Opinion - Emirates 24|7

Nobody warned me about the streets. I landed in Kigali expecting to be moved by a memorial, and I was, but what caught me first was a city with no cigarette butts on its pavements, no plastic bags in its gutters, orderly traffic and a simplicity that made everything feel calm and deliberate. In 199

Some letters are written for an occasion. Others are written for a lifetime. The letter Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid addressed to his son, Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed, is more than a father’s words of pride and congratulations. It is, at its heart, a reflection on leadership — a distillation of lesson

The significance of the letter addressed by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum to his brother, His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, lies not simply in the fact that it is a letter from one leader to another, or from a brother and a long-standing partner in the nation’s j

Sudan has been descending into hell for years. The United Nations Security Council now has a chance to do right by the people of Sudan and remember what it was created to do: stop wars, keep the peace, and protect lives. But it can do those things only if its members are willing to step up. Sudan i

My friend Sana is getting married in December in Phuket. She is Tunisian, he is Pakistani, and she was flying through Dubai from Lisbon for two days to find her wedding dress. I am the head of the dress committee, which means I do the research, map the routes, call the shops and build the itinerary

I have a complicated relationship with earphones. Over the years I have tried every kind, wired, wireless, expensive, very expensive. The outcome was always the same: I would lose them. So I changed strategy, bought an inexpensive pair that worked surprisingly well, and accepted that they too would

Perhaps many people do not know that a work of art by the late Kuwaiti artist Sami Mohammad stands on one of Dubai’s streets, and perhaps many pass it without a second glance. It is the sculpture 'The Sidra' unveiled in June 2009 in Downtown Dubai. Sami Mohammad who died on August 11, 2026, at the

When I first set foot at London Heathrow in the early 1970s, I was leaving Dubai and the United Arab Emirates for the first time in my life. It was my first encounter with a foreign country, and what I saw in London left me almost speechless. Even the pavement seemed extraordinary. For most of my l

Last June, I was travelling with friends: Willie, a South African entrepreneur, and his wife Imen, who is Tunisian. Both live in Dubai, like me. We stopped in Copenhagen a day before flying to Milan for a friend’s wedding, and over coffee, the conversation turned to leadership. Society, Willie said

During one of our meetings, Meher, Managing Editor of Emirates 24|7, had shown me a video of Jazz, his German Shepherd puppy, watching a World Cup match and snacking, I found the scene so cute that it stayed with me. A few nights later, I sent Meher my new column late in the evening, shortly before

August 15-18, 1969, the venue: Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York. More than 500,000 young people attended the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. Woodstock was a celebration of music and peace. But it was much more. The young opposed the Vietnam War. The festival also embodied values associated with the

In the UAE’s development journey, major milestones are never announced in isolation, nor are strategic ambitions left hanging in the future. When His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, unveiled the target of increasing th