Time Frame: Modern artwork with long roots

It’s almost a year since the remodelled Rolla Square Park reopened in Sharjah after a multi-million dirham facelift.

The centre piece of the park is a half-size copper replica of a tree, its foliage cleverly simulated by a cut-out in concrete that completes the sculpture. But why a tree?

This photograph supplies the answer. It was taken in 1977 for Al Ittihad newspaper and shows the original tree that gave the square its name; a rolla or banyan tree. The area, the newspaper noted, had been in use as a public space for 150 years, with the original rolla planted by the Ruler of Sharjah, Sheikh Sultan Bin Saqer Al Qasimi, in the 19th century.

Down the years, the square became a regular meeting and a place to hang out where you might see everything from falcons to wresters. It was where people gathered to mark the funeral of Egypt’s president Gamel Abdel Nasser in 1970.

In it’s native India, the banyan can live for up to a thousand years, but while Sharjah rolla has long passed on to the great woodpile in the sky, its memory is honoured in a statue and in the spirit of the park.

* James Langton