Most customers are Arabs looking for a taste of home, or a cure for an ailment like thyme water for stomach aches or gas, or fresh and ground carob bean for constipation. Olive oil he sells by the crate. "The best tasting oil is from Palestine, and you can use it to treat paralysis, hair loss or to lower cholesterol," he claims. "If your body is weak you should have your wife rub you down with olive oil, take one Panadol and go to sleep. The next day you will feel revived."
He also caters for flights of fancy. "This is the doum fruit," he says as he points to a desiccated, rock-hard husk that looked like a brown lemon. "Egyptians and Sudanese children pull these off trees and eat them, and [as adults] they come here to relieve childhood memories." Like most everything in the store, Mr Basanboul claims, doum is good for your health. "Like hibiscus, it helps with blood pressure. If you drink it cold, it brings it down; if it is hot, it brings it up." He does, however, qualify this particular claim. "I don't know if that is true, but that is what they say."
Mr Basanboul's mission is to keep alive the Arabic food culture in Abu Dhabi. Business at his store has declined by a third in the past years mostly because of construction of what might become a new landmark building. The building, however, has been under construction since 2006, limiting parking and obscuring his store from view. Though he also blames the popularity of fast food for the decline in foot traffic through his store, he remains optimistic. "When they get sick from the Big Macs, they will go back to natural food."
Middle East Flour Mill & Foodstuff, Muroor and 25th Street
Abu Dhabi was a different place when Abdul Rashid Kunduerel, 61, arrived 42 years ago as a taxi driver. He followed his brother, Mohamed Kunduerel, 65, with dreams of a better life for his family. They found it. Six years later they owned a store and brought their wives to Abu Dhabi. Their children were born and raised here, and they have gone on to have successful careers in the UAE. Mr Rashid says this is rarer these days.
"There are less families here now because of the cost of rent," he says. "Many are going back." That has changed the neighbourhood along Muroor Road where he and his brother have their shop.
In 1980, when the brothers got together the money to set up their corner store, the area around Muroor and 25th Street was largely empty except for a few villas and a handful of low-rise apartment blocks that housed families. "It used to be about 20 per cent locals with a mix of Indian and Pakistani families and bachelors; now it is 50/50 families and bachelors," Mr Kuduerel says. The Emiratis have moved to Khalifa City and most of the rest have returned home. The only thing keeping any families in his area is the Pakistani school across the street. There have been many evictions from illegally partitioned villas recently and that has shrunk an already dwindling pool of customers.
The store sits nestled between the Commando Saloon and the Ideal Bakery. The mill for which the shop is named lies in a back corner of the store; it's still used, but infrequently. "Families used to come to me to grind the spices they bought at the market, but now there is no business for that - everything comes in packs," Mr Kuduerel says.
Business was slow on Monday despite the stream of children heading home from school. "Now there are a lot of bachelors and they all go to Musaffah, and most of the families go to the big shops like Carrefour."
Mr Rashid feels he has to stock just about everything to keep competitive. You can't get an iPod in the Middle East Flour Mill, but you can get a close facsimile, an AM/FM radio shaped like an iPod that costs only Dh30.
"I try to keep prices down. I cannot compete with Carrefour, but between other groceries and me, there is a huge difference." The difference appears to be that he has turned his shop into an off-brand market, crammed to the rafters like Noah's Ark with everything you might need for daily life. His customers appear to be mostly South Asian bachelors. One, a Pakistani gold-and-white taxi driver plops a super-sized can of Tang on the counter and asks, "Discount?" Mr Rashid laughs at him. Maybe in the past, he might have given a discount or store credit, but not now.
Mr Rashid struggles to keep up with a rapidly changing city. He points to his biggest adjustment: a TV screen showing feeds from six different security cameras. A year or so ago children began stealing from his store, coming through his now-shuttered back door to steal candy and sodas.
He speaks wistfully about Abu Dhabi in its early days. "The city centre used to be full of small businesses and shops, and now that is all being sent to Musaffah." Not all the change has been bad. "When I came here there were few roads and no signals. There was sand everywhere and the only cars were Land Rovers. There was one landmark on Hamdan Street - the TV building - that everyone used to navigate."
Now, he struggles to find his way around. "When we go, we are not sure how we will ever get back. Even Musaffah is becoming like Abu Dhabi - crowded."
Grand Supermarket, Rotana Mall, Khaleej al Arabi Street
"The flats here are all empty," complains Ebrahim Mohamed Haje, the bespectacled Indian proprietor of Grand Supermarket. A lot has changed in the eight years since he came to Abu Dhabi. Back then, Grand Supermarket may have indeed been grand, as no doubt was the Rotana Mall, the small Khaleej al Arabi Street shopping centre to which the store is attached.
A decade ago, it towered over the other buildings. Now it is imprisoned by a sheer wall of gleaming high-rises and luxury car showrooms. The new construction has locked out and strangled the businesses within. What was once a thriving, if crowded, neighbourhood near the Corniche has emptied as parking became impossible to find and rents skyrocketed. Many of the existing buildings are either slated for demolition or refurbishment, although little of either has been done in years.
As a result, business is down. Rent for the premises is about Dh65,000 a year, cheap for Abu Dhabi, which allows Mr Haje and his colleagues from Calicut in Kerala to make a decent living. But there seems little hope that business will go anywhere but down.
One employee, Abdul Rashid, is relatively new to the UAE, having spent only four years in Abu Dhabi. He handles the accounts, going over a list of customers on a register made of a discarded carton of cigarettes. He barely looks up when a customer wanders in. Mr Haje, meanwhile, spends most his time pacing the store with his hands behind his back, gazing at items on the shelf.
There is a steady stream of customers despite the fact most residents in the area shop at the Choithrams Express half a block away. A security guard comes to buy snacks before his night shift; a man asks for a pack of cigarettes; another comes for a pint of milk. A dirham here, a dirham there: this is how Grand Supermarket stays in business.
Tucked in an alcove next to the register is a children's paradise. Shelves stacked to the ceiling with sweets ought to make Grand Supermarket a prime destination for children - the Willy Wonka's of Abu Dhabi - but most of the children have long since left. One girl wanders in to gawk at the towering racks. She's one of the few who live in the area, Mr Haje says. The girl must just be killing time. She leaves without buying.
What remains are mostly residents of company-owned apartments, the nearby Corniche Towers, for example, a mix of westerners and South-east Asians.
The mall, full of tailoring shops with obscure Italian names and souvenir shops selling gilded plastic, is empty. Shopkeepers sit in a circle in the middle of the atrium gossiping, but look up expectantly whenever a head pokes in through the entrance.
Like many of the older parts of Abu Dhabi, the mall was built quickly and forgotten almost as quickly. Partly, the inability to find parking relegated it to becoming one of the many forgotten warrens of the old city, invisible from the road, nearly inaccessible by car. People shop at bigger stores or have moved to new neighbourhoods. "They don't come here," Mr Ibrahim says.
Still, in that typical Abu Dhabi take on evolutionary theory, Grand Supermarket has found a way to survive. It has created itself a niche service, with a delivery business the bigger stores do not provide.
Najla Grocery, Al Bateen Co-op, Defence Road
Tucked between the far larger Shaheen grocery and a branch of the Abu Dhabi Co-operative Society, Najla Grocery stays in business by catering to shoppers in a hurry. "My prices are the same as the co-op, but it is faster to come here than go into the market," says Abdul Ghafour, 36. Shoppers stay for a few minutes, buy what they need and leave, or they simply park in the street, honk, and have goods delivered to them.
To accommodate the desires of his customers, Mr Ghafour seems to have tried to stuff an entire hypermarket into a shop the size of a modest bedroom. Footballs dangle from nets hung from the ceilings, toothbrushes are found between the soy sauce and breadcrumbs on the shelf. Bulky items unable to fit on any rack litter the floor. Navigating the shop requires you to look down as often as you do forward.
Customers squeeze themselves into the rare gaps through which two people can fit so that one or the other can pass by. The effect is rather like a third-class carriage on an Indian train; little wonder, then, that customers linger for as short a time as possible. Perhaps that is also why Mr Ghafour has employed a small man as a stockboy. The man, from Mr Ghafour's hometown of Tirur in Kerala, declines to give his name, but he proves adept at navigating the narrow spaces in the back, all but invisible as he scrambles through the jumble fetching items for the long queue of waiting customers.
Business remains good for Mr Ghafour; customers are constant and plentiful. Unlike many of his compatriots in the small grocery business, he does not have to offer home delivery to stay competitive and seems to be unconcerned with pleasing his customers - they seem to come to him by compulsion. One man complains loudly at being forced yet again to carry the jugs of water to his car himself. "This is the last time," he says angrily. Mr Ghafour shrugs. The man will be back.
The Najla sits along a strip of stores in the bustling Al Bateen co-op, an old and still popular strip mall in the western edge of the city. The KFC there does brisk business, and traffic spills out of the parking lot and onto King Khalid Street, which is always busy. As the sun goes down an entire lane of traffic disappears as cars jostle for position to get into the shopping centre, which has seen better days. Parents bring their children for a taste of their own childhood; as evening prayers end, herds of boys and girls loiter; bachelors sit out on the green spaces to have dinner or just chat; taxi drivers come for a break during their 14-hour shifts. It seems to be one of the few places in the capital where each cross-section of society is present and mingles. This is partly a function of its location. Unlike much of the island, Al Bateen has gone relatively untouched by the building boom; there is still room for old Abu Dhabi here.
This, too, may go, however, as a result of the Abu Dhabi Food Control Initiative's 2030 plan, which will target stores such as the Najla for modernisation or demolition.
"I have heard that I may have to move," Mr Ghafour says. "I am trying to find new premises." He pays about Dh95,000 a year in rent, which, judging by the mobs swarming his store, he can pay easily. Should he be forced to move, Mr Ghafour feels, he will be hard pressed to find a location as profitable.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
When a normal Ferrari won't do, join the Corsa Clienti
The following first appeared in The National on February 25, 2011
A press conference was the last place the assembled group of hacks wanted to be on a sunny Thursday afternoon. However, this time it was not because the end of the work week loomed, but because there were far too many interesting things going on outside the window.
The event was the official press conference for the inaugural Ferrari Festival for the Middle East, and the interesting bits were the roar of V12 engines coming from the cars racing around the tracks. We had been unceremoniously yanked from the garages to an upstairs conference hall to hear about how great Ferrari's sales had been in 2010 (up five per cent from 2009), and how important the Middle East was to the company (exhibit A, Ferrari World).
Organised by the Ferrari division, Corse Clienti, or "client racing", the Ferrari Festival is part of a travelling roadshow, putting on a dozen or so appearances around the world's most famous racetracks every year. Besides the allure of driving their road-going Ferraris without the hindrance of things like speed limits, a select group of "Prancing Horse" owners flock to these events for the chance to drive one of the so-called "laboratory cars".
The laboratory cars programme began in 2005 with the FXX, which is based on the Enzo - a car so exclusive Ferrari got to decide whether you deserved one. That, I suppose, is part of the appeal. Only 400 Enzos were produced, but the FXX programme is even more exclusive.
About 30 lucky Ferrari owners paid €1.3 million (Dh6.5m) to own a car they could only drive on a racetrack. What was the appeal? A 6.7L V12 engine that produces 850hp, which takes you from zero to 100kph in a blistering 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of about 400kph. This is a car for serious drivers. Based on the successes of the FXX programme, Ferrari released the 599XX in 2009 and the 33 available cars were swiftly bought up by the uber-wealthy. Sometimes, just owning a regular, humdrum Ferrari is not enough of a statement.
They are called laboratory cars because of the black box contained onboard the 60 cars. These record data from every drive, which are then logged and analysed by Ferrari technicians and used to produce future cars. Information garnered from the 599XX programme was used to create the 599GTO, the fastest street-legal Ferrari yet.
This was explained to us by Pietro Innocenti, or Peter the Innocent to non-Italian speakers, who is the general manager of Ferrari Middle East. He has an appropriately papal name for his position as the high priest to Medici-esque crew of Ferrari owners assembled at the event. The owners at the Yas Marina Circuit that day were the elite of the elites, chosen by the company to own some of its most prized creations.
One of them was Frank Kanyet, the 56-year-old Colombian executive chairman of the oil consortium Petrotesting. He is the proud owner of a 599XX, and the epitome of what Innocenti refers to as the "gentlemen drivers", the patrons of Corse Clienti's annual racing events. Heavy around the middle and of average height and looks, Kanayet lacks the physique of a hardened racer, but he certainly has gravitas. He sat sprawled on a couch in a luxury villa adjoining the track with his racing suit down around his waist.
The public relations woman taking me to the interview repeatedly assured me of the privilege I was being granted in this brief interview. "Most of the clients do not want to be seen by the press." This sort of conspicuous consumption is best done in private, I suppose.
Despite only getting to drive his car 10 times a year at Ferrari-approved events, Kanayet is completely enamoured of his purchase. He owns the car out of a passion for the brand - and fast driving. "We got the car a year ago in Valencia," says Kanayet. "It's absolutely amazing; it's an experience that you cannot describe. It's the performance, the instant power, the fast shifting and the security in knowing that if you brake you will stop."
The combination of safety and power is what all 599XX owners and test drivers rave about, but if you want to be a little less safe and a bit more Felipe Massa, there is a traction control dial on the carbon fibre dashboard. It goes from one to nine; turn it to nine and the car handles with all the security of a Volvo; turn it to one and you'll be fishtailing around corners as if the roads were iced.
The traction control ensures that if you hit a corner too fast you won't send your million-euro toy careering into the safety barriers. All of the fun, none of the risk. Well, almost.
It's not hard to see why Kanayet fell in love with the car. Turn the key on the 599XX and it roars to life like some prehistoric beast marking its territory. It is a predator engineered for one purpose: to destroy previous lap times. Hit the accelerator and the car gives off a satisfying, eardrum-destroying howl. The FXX sounds like a house cat by comparison.
A car this powerful requires special treatment. So, like most laboratory car owners, Kanayet keeps his 599XX at the Ferrari stables in Maranello, Italy where it is lovingly watched over by an army of engineers and mechanics. The same goes for the owners of retired Ferrari Formula One cars, which were also on display.
The car disrupting Innocenti's press conference earlier in the day was the F2005, which had previously been driven by Michael Schumacher and was now being driven by some unnamed Scuderia Ferrari enthusiast. Ferrari sells off all its Formula One cars two years after each season ends.
One of the other strange perks of owning a Ferrari F1 car is that you also inherit most of the pit crew. Engineers that worked on the car throughout the season tend to stay on with the car as it is retired and maintain it in Maranello for its new owner. So, you not only get Schumacher's car, you also get his mechanic.
The logistics of running these sorts of events is mind-boggling. Kanayet and most of his fellow laboratory car owners pay an extra fee to Ferrari to store and maintain their vehicles, which includes transporting them around the world so that they can play with their toys.
There is luxury, and then there is the stratified world of Ferrari ownership. It is difficult for the peons and the working stiffs of the world to understand the appeal of owning a car you can drive, let alone see, only a handful of times a year. However, you can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy when you see the joy on face of men like Kanayet. They squeeze their middle-aged bodies into the cockpits of Formula One cars designed for men half their age and trouser size, but for the two minutes it takes them to drive around the Marina Circuit they are Fernando Alonso, sitting astride some of the most powerful machines ever designed by man.
Money, it seems, can buy happiness.
A press conference was the last place the assembled group of hacks wanted to be on a sunny Thursday afternoon. However, this time it was not because the end of the work week loomed, but because there were far too many interesting things going on outside the window.
The event was the official press conference for the inaugural Ferrari Festival for the Middle East, and the interesting bits were the roar of V12 engines coming from the cars racing around the tracks. We had been unceremoniously yanked from the garages to an upstairs conference hall to hear about how great Ferrari's sales had been in 2010 (up five per cent from 2009), and how important the Middle East was to the company (exhibit A, Ferrari World).
Organised by the Ferrari division, Corse Clienti, or "client racing", the Ferrari Festival is part of a travelling roadshow, putting on a dozen or so appearances around the world's most famous racetracks every year. Besides the allure of driving their road-going Ferraris without the hindrance of things like speed limits, a select group of "Prancing Horse" owners flock to these events for the chance to drive one of the so-called "laboratory cars".
The laboratory cars programme began in 2005 with the FXX, which is based on the Enzo - a car so exclusive Ferrari got to decide whether you deserved one. That, I suppose, is part of the appeal. Only 400 Enzos were produced, but the FXX programme is even more exclusive.
About 30 lucky Ferrari owners paid €1.3 million (Dh6.5m) to own a car they could only drive on a racetrack. What was the appeal? A 6.7L V12 engine that produces 850hp, which takes you from zero to 100kph in a blistering 2.5 seconds and has a top speed of about 400kph. This is a car for serious drivers. Based on the successes of the FXX programme, Ferrari released the 599XX in 2009 and the 33 available cars were swiftly bought up by the uber-wealthy. Sometimes, just owning a regular, humdrum Ferrari is not enough of a statement.
They are called laboratory cars because of the black box contained onboard the 60 cars. These record data from every drive, which are then logged and analysed by Ferrari technicians and used to produce future cars. Information garnered from the 599XX programme was used to create the 599GTO, the fastest street-legal Ferrari yet.
This was explained to us by Pietro Innocenti, or Peter the Innocent to non-Italian speakers, who is the general manager of Ferrari Middle East. He has an appropriately papal name for his position as the high priest to Medici-esque crew of Ferrari owners assembled at the event. The owners at the Yas Marina Circuit that day were the elite of the elites, chosen by the company to own some of its most prized creations.
One of them was Frank Kanyet, the 56-year-old Colombian executive chairman of the oil consortium Petrotesting. He is the proud owner of a 599XX, and the epitome of what Innocenti refers to as the "gentlemen drivers", the patrons of Corse Clienti's annual racing events. Heavy around the middle and of average height and looks, Kanayet lacks the physique of a hardened racer, but he certainly has gravitas. He sat sprawled on a couch in a luxury villa adjoining the track with his racing suit down around his waist.
The public relations woman taking me to the interview repeatedly assured me of the privilege I was being granted in this brief interview. "Most of the clients do not want to be seen by the press." This sort of conspicuous consumption is best done in private, I suppose.
Despite only getting to drive his car 10 times a year at Ferrari-approved events, Kanayet is completely enamoured of his purchase. He owns the car out of a passion for the brand - and fast driving. "We got the car a year ago in Valencia," says Kanayet. "It's absolutely amazing; it's an experience that you cannot describe. It's the performance, the instant power, the fast shifting and the security in knowing that if you brake you will stop."
The combination of safety and power is what all 599XX owners and test drivers rave about, but if you want to be a little less safe and a bit more Felipe Massa, there is a traction control dial on the carbon fibre dashboard. It goes from one to nine; turn it to nine and the car handles with all the security of a Volvo; turn it to one and you'll be fishtailing around corners as if the roads were iced.
The traction control ensures that if you hit a corner too fast you won't send your million-euro toy careering into the safety barriers. All of the fun, none of the risk. Well, almost.
It's not hard to see why Kanayet fell in love with the car. Turn the key on the 599XX and it roars to life like some prehistoric beast marking its territory. It is a predator engineered for one purpose: to destroy previous lap times. Hit the accelerator and the car gives off a satisfying, eardrum-destroying howl. The FXX sounds like a house cat by comparison.
A car this powerful requires special treatment. So, like most laboratory car owners, Kanayet keeps his 599XX at the Ferrari stables in Maranello, Italy where it is lovingly watched over by an army of engineers and mechanics. The same goes for the owners of retired Ferrari Formula One cars, which were also on display.
The car disrupting Innocenti's press conference earlier in the day was the F2005, which had previously been driven by Michael Schumacher and was now being driven by some unnamed Scuderia Ferrari enthusiast. Ferrari sells off all its Formula One cars two years after each season ends.
One of the other strange perks of owning a Ferrari F1 car is that you also inherit most of the pit crew. Engineers that worked on the car throughout the season tend to stay on with the car as it is retired and maintain it in Maranello for its new owner. So, you not only get Schumacher's car, you also get his mechanic.
The logistics of running these sorts of events is mind-boggling. Kanayet and most of his fellow laboratory car owners pay an extra fee to Ferrari to store and maintain their vehicles, which includes transporting them around the world so that they can play with their toys.
There is luxury, and then there is the stratified world of Ferrari ownership. It is difficult for the peons and the working stiffs of the world to understand the appeal of owning a car you can drive, let alone see, only a handful of times a year. However, you can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy when you see the joy on face of men like Kanayet. They squeeze their middle-aged bodies into the cockpits of Formula One cars designed for men half their age and trouser size, but for the two minutes it takes them to drive around the Marina Circuit they are Fernando Alonso, sitting astride some of the most powerful machines ever designed by man.
Money, it seems, can buy happiness.
Not just for soldiers - Idex is a playground for gadget geeks
The following first appeared in The National on February 24, 2011
There were, unfortunately, no shopping carts outside the entrance to the International Defence Exhibition and Conference, which is a shame really, because it was love at first sight. The IST 14.5 anti-material rifle at the Azerbaijan booth is a thing of beauty.
It was its size that first caught my eye. At 2.25 metres, it was 30 centimetres longer than I am tall. There's an appeal to owning a firearm that's bigger than you, especially one that can put a 50-calibre round through the side of an armoured car 2,000 metres away.
The staff, however, paid me no mind. The steely woman at the display, who bore a rather strong resemblance to the James Bond villain Rosa Klebb, sniffed at me when I asked about price. I half expected her to come at me with a poisoned spike in her sensible shoes. Perhaps I lacked the appropriate demeanour and import certificates to justify her attention. An elderly gentleman in a seersucker suit and a 10-gallon hat, however, earned her undivided attention.
Idex, as the exhibition is known, is the biggest of its kind in the region. Plenty of coin changes hands as governments choose to sign major contracts with manufacturers from all over the world. But the majority of the folks, myself included, were simply there to play with the displays. In this respect, Idex is the county fair of international arms shows.
Casual visitors and tourists poked, prodded and hefted a thousand different models of assault rifles, grenade launchers and even a few Gatling guns. They peered into the innards of gigantic armoured vehicles and tanks with the same naked interest they'd have shown a mastodon skeleton at a natural history museum.
The best fun, however, is to be had at the Virtsim booth. The company sells "virtual reality tactical training". You don a motion capture suit and a headset that lets you see the virtual 3D environment. Your movements are tracked by cameras and translated into the virtual world. To the outside observer, you are wandering aimlessly around an empty stage, but in your reality, you're battling against a team of terrorists.
Perhaps in an attempt to overturn cultural stereotypes, the terrorists you are fighting are not your run-of-the-mill Taliban types. They are instead Kalashnikov-wielding hipsters in ironic T-shirts. It turns out that there's an enemy out there nearly everyone can agree on.
Idex is obviously not for everyone, and those with an under-active humour gland might accuse me of making light of devices designed to kill or maim. They would be right. My only excuse is that I react with the same exuberance when presented with an iPad - gadgets are gadgets, and the gadgets at Idex are par excellence.
I was entranced by armour designed to disguise 50-tonne tanks from thermal sensors by giving the vehicle a pitted surface. Apparently, the difference in heat created by the uneven surface breaks up its heat signature, making it disappear; simple, elegant, amazing.
There is no doubt that an inordinate amount of human ingenuity is devoted to making weapons. Take, for example, Whitebox Robotics. The Korean company designs remote-controlled vehicles for patrols, which clients kept crashing. Their solution was to create a helmet that allowed you to see and hear what the robot did, and direct its camera with a turn of the head.
The obvious follow-up project was applying that technology to a machine gun turret, which the technician demonstrated to me. That its ultimate purpose is to shoot intruders does not detract from its technical brilliance.
Under the florescent lights of the convention centre, it is sometimes hard to put the items on display in the appropriate context. Cochrane International builds security barriers, but what catches your eye is not the barbed wire or fencing made out of tempered steel. You are immediately drawn to a large orange orb covered in concentric circles from which jut steel spikes. It looks sinister, like something that might drop on your head if you pressed the doorbell at the home of someone like Dr No.
It is, however, a buoy designed to stop boats from entering ports. The effects were explained by a helpful series of photos in a glossy brochure. They showed a boat hitting the barrier and mannequins flying out of the boat before landing in the water, several metres away. While it is a simple and effective strategy, I couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret that my initial assessment wasn't accurate.
Not everyone shares an objective love for gizmos. If you can't look at a smoke grenade without seeing Hosni Mubarak, don't go. The rest of you have one more day to take in the sights. You won't be disappointed.
There were, unfortunately, no shopping carts outside the entrance to the International Defence Exhibition and Conference, which is a shame really, because it was love at first sight. The IST 14.5 anti-material rifle at the Azerbaijan booth is a thing of beauty.
It was its size that first caught my eye. At 2.25 metres, it was 30 centimetres longer than I am tall. There's an appeal to owning a firearm that's bigger than you, especially one that can put a 50-calibre round through the side of an armoured car 2,000 metres away.
The staff, however, paid me no mind. The steely woman at the display, who bore a rather strong resemblance to the James Bond villain Rosa Klebb, sniffed at me when I asked about price. I half expected her to come at me with a poisoned spike in her sensible shoes. Perhaps I lacked the appropriate demeanour and import certificates to justify her attention. An elderly gentleman in a seersucker suit and a 10-gallon hat, however, earned her undivided attention.
Idex, as the exhibition is known, is the biggest of its kind in the region. Plenty of coin changes hands as governments choose to sign major contracts with manufacturers from all over the world. But the majority of the folks, myself included, were simply there to play with the displays. In this respect, Idex is the county fair of international arms shows.
Casual visitors and tourists poked, prodded and hefted a thousand different models of assault rifles, grenade launchers and even a few Gatling guns. They peered into the innards of gigantic armoured vehicles and tanks with the same naked interest they'd have shown a mastodon skeleton at a natural history museum.
The best fun, however, is to be had at the Virtsim booth. The company sells "virtual reality tactical training". You don a motion capture suit and a headset that lets you see the virtual 3D environment. Your movements are tracked by cameras and translated into the virtual world. To the outside observer, you are wandering aimlessly around an empty stage, but in your reality, you're battling against a team of terrorists.
Perhaps in an attempt to overturn cultural stereotypes, the terrorists you are fighting are not your run-of-the-mill Taliban types. They are instead Kalashnikov-wielding hipsters in ironic T-shirts. It turns out that there's an enemy out there nearly everyone can agree on.
Idex is obviously not for everyone, and those with an under-active humour gland might accuse me of making light of devices designed to kill or maim. They would be right. My only excuse is that I react with the same exuberance when presented with an iPad - gadgets are gadgets, and the gadgets at Idex are par excellence.
I was entranced by armour designed to disguise 50-tonne tanks from thermal sensors by giving the vehicle a pitted surface. Apparently, the difference in heat created by the uneven surface breaks up its heat signature, making it disappear; simple, elegant, amazing.
There is no doubt that an inordinate amount of human ingenuity is devoted to making weapons. Take, for example, Whitebox Robotics. The Korean company designs remote-controlled vehicles for patrols, which clients kept crashing. Their solution was to create a helmet that allowed you to see and hear what the robot did, and direct its camera with a turn of the head.
The obvious follow-up project was applying that technology to a machine gun turret, which the technician demonstrated to me. That its ultimate purpose is to shoot intruders does not detract from its technical brilliance.
Under the florescent lights of the convention centre, it is sometimes hard to put the items on display in the appropriate context. Cochrane International builds security barriers, but what catches your eye is not the barbed wire or fencing made out of tempered steel. You are immediately drawn to a large orange orb covered in concentric circles from which jut steel spikes. It looks sinister, like something that might drop on your head if you pressed the doorbell at the home of someone like Dr No.
It is, however, a buoy designed to stop boats from entering ports. The effects were explained by a helpful series of photos in a glossy brochure. They showed a boat hitting the barrier and mannequins flying out of the boat before landing in the water, several metres away. While it is a simple and effective strategy, I couldn't help feeling a twinge of regret that my initial assessment wasn't accurate.
Not everyone shares an objective love for gizmos. If you can't look at a smoke grenade without seeing Hosni Mubarak, don't go. The rest of you have one more day to take in the sights. You won't be disappointed.
The power behind Egypt's unrest
The following first appeared in The National's Review section on February 4, 2011
The revolution will be Twitterised, said one young Egyptian on January 25, the day that the protests in Cairo began. Her tweet was meant both to praise the social networking site and to condemn TV news channels, which at the time seemed more interested in the rioting in Lebanon than in the mass demonstrations in Cairo.
For years, pundits and social media activists have heralded the internet as the great leveller, a forum for true democracy. To the internet evangelists, sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring governments to account. And yet the internet is unlikely to fulfil the utopian visions of its most ardent advocates.
The power of the medium has been evident in events in Tunisia and Egypt, which were organised online. There have been other breakthroughs in the past weeks. In China, so-called "human search engines" - web users who perform research to humiliate targeted individuals - recently scored a coup when Li Qiming was sentenced on Monday to six years in prison for drunkenly driving over a young college student.
The 23-year-old Li reportedly tried to escape arrest by saying "my father is Li Gang". The phrase and the story went viral and a human search engine revealed that that Li's father was a local police chief. Both father and son were subjected to online ridicule, and attempts by the Communist party to hush up the controversy failed.
All the same, the web's limitations as a tool of rebellion are striking. This becomes clear when one considers the shadowy organisation known as Anonymous. A group of so-called "hacktivists", they are, in their own words "the hardened war veterans of the internet". The group was responsible for interrupting service on the websites of Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon, punishing those companies for halting payments to Wikileaks. More recently, Anonymous sought to offer alternative means of web access to protesters in Egypt after the Egyptian government took the country offline.
In many ways, the members of Anonymous and their ilk typify the internet - Clark Kents who become Che Guevaras when they get home and log on. And as of last Thursday, dozens of them have had their cover blown.
The FBI arrested 40 purported members of Anonymous for their alleged participation in the web assault on credit card companies. One of those arrested reported in surprise that the agents had pointed "real guns" at him. Another turned out to be an 18-year-old computer science student at a university in the state of Georgia.
It is debatable whether the FBI needed to kick down doors with pistols drawn, but it is a sign of how seriously governments take online activists. In the US they arrest them. In many other countries they incarcerate them as political prisoners. The Man, it seems, also runs the internet, and in Egypt, he did something unprecedented: he shut it down.
The fact that protests continued points to another underacknowledged aspect of the web. As revolutionary a tool of communication as it is, that's all it is. The message is more important than the medium, and the audience has to be ready to hear it.
Egypt furnishes other proofs of this. In 2008, when the April 6 movement used Facebook to bring thousands on to the streets in El Mahalla El Kubra, the world was abuzz. Advocates for democracy in the region praised the site and some governments considered blocking it. Yet a similar protest called on the same day a year later attracted almost no support.
Something much older than the internet has fuelled the latest protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It is the same thing that sparked revolutions in America, France, Iran and Eastern Europe - anger at a government that people feel is out of touch, repressive and corrupt. That's something that can't be unplugged, and which retains its power even when it steps out from behind the keyboard.
The revolution will be Twitterised, said one young Egyptian on January 25, the day that the protests in Cairo began. Her tweet was meant both to praise the social networking site and to condemn TV news channels, which at the time seemed more interested in the rioting in Lebanon than in the mass demonstrations in Cairo.
For years, pundits and social media activists have heralded the internet as the great leveller, a forum for true democracy. To the internet evangelists, sites such as Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring governments to account. And yet the internet is unlikely to fulfil the utopian visions of its most ardent advocates.
The power of the medium has been evident in events in Tunisia and Egypt, which were organised online. There have been other breakthroughs in the past weeks. In China, so-called "human search engines" - web users who perform research to humiliate targeted individuals - recently scored a coup when Li Qiming was sentenced on Monday to six years in prison for drunkenly driving over a young college student.
The 23-year-old Li reportedly tried to escape arrest by saying "my father is Li Gang". The phrase and the story went viral and a human search engine revealed that that Li's father was a local police chief. Both father and son were subjected to online ridicule, and attempts by the Communist party to hush up the controversy failed.
All the same, the web's limitations as a tool of rebellion are striking. This becomes clear when one considers the shadowy organisation known as Anonymous. A group of so-called "hacktivists", they are, in their own words "the hardened war veterans of the internet". The group was responsible for interrupting service on the websites of Mastercard, Visa, PayPal and Amazon, punishing those companies for halting payments to Wikileaks. More recently, Anonymous sought to offer alternative means of web access to protesters in Egypt after the Egyptian government took the country offline.
In many ways, the members of Anonymous and their ilk typify the internet - Clark Kents who become Che Guevaras when they get home and log on. And as of last Thursday, dozens of them have had their cover blown.
The FBI arrested 40 purported members of Anonymous for their alleged participation in the web assault on credit card companies. One of those arrested reported in surprise that the agents had pointed "real guns" at him. Another turned out to be an 18-year-old computer science student at a university in the state of Georgia.
It is debatable whether the FBI needed to kick down doors with pistols drawn, but it is a sign of how seriously governments take online activists. In the US they arrest them. In many other countries they incarcerate them as political prisoners. The Man, it seems, also runs the internet, and in Egypt, he did something unprecedented: he shut it down.
The fact that protests continued points to another underacknowledged aspect of the web. As revolutionary a tool of communication as it is, that's all it is. The message is more important than the medium, and the audience has to be ready to hear it.
Egypt furnishes other proofs of this. In 2008, when the April 6 movement used Facebook to bring thousands on to the streets in El Mahalla El Kubra, the world was abuzz. Advocates for democracy in the region praised the site and some governments considered blocking it. Yet a similar protest called on the same day a year later attracted almost no support.
Something much older than the internet has fuelled the latest protests in Tunisia and Egypt. It is the same thing that sparked revolutions in America, France, Iran and Eastern Europe - anger at a government that people feel is out of touch, repressive and corrupt. That's something that can't be unplugged, and which retains its power even when it steps out from behind the keyboard.
Jobless youth tell of their frustrations
The following first appeared in The National on January 29, 2011
A report released last week on employment trends by the UN's International Labour Organisation painted a stark picture of the Mena region. One would have to travel to a former Soviet republic to find unemployment rates anywhere nearly as high as are found in the Middle East and North Africa. Unemployment in the Mena region is the highest in the world, particularly among young people, and the work that is available is often poorly paid. Financial security? Non-existent.
About 40 per cent of the working population in the Middle East and 32 per cent in North Africa earn less than $2 a day, according to the ILO report. About a third work in conditions the ILO calls vulnerable employment, "characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers' fundamental rights".
In 2010, one out of every four young people in the region's labour market was unemployed. The scarcity of work seems to have discouraged many from even trying to enter the workforce. Only about 35 per cent of young people in the Muslim world have a job or are actively looking for one; in the rest of the world, that figure is closer to 50 per cent.
Queen Rania of Jordan warned in 2008 of the dire situation facing Arab youth. That year, 15 million Arabs under the age of 30 were unemployed, many of them university graduates. About 30 per cent to 40 per cent of young people in the region attend university, but that does not make it any easier to find a good job.
Mena is the fastest-growing region in the world and, according to the ILO, many economies in the region have not kept pace with the booming population. That means more competition for too few jobs.
Here, four young people from across the region and from various walks of life tell us what it is like to be looking for work. They are either seeking employment or working in jobs well below their education and qualifications.
Mohammad Anwar Abdallah, aka Matouk
Age: 25
City: Cairo
Level of education: Vocational diploma
I have been selling socks in Cairo streets for nearly five years. I graduated from vocational school in 2002 with a diploma in furniture carpentry, but I couldn't get work in carpentry, or even a steady job. All I found were odd jobs.
I worked for a while in a bakery, had a stint handling luggage at the customs in Sallum, near Libya, and was for a while working on a microbus, not as a driver but as tabbaa, the man who calls out to passengers and helps them to get in and out.
I would have loved to have a steady job with social security and all. I am engaged to my cousin but cannot marry her because I cannot save enough money. I make about 500 pounds [Dh315] a month selling socks and half of that goes for rent on my room in Bashtil [an informal housing area] in Imbaba.
There is no work in my village. It is a small mountain village and nothing much goes on there. This is why I come to Cairo to work. I don't own the merchandise I sell.
A supplier provides me with the socks and I write him an IOU note for the value of the merchandise, 700 pounds. I work illegally, so the municipal police can confiscate my merchandise at any time. If this happens, the supplier would give me another batch of merchandise, but I will have to pay for both, the one that was confiscated and the new one. So instead of paying him 100 pounds every day as I do now, I will have to pay him 150 pounds or so every day.
Some of my friends work in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others have gone back to the village in Asyût and now work in agriculture.
I don't work in agriculture because my family plot is too small, about a quarter of an acre, just enough for my father to work on.
I dream of having a microbus of my own and working on it, either here or in my village in Asyût.
I sell socks from 11am until 11pm every day except Fridays. It's a tough life, but it's what God has ordained for me.
* As told to Nabil Shawkat
Khaled Kapoun
Age: 33
City: Dweila suburb of Damascus
Level of education: University graduate
I graduated in English literature from Damascus University two years ago. I have been looking for a permanent position as an English teacher ever since, but I have only found short-term contracts for three to four months at a time. I worked briefly for a university and then for a language institute.
I want to work in the private sector because the wages are better, but it is as hard to get jobs in both areas. No company wants to take people on for the long-term, while the public sector is very competitive and you have less control over where you work.
For the past month I have been unemployed. In the first days I worked on my CV and I walked around the city handing it to language institutions. Some days I start at 10am and don't get back until 10pm. They smile and say they'll call me, but they never do. I am surviving on my savings and I live with my parents.
I left school when I was 14 and worked various jobs, including as a blacksmith, before deciding to take up my studies again at the age of 24. But having a university degree has not given me more opportunities than I had before. Now that I have studied, I do not want to try to find work in another area. I want to use my skills and teach English.
The main problem in Syria is that employment is via networks. Even if there are teaching jobs, the institutions are more likely to interview and employ someone they know. I cannot afford to take a job away from Damascus because it would mean paying rent and the salaries are rarely high enough to do that. I am looking outside the country as well.
Being unemployed is having an effect on my life. I cannot save to buy a house and I could not afford to get married even though I am in my thirties. It is also bad for our society. If many people are unoccupied and poor, it encourages behaviour such as stealing.
Everyone knows it is very hard to find a job. But it is hard not to get frustrated. I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, which I studied during my degree. I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along.
* As told to Sarah Birke
Fadi Quran
Age: 22
City: Al-Bireh neighbourhood of Ramallah
Level of education: University graduate (two bachelor's degrees)
I studied at Stanford in the USA and have a BA in international relations, focusing on international law, and a BSc in physics. I got back to the West Bank in July because I want to put my skills to good use here, in my country: I want to start an alternative-energy company. The issue here is not just the lack of jobs but the lack of opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to innovate, to start up something here that would also create opportunities for others.
I live in Ramallah, the most prosperous of the West Bank cities, but the Israeli occupation is a major obstacle as it puts a lot of bureaucracy in the way of a start-up; for example, in getting materials or recruiting skilled people, because of the difficulty in travelling both within the West Bank and from outside, for Palestinians. For instance, Gaza has many great engineers, but it is impossible for them to come and intern here for me.
Most of the jobs that are available for skilled people are within the Palestinian Authority or within the NGO sector, but that also creates a problem because they take all the skilled people out of the market and don't use them to innovate or develop skills that can expand the economy. Instead, skilled Palestinians end up working as low-level clerks.
Right now, I decided to look for jobs that are less entrepreneurial and have more to do with the NGO sector. I am frustrated by the circumstances that people here are suffering. I feel like if I moved somewhere else I would easily - thankfully - get a job. And I know that if I could work on my start-up, without these obstacles, I could help to create more jobs and be innovative. I have the potential to do that, but I can't use it and be of benefit. Sometimes I think that my energy would be better spent trying to remove the structural obstacles, by non-violently challenging the occupation. I feel that would be less difficult than what I am trying to do now. But I have to be optimistic for the future: I know something must happen to change things, and soon. The Arab world is boiling right now, and a part of that is because of this lack of opportunity for skilled young people.
* As told to Rachel Shabi
Ramzi Hajji
Age: 31
City: Tunis
Level of education: Master's degree
Geometry is for me like a kind of music: I just feel it. I can't explain why, but since I was a kid I've wanted to be a teacher.
I grew up in Regueb. It's a small town near Sidi Bouzid, in the interior of Tunisia. My father works as a labourer, mainly on construction sites, and my mother is a housewife.
We were eight children originally, but one brother and one sister died around 10 years ago from anaemia. My father always had to spend money as fast as he could earn it on our food, health care and on books and clothes for our schooling.
I used to help my father during school holidays, but my favourite thing was school. I dreamt of going to university and becoming a professor and, in 1999, enrolled in the University of Tunis. As a student I was living as I am now - hand-to-mouth - but I loved the experience.
We used to eat bsissa every day - it's a paste of grains, herbs and olive oil that students in Tunisia practically live on. Each morning it was two spoonfuls of bsissa, a coffee, two cigarettes, and then studying.
I graduated in 2005 with an MA in mathematics. I spent a couple of months at home in Regueb, then came back to Tunis to look for work.
I put up lots of adverts as a private teacher, but I didn't have much success: I was earning around 200 dinars month, and I was living on sandwiches.
I ended up working in cafes and hotels. Today I have the use of a schoolroom to give private lessons, but I'm still working without a contract. And now I'm taking home about 150 dinars a month.
Ideally I want a full-time job in a private school, but I don't have the connections. And I can't even find work in a state school.
When you're a student, you feel that your education equals a job later. You visit home and they're proud of you. But when you return home unemployed, it's different. They're not angry, but it's awkward. I hesitate to return home nowadays.
But I did visit Regueb this month to join the protests there - peaceful protests with reasonable demands for work and an end to corruption. I never imagined it would end with Ben Ali leaving. The revolution is wonderful. I feel I was reborn that day, January 14. And I hope things will keep improving.
* As told to John Thorne
A report released last week on employment trends by the UN's International Labour Organisation painted a stark picture of the Mena region. One would have to travel to a former Soviet republic to find unemployment rates anywhere nearly as high as are found in the Middle East and North Africa. Unemployment in the Mena region is the highest in the world, particularly among young people, and the work that is available is often poorly paid. Financial security? Non-existent.
About 40 per cent of the working population in the Middle East and 32 per cent in North Africa earn less than $2 a day, according to the ILO report. About a third work in conditions the ILO calls vulnerable employment, "characterised by inadequate earnings, low productivity and difficult conditions of work that undermine workers' fundamental rights".
In 2010, one out of every four young people in the region's labour market was unemployed. The scarcity of work seems to have discouraged many from even trying to enter the workforce. Only about 35 per cent of young people in the Muslim world have a job or are actively looking for one; in the rest of the world, that figure is closer to 50 per cent.
Queen Rania of Jordan warned in 2008 of the dire situation facing Arab youth. That year, 15 million Arabs under the age of 30 were unemployed, many of them university graduates. About 30 per cent to 40 per cent of young people in the region attend university, but that does not make it any easier to find a good job.
Mena is the fastest-growing region in the world and, according to the ILO, many economies in the region have not kept pace with the booming population. That means more competition for too few jobs.
Here, four young people from across the region and from various walks of life tell us what it is like to be looking for work. They are either seeking employment or working in jobs well below their education and qualifications.
Mohammad Anwar Abdallah, aka Matouk
Age: 25
City: Cairo
Level of education: Vocational diploma
I have been selling socks in Cairo streets for nearly five years. I graduated from vocational school in 2002 with a diploma in furniture carpentry, but I couldn't get work in carpentry, or even a steady job. All I found were odd jobs.
I worked for a while in a bakery, had a stint handling luggage at the customs in Sallum, near Libya, and was for a while working on a microbus, not as a driver but as tabbaa, the man who calls out to passengers and helps them to get in and out.
I would have loved to have a steady job with social security and all. I am engaged to my cousin but cannot marry her because I cannot save enough money. I make about 500 pounds [Dh315] a month selling socks and half of that goes for rent on my room in Bashtil [an informal housing area] in Imbaba.
There is no work in my village. It is a small mountain village and nothing much goes on there. This is why I come to Cairo to work. I don't own the merchandise I sell.
A supplier provides me with the socks and I write him an IOU note for the value of the merchandise, 700 pounds. I work illegally, so the municipal police can confiscate my merchandise at any time. If this happens, the supplier would give me another batch of merchandise, but I will have to pay for both, the one that was confiscated and the new one. So instead of paying him 100 pounds every day as I do now, I will have to pay him 150 pounds or so every day.
Some of my friends work in Saudi Arabia and the UAE and others have gone back to the village in Asyût and now work in agriculture.
I don't work in agriculture because my family plot is too small, about a quarter of an acre, just enough for my father to work on.
I dream of having a microbus of my own and working on it, either here or in my village in Asyût.
I sell socks from 11am until 11pm every day except Fridays. It's a tough life, but it's what God has ordained for me.
* As told to Nabil Shawkat
Khaled Kapoun
Age: 33
City: Dweila suburb of Damascus
Level of education: University graduate
I graduated in English literature from Damascus University two years ago. I have been looking for a permanent position as an English teacher ever since, but I have only found short-term contracts for three to four months at a time. I worked briefly for a university and then for a language institute.
I want to work in the private sector because the wages are better, but it is as hard to get jobs in both areas. No company wants to take people on for the long-term, while the public sector is very competitive and you have less control over where you work.
For the past month I have been unemployed. In the first days I worked on my CV and I walked around the city handing it to language institutions. Some days I start at 10am and don't get back until 10pm. They smile and say they'll call me, but they never do. I am surviving on my savings and I live with my parents.
I left school when I was 14 and worked various jobs, including as a blacksmith, before deciding to take up my studies again at the age of 24. But having a university degree has not given me more opportunities than I had before. Now that I have studied, I do not want to try to find work in another area. I want to use my skills and teach English.
The main problem in Syria is that employment is via networks. Even if there are teaching jobs, the institutions are more likely to interview and employ someone they know. I cannot afford to take a job away from Damascus because it would mean paying rent and the salaries are rarely high enough to do that. I am looking outside the country as well.
Being unemployed is having an effect on my life. I cannot save to buy a house and I could not afford to get married even though I am in my thirties. It is also bad for our society. If many people are unoccupied and poor, it encourages behaviour such as stealing.
Everyone knows it is very hard to find a job. But it is hard not to get frustrated. I feel as though I am in the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot, which I studied during my degree. I keep hoping that tomorrow a job will come along.
* As told to Sarah Birke
Fadi Quran
Age: 22
City: Al-Bireh neighbourhood of Ramallah
Level of education: University graduate (two bachelor's degrees)
I studied at Stanford in the USA and have a BA in international relations, focusing on international law, and a BSc in physics. I got back to the West Bank in July because I want to put my skills to good use here, in my country: I want to start an alternative-energy company. The issue here is not just the lack of jobs but the lack of opportunities for entrepreneurs who want to innovate, to start up something here that would also create opportunities for others.
I live in Ramallah, the most prosperous of the West Bank cities, but the Israeli occupation is a major obstacle as it puts a lot of bureaucracy in the way of a start-up; for example, in getting materials or recruiting skilled people, because of the difficulty in travelling both within the West Bank and from outside, for Palestinians. For instance, Gaza has many great engineers, but it is impossible for them to come and intern here for me.
Most of the jobs that are available for skilled people are within the Palestinian Authority or within the NGO sector, but that also creates a problem because they take all the skilled people out of the market and don't use them to innovate or develop skills that can expand the economy. Instead, skilled Palestinians end up working as low-level clerks.
Right now, I decided to look for jobs that are less entrepreneurial and have more to do with the NGO sector. I am frustrated by the circumstances that people here are suffering. I feel like if I moved somewhere else I would easily - thankfully - get a job. And I know that if I could work on my start-up, without these obstacles, I could help to create more jobs and be innovative. I have the potential to do that, but I can't use it and be of benefit. Sometimes I think that my energy would be better spent trying to remove the structural obstacles, by non-violently challenging the occupation. I feel that would be less difficult than what I am trying to do now. But I have to be optimistic for the future: I know something must happen to change things, and soon. The Arab world is boiling right now, and a part of that is because of this lack of opportunity for skilled young people.
* As told to Rachel Shabi
Ramzi Hajji
Age: 31
City: Tunis
Level of education: Master's degree
Geometry is for me like a kind of music: I just feel it. I can't explain why, but since I was a kid I've wanted to be a teacher.
I grew up in Regueb. It's a small town near Sidi Bouzid, in the interior of Tunisia. My father works as a labourer, mainly on construction sites, and my mother is a housewife.
We were eight children originally, but one brother and one sister died around 10 years ago from anaemia. My father always had to spend money as fast as he could earn it on our food, health care and on books and clothes for our schooling.
I used to help my father during school holidays, but my favourite thing was school. I dreamt of going to university and becoming a professor and, in 1999, enrolled in the University of Tunis. As a student I was living as I am now - hand-to-mouth - but I loved the experience.
We used to eat bsissa every day - it's a paste of grains, herbs and olive oil that students in Tunisia practically live on. Each morning it was two spoonfuls of bsissa, a coffee, two cigarettes, and then studying.
I graduated in 2005 with an MA in mathematics. I spent a couple of months at home in Regueb, then came back to Tunis to look for work.
I put up lots of adverts as a private teacher, but I didn't have much success: I was earning around 200 dinars month, and I was living on sandwiches.
I ended up working in cafes and hotels. Today I have the use of a schoolroom to give private lessons, but I'm still working without a contract. And now I'm taking home about 150 dinars a month.
Ideally I want a full-time job in a private school, but I don't have the connections. And I can't even find work in a state school.
When you're a student, you feel that your education equals a job later. You visit home and they're proud of you. But when you return home unemployed, it's different. They're not angry, but it's awkward. I hesitate to return home nowadays.
But I did visit Regueb this month to join the protests there - peaceful protests with reasonable demands for work and an end to corruption. I never imagined it would end with Ben Ali leaving. The revolution is wonderful. I feel I was reborn that day, January 14. And I hope things will keep improving.
* As told to John Thorne
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