khalijefars News, Blogs, Art and Community
We begin tonight’s edition of A Window to the Fatherland with Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh reading one of his poems from the book of his collected works.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
Imagine this was 60 or 70 years ago and one day you wake up and do not see the usual natural world of trees and creeks around you and instead ta sahara and scorching sun have replaced them.
This is Dubai of those days in which our special guest of tonight Mr Faghihi woke up to when he was a young man.
Now in his seventies he is the chairman of the association of foreign trades in Dubai and one of the most prominent businessmen of the Sheikhdom.
Anyone who needs help for a wide range of services, from having a wedding party to insuring their cars, calls at his office in Dubai.
Back in Iran he has built schools, university, old people homes, mosques and clinics for the people in his birthplace of the city of Lar.
And he has provided these excellent services regardless of if a Muslim, Christian, Jew or Zarostean Iranian benefits from them as he does not look at his fellow humans from a religious angle!
So, lets hear the story of his life from himself.
Mr Faghihi;
When I was only 16 years old I accompanied my late father to the Hajj pilgrimage through Dubai.
He went on to Mecca and I stayed over in Dubai. I had lost my mother when I was two years old and were not on good terms with my step mother. So I decided not to go back to Iran.
In Dubai I began working as a bookkeeper at a relative’s company and went back to Iran after six years to do my military service.
After completing my conscription in 1964, in partnership with my brother in law we opened the Halem Fujaira Company.
Dr. Alireza Nourizadeh:
In those days Dubai must have only been a long road that connected a few buildings only.
Mr Faghihi:
Dubai came to being in 1832 when two rival clans from Yemen migrated there and each established their own authority in opposing parts of it.
The first official ruler of Dubai was Sheikh AlMaktum who needed some protection from the Iranian people for his authority and 35 armed men from my birthplace had provided this for him.
