Ask Ali: It is easy to give your house an ‘Emirati’ feel?

Dear Ali: I recently married an Emirati, but we live in an apartment outside of the UAE. How can I make my home look more "Emirati"? HY, Toronto, Canada

Dear HY: My heartiest congratulations. It is not hard to make your apartment look more “Emirati” if you have space. I know some apartments in the West are a little tiny compared with those we have here in the Gulf – we love everything big and huge.

I advise you to set up in a majlis or sitting area. You can set it up with a comfortable set of couches and armchairs placed around a tea/coffee table, which should be in the middle. You will need some “sadoo”, which is a wool fabric, to give you the feeling of a real Emirati majlis. There is no need to make this majlis as big as the room – it can occupy one area of the room where is enough space while other space can be dedicated to anything else. If you can, purchase a “dallah”, our traditional coffee pot, and place it on the table with a small traditional cups, called “fenjan”. Otherwise try using plastic thermoses in the shape of a traditional pot. Since we moved from hair houses to brick houses and apartments, we no longer have the opportunity to cook coffee or tea on an open fire, so we started using them ourselves. It is very practical and helps us to maintain our norms of hospitality at the top level.

Another option would be to have a mini palm trunk, which you could use as a decoration or perhaps to hang some of your clothes. Also you may use some “bukhoor”, which is the incense we burn to make our houses smell good. This always works best – even when I was a student in the United States I would burn some “oud” bukhoor incense to make me feel as if I was back home. Use it before your Emirati husband arrives home and make sure you open the door to greet him wearing your Emirati “jalabiyah” dress and smile, and you will win his heart and mind always.

Dear Ali: I love the Emirati men's dance and would like to know more about it and whether it is possible for me, an American guy, to learn it? MF, Dubai

Dear MF: I have noticed many people like the Emirati “razfah”, which is what we call it. I believe it is because of the dignified movements our men implemented from the lifestyle we had before, such as hunting, battles, camel riding and sailing. There are three main kinds of the rafza national or traditional dance: yola, harbiya and aayala.

Yola is performed by one person or a group, but each man moves individually, demonstrating his skills and dexterity in twisting and twirling a sword, stick or rifle in one hand. The action is called “yool” and if you hear someone say yool, it means “perform the yola move”.

Regarding the harbiya and aayala, at first sight they may look the same but there are two main differences. Unlike the yola, the harbiya and aayala are performed in two groups facing each other. The yola can be performed by one man. The first difference is that the harbiya can be done by a minimum of 10 people – so five against five – while the aayala needs a minimum of 30 men – 15 men will stand in front of the other 15. It’s no secret that the groups can be huge, sometimes up to 100 men. The next difference is that we need a poet who can write a poem to be sung by both groups. Its meaning will depend on the event. The first group chants the first lines of the poem and then second group repeats it. At the same time men in each group will stand close to each other, almost touching and move at once, hands holding sticks and lightly hitting them on a ground. They also crouch and lean in to the rhythm of the song. The second main difference is that the rhythms are not the same, and will have specific variations.

Since we do not have clubs or schools for adults to learn these traditional dances, men who are interested meet in the majlises of their houses to practise movements and write new poems.