Good boys do it well? Saudi drifters and stunt drivers

Caption: Young men park at the sidelines of an illegal drifting races on Million's Street at the Al Dhafra Festival in the Al Gharbia, Abu Dhabi. (Anna Zacharias / The NShow more

By day, camels ruled Millions Street in Al Gharbia. By night, it belonged to drifters.

The air, usually alive with fireside chatter, was still at Al Dhafra. It was 10pm and the roads were empty.

Ten minutes from my tent, I accidentally drove into a drift contest.

Two cars raced towards me. Scores of cars were parked on the sidelines, beaming headlights onto the rough surface of Millions Street.

Pickup trucks skidded back and forth down its centre, young men precariously seated on window ledges, swinging ghutra headscarves into the air.

Spectators perched on sandbanks and car roofs, snuggled into leather jackets with ghutras wrapped tight against their faces as protection from the desert cold and sand sprayed by drifters who came too close.

The clandestine races were being filmed on dozens of mobile phones and would be uploaded in a matter of hours, like a Saudi YouTube video in the making. The kind of video that provided the inspiration for M.I.A.'s controversial Bad Girls video.

But here’s the thing. The guys I spoke to weren’t particularly bad boys. They were well mannered and polite and in Al Dhafra for a family holiday.

Guys like Saif, 23, a Saudi Arabian more intent on converting me to Islam than breaking any law. Saif had work in the morning. He had spent the day partying with beauty camels and would not sleep that night. He had a 850km drive back home to Dammam.

“Repeat after me,” said his friend, a waif in his early twenties. “There is no god but God and Mohammed is the....”

“No, no, no,” said Saif. “Not yet.”

“Why not?” asked his friend.

“In a minute. First let’s explain to her what is forbidden, what is not forbidden...”

The Saudis plotted my conversion to Islam, happily oblivious to the fact that I understood their conversation. Which was odd, you know, because we’d been talking in Arabic.

It was probably my fault for bringing religion into the discussion in the first place.

Saif puffed away on his cigarette. “Isn’t smoking forbidden?” I asked. “Yes. And music.” Music, clearly, the worse of the two in his mind.

Welcome to the sidelines of the Western Region stunt races.

They met in a different place every night. They had drag raced on the motorway the night before. The hard of Millions Street worked best for drifting, when drivers intentionally oversteer to make the car skid. Saif believed the drivers were Emirati, cheered by Saudi, Qatari and Emirati boys.

Stunt driving, deadly and popular, is one of the biggest hobbies for young men across the Gulf. Doctors have labelled reckless driving a pandemic, muftis have denounced it as sinful and police have launched undercover teams to stop illegal races planned on mobile networks.

Cars and camels have a close association. Half the fun of a camel race is the reckless pursuit of camels beside the track. The best part of a beauty contest is the parading with the winning camel and an entourage of cars with flashing lights, blaring music and honking horns.

In desert camps, people are free to drive over any dune they can conquer. Regrettably, a similar approach is taken to tarmac roads.

The combination of inexpensive petrol and large families means that many young Gulf men, and increasingly women, only enjoy real privacy behind the tinted windows of a 4x4.

Around the camel track or in the city, the car becomes an extension of the self. A 2011 government crackdown on modification garages has not stopped demand for vehicles customised with turbochargers, superchargers and exhaust headers.

Al Gharbia is infamous for drag races but dragsters are not exactly hardened criminals. They are young and invincible, they are bored and there is a fatalist belief that whatever happens is the will of God.

A 2008 survey of 260 traffic police in Al Ain found that 92 per cent believed "destiny" was the most likely causal factor for motor vehicle crash injuries and deaths.

Police have clamped down on illegal stunt driving but the sport remains resilient in Dubai and Ras Al Khaimah.

It affects us all. When speeding drivers tailgate and flash their lights on the Sheikh Zayed Road, it's easy to dismiss them as selfish louts.

Most youth genuinely don’t see this as bad behavior.

Flashing red and blue police lights cut down the centre of Millons Street a few minutes after my arrival. Drivers revved their engines. The street emptied in seconds.

“If I get arrested, will you help me?” shouted Saif as he started his 4x4.

With that, he disappeared into the night.