Sharjah is a small Emirate next to Dubai separated by Deira Creek. It was simpler, dry -no alcohol – but on the beach of the creek a craftsman would build dhows with just simple tools and no plans. The idea for this poem came to me as I looked at a photo some years after I had taken it. It was of a man in a lunghi crouched on the sand shaping trunks of wood into a dhow. The colour had faded and I thought this a metaphor for memories fading of that lone man building, what were for me, romantic boats. He is no longer there.
Building Dhows in Sharjah
I saw branches tangle on the beach,
grey-sheened, dark and hard wood,
smoothed-formed by the slicing adze.
A dhow is growing on the sand,
I can hear the sharpened thuds,
shaving, shaping sounds over the Creek.
Now across the water
the Sharjah sands are empty;
wood, adze, dhow, man are gone.
No sound to carry memories.
Dhows crowd around the creek
moored together several deep,
goods pile high along the quay.
Men squat and wait to load to move
to sail the high-sided, brooding boats
to Iraq, Iran, Pakistan
as they have always done.
But no one is building dhows in Sharjah.
© Anthony Fisher July 2002