The traditional manner of celebrating National Day is to decorate your 4x4 with flags, pictures of the country’s leaders, and various other shapes (stripes, hearts, etc.) in red, black, white, and green. Then you drive slowly down a beachfront street, honking like there’s no tomorrow, revving your engine, making popping sounds with your exhaust and screaming out the windows. If you have many children, you put the youngest on the roof of the 4x4 and have one of the teenagers sit on the window ledge and reach up to hold on to the young one’s leg, honk, clap, rev engine, repeat.
It’s also encouraged to circulate Happy National Day emails, some of which come illustrated with motivational pictures. This one is my favorite, courtesy of Tabitha and the Dubai Metro crew.
Buildings also get decorated in celebratory portraits, some of which are inspiring, some of which are not. We spotted this one last night, which I find a bit creepy. Best leave Sheikh Mo without the unflattering lighting, I think.I don’t have a 4x4, or a small child to put on top of it, so I celebrated UAE National Day by going to the Shindagha fish market and fruit & veg market. I’m embarassed to admit this is the first time I’ve gone, despite having lived here for almost 4 years. It’s amaaazing! And it’s about 2 miles from my house. I love Dubai’s capacity to still surprise me. These markets are incredible – bountiful, bustling, cheap, colorful, and smelly – everything a good market should be.
First, we parked our “fish vehicle”, then sauntered through the fish stalls, admiring the monstrously large hammour head, we bought a beautiful obsidian-colored tuna, we wandered amidst technicolor fruit stands and admired the bite-sized bananas and walls of melons, bought some dates, Mahmoud gave me a bouquet of mint, and then… the fish cutting factory!On your way out, you stop here and for about $1 they’ll remove the skin, bones, and guts and chop up your fish for you. Amazing! Yay UAE!
