Emirati Stories

Jalal Luqman's name is known today both locally and internationally. But his journey to becoming the UAE's first digital artist in the 1990s was not a walk in the park. Although his passion for computers and art showed at a very young age, reality forced him to make other professional choices first. After a dramatic event in his personal life that turned him from wealthy to poor overnight, while he was studying business in the USA, he managed to finance and complete his degree by doing blue-collar jobs - while secretly following art classes in the evening.

Jalal's art is sometimes qualified as dark, and has gone through different phases, using a large variety of media.

A few weeks ago he published his first novel: The Armagondas – Volume 1, an epic fantasy graphic novel.

During this interview, Jalal Luqman goes back to this long journey and remembers life as a child, when his father worked as one of the first lawyers in the country.

Episode 03 Webpage: http://emiratistories.com/03-jalal-luqman

Music: Getting Older, by Martjin de Boer - featuring Javolenus

Suhaila al Dhaheri, is a law student at Paris Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. At 21 she already has experience in running elections and holding a mandate to represent the interests of her peers. Suhaila was elected President of her university's Student Council and at a federal level she has also been a member of the Emirates Youth Council for one year. In a country that little more than a decade ago has launched the first elections of its history for its consultative legislative body, progressively increasing the number of eligible voters, her experience contributes to the general journey towards more public participation. Suhaila lives in Abu Dhabi, pursuing her desire "to make a change", but is keen to maintain a strong connection to her roots in Al Ain. Born at a time when her country had already gone through significant transformations, she embraces the future with optimism.

Two years after the loss of her mother, Dubai artist and entrepreneur Leila al Marashi, 35, decided to build on her experience in a creative way with The Power of Pink project, an art installation focused on the colour pink, dedicated to raising awareness about breast cancer in the UAE.

In this episode, Leila speaks about pink in the life of an Emirati girl, teenager and grown-up woman. She tells the story of her mother and her father, of how they met, explains what is behind the pop-art pictures that she created a few years ago to "make East meet West", her fashion design business and her experience of different corporate cultures in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

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Emirati Stories is a podcast dedicated to introducing the Emirati culture and society through individual stories. Episode 01 was recorded in Abu Dhabi and hosted by Nathalie Gillet.

Show notes and pictures are available on: http://emiratistories.com/01-leila-al-marashi

Emirati personalities from a variety of backgrounds walk us through their life experience, their sources of inspiration, their motivations, sometimes their doubts. In a quiet atmosphere of Abu Dhabi, away from the whirlwind of news, guests speak about themselves at their own pace, going back to the roots and key influences of the past.

Halfway between journalism and literature, this podcast aims at offering new tools to understand the way people in the Arabian Gulf think and see the world around them. Stay tuned to listen to our first episode to be posted soon.