Restoration efforts are underway in Fujairah’s Wadi Al Hayl

posted on 23/07/2005: 121 views

It might be just a generation old but time has taken its toll. Piers Grimley Evans goes to Wadi Al Hayl, a small hamlet in Fujairah, which is in the process of being restored to its traditional, simplistic glory. Today the road up Wadi Al Hayl passes a street of neat single-storey houses.



Off-roaders parked on the corners and a noisy gang of children whizzing around on their bikes are tokens of a happy, prosperous community. Yet older inhabitants remember a very different way of life. The original village sits on a craggy outcrop a few miles further up the valley. Low stone walls mark the narrow contours of homes whose roofs have long since collapsed. An ancient ruined fort on a peak across the valley completes the impression of timeless desolation. For the next few months this desolate vista will be interrupted by a series of grey breeze-block huts.



They guard the equipment of a team of workers now six months into converting the village into a key site for exploring Fujairah's heritage. The two-year project will also give insight into a relatively recent, yet profoundly remote, way of life.



Only 40 years ago, over 30 families eked out a Spartan living here in virtual isolation from the 20th century. Among the last to leave was Saif Rashid al-Kindi, a wiry mountain-man with a penetrating gaze, ready smile and apparently limitless reserve of wiry vitality. He believes he is now in his sixties, although, as he does not know his precise age, he may be over 70.



On a baking morning, he drove the Gulf News reporter up to the valley to show him around his native village as it undergoes its architectural facelift. "Life was tough,” he says. And that is something of an understatement. To see the village with him is to discover a way of life that, despite being just one generation away, is in many ways unreachably demanding.



Yet the community's vitality can still be seen in the maze of abandoned buildings. The most prominent are a watchtower above the main settlement, and the courtyard house of the ruler. Both still have their tan covering of sarooj – a local version of cement painstakingly prepared by mixing sand and minerals and baking the mixture in a kiln.



The two-storey courtyard house was put up in 1932 by Sheikh Abdullah Bin Hamdan. It was his family's private residence, but could handily double as a fort if the delicate net of tribal alliances should unravel. Its walls are dotted with slots, some hooded, for firing on unwelcome visitors.



The courtyard was also intended for what, back then, counted as luxurious living. Its walls trapped the cooler morning air. The pillars that still cross it would once have supported a date palm canopy to protect from the sun. Here the sheikh's family could enjoy a degree of privacy. The side gate in the courtyard was known as the women's gate.



Through here they went to collect water from the wadi, a stiff trek away in the valley below. For men, the appropriate place was outside. A pile of stones on the outside of the courtyard wall is all that remains of the long bench where the sheikh's male visitors would sit. A few yards away stand the walls of the guesthouse where they slept.



A few yards further up the hill, the watchtower rises almost intact and still effortlessly dominates the view across the rocky mountainside. It was built for the sheikh's brother – but he lived here for less than a year, and it was later converted for processing dates. To get a feel of the humbler dwellings of villagers like Al Kindi we must wait for completion of the restoration project.



Today, the walls of the home where he and his family were born stand only a yard high – which is, admittedly, more than enough to suggest an extremely cramped co-existence. In any case, Al Kindi's life was lived outdoors in the tobacco fields. Tobacco has been one of this area's leading crops since the 18th century, but it was a demanding plant that required constant tending.



Then, come the harvest, farmers would keep only one third of their crops and give the rest to the landowner – not that Al Kindi minded. "It was not an easy time,” he says. "At that time there was the same system across the UAE. The people depended on the landowner throughout the entire year.”



For humans, the standard fare was dates, sorghum and corn – with rice as a rare treat to be enjoyed once a year if you were lucky. Any variation to these rations required a trip to Fujairah. "We would go to Fujairah to get coffee, sugar, clothes, fresh and dried fish,” says Al Kindi. "Generally we'd go on foot – although some used donkeys and the rich used camels. We would start about five in the morning. It would take about two or three hours. We would get what we needed and come back at seven or eight in the evening.”



Otherwise, relations between mountain folk and sea folk were cordial. "We would trade with the fishing people, but mountain people had no experience of water and we were afraid of it,” he says. "We were different communities – very separate, except when we needed to trade.”



The treks to Fujairah, or even the occasional journey to Dubai, seem to have done Al Kindi no harm. In the blistering heat he leaps over masonry like a mountain goat to check out the restoration project. After inspecting the breeze-block huts where the team put their equipment, he peers over them as they mix cement.



This morning there are only a handful of workers but Amrik Singh Plaha, the supervisor, plans to eventually bring a team of 16. "Technically, it's a challenge,” he says. "But structure-wise it's not too difficult. The problem is putting grout inside walls. We will restore 12 houses or so around the central buildings.” "We never remove standing walls and we try to preserve as much as we can,” he says.



The drive for authenticity even stretches to sourcing the unusual woven bamboo used in ceilings in the place of conventional palm-leaf matting. The restored buildings should round off a highly scenic panorama. But visitors cannot escape reminders of just how tough you had to be to actually live here.



A fence surrounds a close-packed thicket of headstones and the mortal remains of villagers who, before modern medicine reached the wadi, had to contend with both illness and traditional remedies. Child mortality, recalls Al Kindi, was especially high. "That is the grave of my mother,” he says, pointing to a stone standing not at the head of the grave but at its centre.



"She died in labour and so they put the stone over her dead baby,” he explains. "I like the old place, but I am so happy to settle where I am now,” he says. "And there is one reason.” He pauses. I try to guess if he will mention his new home's air-conditioning, its running water or his spacious majlis. But no. "Until recently, each year heavy rains would come. Water would rush down the wadi and destroy the road,” he says. He frowns at this bitter memory. "It would take us up to three weeks to fix it. All that time, the young and the old would be stuck in the village. That was a miserable life.” (The Gulf News Feature)

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