The Magazine of Dubai Women's College Volume 16 Issue 2, May ...

24 > FEATURE
Photo by Shaikha Bukhashem
DUBAI CREEK:
Past and Present
TEXT > Asma Ahmed & Shamma Al Muhairy
Driving through Dubai and crossing Al Garhoud Bridge, you see a
line of wooden boats floating over the water of the Creek and an old
man with his crew building and repairing traditional boats. The life
of the old man, like many other Emiratis, has always been connected
to Dubai Creek.
The 70-year-old Emirati, Saif Al Falasi, sits
every day on the side of the creek working with
his crew building boats that he is quite famous
for. In the past, these boats were used to carry
goods through the Creek. Nowadays, Dubai
Creek has changed just like everything else
in the city.
Al Falasi still recalls how the Creek was
in the old days. He says, “The Creek was
a very narrow waterway until the late Sheikh
Rashid bin Saeed Al Maktoum, former Ruler
of Dubai ordered the expansion of this narrow
canal to become Dubai Creek. Since then, the
flow of commercial and non-commercial ships
coming to Dubai carrying goods and people
from different countries has never stopped.
Dubai is indebted to the Creek for its
commercial boom.”
The Creek: past and present:
Dubai Creek was a narrow waterway, which
divided Dubai into Deira and Bur Dubai. It
was a safe place on the southern shores of the
Arabian Gulf where a small group of people