The secret of Dubai II: What my father saw but others didn’t

“With each new day in Africa,” Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai wrote in his book, “a  gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish.  At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve.  It is no different for the human race.  […]

“With each new day in Africa,” Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai wrote in his book, “a  gazelle wakes up knowing he must outrun the fastest lion or perish.  At the same time, a lion stirs and stretches, knowing he must outrun the fastest gazelle or starve.  It is no different for the human race.  Whether you consider yourself a gazelle or a lion, you simply have to run faster than others to survive.”
“What you see now is nothing compared to our vision… just tiny parts of what lies ahead.  We’ll build a great monument on these foundations.”
This is where the reader’s concentration breaks down.  He closes the book and whistles, holly molly!  What a minute.  What is this guy talking about?  Who would look at Dubai and called it a tiny part – of anything? Well, a visionary – that is who.
It’s incredible, yes.  A city in which you have the largest of this and the tallest of that shouldn’t be a part of anything, let alone a tiny part.  It should be THE thing.  
The speaker, however grandiose he sounds, merits our attention.  And when we allow ourselves to explore the artefacts that his hands have molded in such a short time, we soon realize he’s not delusional, this is a visionary sharing his visions.
But what is vision?  Is it hereditary or a learned behaviour? Al Maktoum also found it difficult to tell. Whatever it is, it is safe to assume that Al Maktoum obviously got the arrogance for such big thoughts from his father, Rashid.  If it’s hereditary, his father gave him the genes.  If it’s a learned behaviour, his father taught him.  
As a young impressionable young man, Al Maktoum also was bewildered by the audacity of his father’s thinking.  
“Many years ago,” Al Maktoum retells an encounter which demonstrated the soldierly resolve of his father’s vision, “some merchants came to me and asked me to approach my father, Sheikh Rashid, on their behalf, and discuss the large port he was planning at Jebel Ali.  Since the economy was in recession and we already had a large harbor at Port Rashid that met their needs, they thought the emirate did not need a new, larger harbour.”
Al Maktoum obviously agreed with the merchants so he felt he “should convey the message and shortly thereafter, went at dawn to the Jebel Ali area, where I knew I would find my father.  He was standing on top of a small hill examining the site.  I passed on the message and waited for his reply.  He looked at me intently and said nothing, then he fumbled with the widwakh [pipe] he was holding between his fingers.  After a few moments he looked at me again and then to the ground, saying nothing.
“I dared not ask him the same question again, and waited until he had finished his examination and asked me to drive him home.  Once we took off and after relaxing his feet against the corner of the car as usual, he said, ‘Listen my son, I never answered your question because I did not want the engineers to hear.  But I can tell you that the reason I am building this port now is because there will come a time when you will not be able to afford to do so.’
“Before my father conceived and implemented this project, nobody had thought of executing one of such gigantic proportions.  Even now, I have no simple explanation as to how the idea occurred to him, but if I had to explain it in one word, I would use the word ‘vision’.  In his great wisdom, God gave each one of us a share of material possessions, capabilities and talents.  Some people may aspire to little more than their daily earnings, while others have far greater vision.”
To give the reader a context, at the time Al Maktoum’s father was conceiving another port, Dubai already had a port – Port Rashid – named after Al Maktoum’s father.  At that time, it was the largest port in the Middle East. Again, at that time, at the old port, you could see “between 300 and 400 ships anchored off Dubai, queuing to offload their cargoes.”
To stretch the insanity further, the location of the port had no water.  Yet, the father wanted it to be the largest man-made port in the world.  And he did.  And it took only two years.  The Jebel Ali Port was completed in 1979.  It is now the world’s largest man-made harbor and the biggest port in the Middle East.
Even today, Al Maktoum considers the impossibility of the task.  “It was an undertaking of epic proportions for a small emirate such as Dubai and I doubt any consultant engineer would have wanted to undertake its feasibility study back then.  Imagine telling a group of investors: ‘This is the Jebel Ali area which, as you can see, is a remote area devoid of water, vegetation and people.  I want to build the largest man-made port ever here, despite the fact that Dubai’s Port Rashid is already the Middle East’s largest port and has thirty-five berths.’”
Wherever you see an enduring development, there’s someone who did the visioning and who was resolute in its implementation.  
I recall one of my professors telling us about the challenges Dr. Mahathir Mohamed faced when establishing Proton, Malaysia’s national car manufacturer.  “Professors brought economic arguments why it wasn’t feasible, why it shouldn’t even be our priority.”
But Dr. Mahathir ignored them and proceeded.  Recently, a couple of years ago, I read a publication where the Scotland Yard (the detective department of the metropolitan police force of London) said one of its favourite brands was Proton, because of its fuel economy.
The responses from those who wanted the summaries of Al Maktoum’s book were overwhelming.  I’ve started sending out the available ones.
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