I was missing Masqat and the fare at the Arab World and the Mandi places in Al Khuwair, Ghala and Azaiba, so what does as ‘Desi Khaleeji’ do in such circumstances? Head to Wadi Hadramout, for Adeni Tea and Mandi Rice in Jalan Ampang. The place feels somewhere out of Dakhliyah, with a space-time compression identical out of Oman.
KL has a large Arab student diaspora and refugee communities, and I often speak Arabic here with Malaysians and Indonesians, and is a lingua franca of the Nusantara. The jawi script is Arabic and Indian Ocean circulations dominate.
The sensory scapes of the place, is deeply familiar and satisfying.
On the business end, this edition of The Entrepreneur’s from the Monocle stable is on entrepreneurship in the Emirates, which is the embodiment of the free port ethos of Dubai since 1905, which prompted the migration of Persian merchants, traces of which can be found in current day Al Fahidi in Bur Dubai.
Change Thinker 