Billionaire sheikh scrubs name from private island
Back in 2011, I wrote about a story that seemed way, way too good to be true: Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan — a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family famous for owning rainbow-colored cars, the world’s largest truck, and a globe-shaped motor home that’s roughly one-millionth the size of Earth — had carved ...
Back in 2011, I wrote about a story that seemed way, way too good to be true: Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan -- a member of Abu Dhabi's ruling family famous for owning rainbow-colored cars, the world's largest truck, and a globe-shaped motor home that's roughly one-millionth the size of Earth -- had carved his name, "Hamad," into an island he owns in the United Arab Emirates, forming waterways so massive that the letters could be viewed from space. But it was true -- and Google Earth satellite imagery proved it.
Back in 2011, I wrote about a story that seemed way, way too good to be true: Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al Nahyan — a member of Abu Dhabi’s ruling family famous for owning rainbow-colored cars, the world’s largest truck, and a globe-shaped motor home that’s roughly one-millionth the size of Earth — had carved his name, “Hamad,” into an island he owns in the United Arab Emirates, forming waterways so massive that the letters could be viewed from space. But it was true — and Google Earth satellite imagery proved it.
Now the story’s getting even more epic. According to a Wall Street Journal report today, the name has since disappeared with no explanation — as you can see by comparing this 2011 Google Earth image with a more recent one taken in August 2012 (in the latter, the icon where “Hamad” used to be is a Google annotation linking to a Daily Mail story about the sheikh’s exploits).
2011
2012
The Journal has more on the mysterious vanishing act — including what it learned from a trip to the largely uninhabited island:
A recent visit to Futaisi Island revealed only a flat expanse of sand stretching over the area where the canals had once snaked their way through the desert. A few excavators -apparently used to pile sand back into the canals – were scattered around the site. Only the main inlet of the canals, the base of the “H” where they emptied into the waters surrounding the city, has been spared the filling-in operation….
“We deleted it,” said a man named Waleed, who works in Sheikh Hamad’s Abu Dhabi office. But he wouldn’t say why or when.
An engineer at Abu Dhabi’s National Marine Dredging Company, which handled the construction of the canals that spelled out the sheikh’s name, said he was hired to do a job, not to ask questions about it. A former business partner of the sheikh pled ignorance: “I don’t know what happened,” he said. “I have no idea and I don’t think I will come into that information.”
Efforts to contact Sheikh Hamad via his office or his business associates were unsuccessful. Even his whereabouts is hard to ascertain. Some say he lives in Morocco, others in Europe.
One possible explanation for disappearance of Sheikh Hamad’s name is that someone in authority decided that the vast carving in the sand didn’t fit the modern image of Abu Dhabi, which is using its vast oil wealth to position itself as a cultural capital by building branches of the Louvre and Guggenheim museums and hosting campuses of New York University and the Sorbonne.
Apparently, spelling your name in canals doesn’t qualify as Louvre-level art these days.
Atlantic Wire/Google Earth
Uri Friedman is deputy managing editor at Foreign Policy. Before joining FP, he reported for the Christian Science Monitor, worked on corporate strategy for Atlantic Media, helped launch the Atlantic Wire, and covered international affairs for the site. A proud native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he studied European history at the University of Pennsylvania and has lived in Barcelona, Spain and Geneva, Switzerland. Twitter: @UriLF
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