Abu Dhabi doesn’t have a lot of public art, unless you count big billboards of Sheikh Zayed (the founder of the UAE). And while I don’t know if there is a causal relationship here, there’s not much graffiti, either. All those places in cities where your eye might see a scrawled tag, a political comment, a DeLaVega aphorism…
…there’s none of that here, in English or Arabic. At the National Day celebration last year, there was a designated spot to write “graffiti” on a free-standing blank wall:
but the wall was surrounded by a safety rope: sanctioned graffiti, emblazoning only positive comments and drawings.
So you can imagine my surprise when I saw this wall:
Goin 2 introduce men of Liwa…
I don’t know who the men of Liwa are but seeing their scribbled felt oddly familiar, as if a tiny sliver of Manhattan had suddenly appeared on a wall in Abu Dhabi. Graffiti as a marker of home.
