The Village I Grew Up In
A snippet of my life
I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a little village called Neseem on the far edge of civilization where life was encapsulated. Its inhabitants were detached from the world – jamming their existent, spiralling and spiralling with them in endless circles, isolating them from the world outside. Life in Naseem, when we moved out was certainly stuck in the older, much more surreal age of the eighties.
Its people did not talk politics. They did not think of big businesses and big money or international trade or the effect of global agreements on the life of an average modern UAE person or the effect of computers or satellite imagery or technology or the snow or sky diving or history or the difference between the English and the French or the world wars or what Dutch cheese tasted like or any of the things people of today’s world talk about. Hardly anyone travelled in summer or school holidays outside the country. For an average person in Neseem, even things happening on TV were a curious phenomenon as the events seem to occur in a different dimension. When I was little, I could not come in contact with the realities of what’s on TV. It was hard for my little brain to tell the difference between what’s fiction and what’s not. You never recognized the faces you saw on TV as people whom you have ever met or likely to meet ever. It was like watching something happening on a different planet that you are never going to visit.
There is hectic life, and there is life on the fast lane and there is normal life, then there is a slow-paced life, and beyond that comes life in Neseem. Studying its socio-dynamics maybe the dream of any sociologist, as it occurs in isolation of all else that is happening in the world outside. The closest asphalted road was 3 kilometres away and it is exactly where that road ended that Neseem was left out to spiral on itself in the eighties. Schools, a small clinic, police station, few shops and, later, a small market were only seen where the road started.
Looking now in retrospect, the village was really divided into three zones. Neseem’s original inhabitants, living in an L-shape terrace of about thirty houses, which were one way or another related to a Kaabi village elder who was said to be the first person to live there. He was high and mighty and to most people, he was the closest thing to a government. His death in the early nineties shuffled the equilibrium the village brought itself to for many years. Then there was a zone half that size where new comers lived. Then in isolation of the other two zones, another community lived at the far edge of the village .That community was ever expanding probably to a much larger size than the other two parts. But they never showed interest in the politics of the village or its big events or the decision making process inside it. I remember looking at that end of the village with a sense of queer as I knew none of the people who lived there, played with none of their children in the fields, or went with any of them to school.
I never visited Neseem since we moved out. I hear things are now different and I am told I would not recognize it if I saw it now. That remains to be seen.
May 21st, 2005 at 7:22 am
Wow that was very interesting to read. I sure would be interested to visit the place if you are going to arrange a tour :P
May 21st, 2005 at 8:34 am
[sigh]
u reminded me of my home town village too… bas atleast we go from time to time…
“I grew up in the middle of nowhere in a little village called Naseem on the far edge of civilization where life was encapsulated.” liked the way u described the village and the begining….
=)
May 21st, 2005 at 9:34 am
It’s enchanting… such a village is a place i’d like to visit and be part of for a while… just to go back to the roots… that we’ve been detached from for some time…
Beautifully written!
May 21st, 2005 at 9:45 am
it sounds interesting and well written .. you’ve done a great job, but where is Naseem?
May 21st, 2005 at 10:14 am
That’s very interesting.. seems like something you would only read in stories.. I never heard of Naseem? Where is it located?
May 21st, 2005 at 7:04 pm
:) touchy! i would love to know where does it located too! nseem.. kaab.. sounds somewhere close to oman!
May 21st, 2005 at 7:35 pm
hey guys,
alnseem is a small village in northern emirates in a spot midway between Sharjah, Fujairah and RAK. No body has ever heared of it and I do not suspect there is reason for its name to come up in anyone’s conversation so no body talks about it either. I lived in it for the best part of 13 years.
May 21st, 2005 at 8:10 pm
beautifully written e3ashig..
makes me want to visit the place.. we’ve got beautiful places in the country but we never really take the time to go discover.. it’ll be interesting to see..
feels like a different dimension..
May 21st, 2005 at 10:18 pm
eeeh i wrote soo much it was lost when i clicked the “add my comment” without putting my email *ufff*
i was sayin, welcome back again and again :D
May 21st, 2005 at 10:38 pm
I couldn’t but commend your impressively forceful comeback.
The compelling ambition you possess is doubtlessly admirable. Well done Dr. e3ashig.
May 22nd, 2005 at 4:06 am
well written =) i alaways feel that the small villages in RAK and Fuj, have their own atmosphere… their life is still simple… the people are just different =)
welcome back e3ashig =)
May 22nd, 2005 at 11:20 am
It was really nice writting, i really like those places i always try to stop by those small villages on my way to Fugairah and discover it. But you must go back there, promise haa !
May 22nd, 2005 at 11:30 am
Interesting anecdote, yet your account almost sounds detached.
I never would have guessed you’d be fond of the village until you mentioned you “lived in it for the best part of 13 years”.
May 22nd, 2005 at 11:35 am
i agree with you kitten “seems like something you would only read in stories” …
May 22nd, 2005 at 11:37 am
thanks uaeyah, sugar, ventage, guesswhoisback, uaerose, firebrand, adorie for your feedback.
Firebrand, curious observation. Strictly speaking, i only lived in the village between ages 5-12. The other 6 years I spent in military boarding schools around the country and only went back for weekends and short holidays.
May 22nd, 2005 at 1:45 pm
where’s my suggestion :( you meanie!!
June 1st, 2005 at 1:30 pm
[…] its side. Soon after, we moved against the flux outside of Abu Dhabi where I grew up in a small and delightful little village. I joined school at five, but then at seven, I transferred to a military school […]
January 11th, 2007 at 8:27 am
[…] Now, growing up in a small village where things were seen at night, and stories of voices and mythical creatures were a common after-football chitchat topics, my brain was obviously pre-wired to respond with awe and automatic acceptance and sympathy. Even after studying psychology and working in psychiatry and reading numerous book on human consciousness and how it works, I found myself unable to dismiss what was obviously a hypnogogic hallucination. I feel ashamed to say that part of me wanted to say: “How amusing! Could you tell this guy to pay ME a visit next time you see him, I feel certain we would have an interesting conversation” but an other part of me was saying: “What a ridiculous idea. What if this really WAS a creature in the physical sense, would you really want it in your bedroom?” […]
February 6th, 2007 at 7:51 am
[…] There were few Urban legends circulating Neseem. I do not recall all of them but I can remember a few about the village elder, Kaabi. Weather these were spread out as a propaganda to ascertain his political leadership over the other more simple and uneducated inhabitants is beyond me. It certainly is well known that superstition and religion can both be exploited for political purposes. I was too young to know at the time. […]
August 20th, 2007 at 8:49 am
[…] younger, there was an acacia tree behind our house. It was one of many that dotted the landscape of the village - one at about every 100 meters. I remember vaguely playing under one particular tree and making a […]
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