I remember arriving the very first time in Abu Dhabi… I planned that visit for many weeks. I had no idea what to expect, I purchased Hijabs, I did all the research thoroughly and I was never so nervous and excited about any holiday in my whole life. My memories of childhood are like a hole punched binder of memories, jumbled and mixed up. But I remembered when my families most special person arrived from Abu Dhabi when I was 11 years old. My Mumma believed that he was called Dave. However even in those very early days I knew that this was his English name and that his real name was more likely to be Muhammed Mahmood or another beautiful Arabic name. But even in those days, I didn’t like to tell my Mumma…she was the most beautifully funny and beautiful character… sensible yet naïve… The reality is he was a stand in Dad, where the English were raping and attacking women and children, this man was what made our house a home for those years… Not because he was there all the time, but because his treatment of my Mumma for that time showed me that she was special and appreciated and that not all men in the world were aggressive sexual offenders ( Not that I had all the words for this in those days )
I digress, fourty years later, the very men that I had feared all those years before, had totally destroyed my family,my life, my career… there was no escape… the distant memories somehow surfaced and I took the life changing decision to leave europe and try and find some space to breathe… So there it is… To paint a picture I had several teeth missing from an attack that left metal sticking out of my jaw, my hair was so bleached to try and cover an attack, where my hair was dyed dark brown in a streak… My youngest daughter was missing, her sisters were heavily involved with the person I had agreed to give evidence about and his military and police associate’s, implicated the rape and murder of children.
I digress again, the backdrop for my booking the holiday to prepare for the onerous time ahead ( I could not have known how low the Europeans would go to cover for child abusers and sex offenders) I packed… and arrived at the airport in London… I boarded the most beautiful aeroplane I had ever been on in my entire life and from that moment, something changed, something awoke, memories, the scent of oud, spices. I arrived at Zayed Airport, Abu Dhabi… As I look back I smile, I wondered from the aeroplane through a terminal, that was like nothing I had seen on earth… The feeling I cannot describe until I arrived in the main arrivals hall. I stopped for a moment and the sea of angels in Kanduras, so white, spotless like the airport. As i looked at all of these men, I saw the similarities with my families most special person from childhood. The feeling of safety was immediate and overwhelming after an adulthood of violence and danger, with my missing teeth and crazy hair and trauma… In that moment in that hall surrounded by a sea of the most honourable men, the same as my sort of Dad all those years ago, I felt more at home than I had since those days in childhood with my Mumma…