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The people of the coast: this is how a quarter of us lived..and these are their industries
Photography: Youssef Al Harmoudi
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The "Al-Maleh and Marine Fishing Festival" in Dibba Al-Hisn is one of the major events at the state level, which celebrates a series of ancient marine professions and industries.
Within the activities of the ninth edition of the festival, a group of Emirati citizens were working on reviving handicrafts inherited from fathers, grandfathers, mothers and grandmothers, to keep them in their memory, as if they were saying to visitors to the festival, “This is how our quarter lived, and these are their industries,” defining the trades and professions in which the people of the coast worked.
The mother, Maryam Al-Khashri, participated in the Al-Maleh Festival with the craft of “Al-Safafa” in which palm fronds are used during weaving, as they take various shapes and in different colors that combine the aesthetic aspect and accuracy in weaving, so that her work becomes the outcome of her effort, and it becomes the most beautiful possessions that she is associated with.
Al-Khashri says that her use of wicker products is a legacy that she relates to and loyalty to history, using a variety of tools that she made with her own hands from palm fronds, such as “baskets” to put food and keep dates inside, and the traditional “Mahfa” that is used in summer and heat times. Hard mats and “mats” that are used as rugs for sitting or placing food on.
The mother, Maryam Hassan, spoke about how Emirati women sewed their clothes in the past, using the “Tali”, which is a ribbon with colored threads in different colors (gold and silver) that were embroidered manually, with various threads intertwined in the decorations and embroidery called “the virgin” to adorn the woman’s dress. And the “Badala” through which the trousers she wears under her dress are embroidered.
Citizen Amna Ali says: “Because the people of the Dibba Al-Hisn area are close to the sea, men and women used to practice the craft of extracting sea salt, which was either coarse or fine. The water is evaporated by sunlight, while the salt remains, and then it is cleaned of impurities by washing it with water, to later enter into many uses, such as preserving foods through salting as the (salty) industry, and it is used in the treatment of some skin diseases such as eczema and psoriasis, and mothers Grandmothers make mixtures of salt with oils to treat the scalp and stop hair loss.”
Among the ancient maritime heritage crafts is the manufacture of “lech”, a tool used in fishing, and its manufacture requires skill and patience, according to citizen Omar Al-Dhahouri, as it is a network of “nylon” or “cotton” threads, and it is strengthened with a thick rope from the outside, Each fisherman determines the length and width of the “lach” according to his use, and after the completion of spinning the “lach” the white oyster (the seashell) is collected, burned, crushed and cooked with the “lech” for 24 hours, until it takes on the white color, and there is another profession called “rawaba.” It is the repair of the "lech" after it was cracked or cut off while fishing for large fish.
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