Friday weekend in Dubai Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

UAE is the first nation to formalise a workweek shorter than five days – for the public sector at least, and my lucky kids

It was a historic day today – the UAE’s first-ever working Friday as the nation switches to a Saturday-Sunday weekend, rather than Friday-Saturday.

The surprise announcement – that government bodies and schools would operate four-and-a-half days a week, closing at noon on Fridays – came out of the blue in December, and left lots of people scratching their heads.

Private businesses aren’t mandated to make the change, so if my company hadn’t followed suit, I’d have had different weekends to my kids! (who, needless to say, are thrilled with their super-early finish on Fridays at the end of their gruelling (haha) 4.5-day week.)

It took my company a few weeks to decide, but knowing that my bosses all have children, I was fairly confident we’d make the transition to align with Western calendars, even though we work with other Gulf states that are keeping their Friday-Saturday weekend. The half day on Friday, unfortunately, doesn’t apply to us being in the private sector (booo!).

So how does the new arrangement feel?

Right now, strange! I’d go so far as to say a little bewildering. Definitely confusing. Humans, it seems, are programmed to feel a sense of dislocation when a sudden change to routine is imposed on them. But I feel sure it’s going to be great – a whole extra day to catch up with family and friends at home, and proper Sunday roasts, yay!

Like many people, my week has consisted of changing days on calendars, shifting appointments and commitments forward by a day and wondering what’s going to happen to Friday brunch.

On several occasions, I had to think really hard about what day it actually was. Take Wednesday (the new hump day) for example. Really it was Tuesday. But with school online and my boss sending us home to work due to the UAE’s high Covid case numbers, it felt like Monday part 3.

In the grander scheme, the passing of time is neither here nor there in a world where 2022 appears to be shaping up as the third act of 2020.

It’s not the first time that the UAE has swapped the weekend around. The previous switch took place in 2006, via a story in the Gulf News, announcing that the weekend would move from Thursday/Friday to Friday/Saturday.

I am wondering, however, whether we should relocate to our neighbouring emirate of Sharjah. They’ve gone a step further and adopted a three-day weekend.

On 3 September 1967, traffic in Sweden switched from driving on the left to the right. This also happened in Dubai in the 60s. Can you *imagine* if it occurred today?!

I read somewhere that you know you’re a long-term desert dwelling expat when you stop explaining to people that the weekend here is Friday and Saturday.

In fact, it used to be Thursday and Friday, changing in 2006 after it was deemed that having a weekend halfway into the rest of the world’s working week wasn’t productive.*

Every Friday at noon, Muslims go to the mosque for Friday prayers and the city erupts with noise as the mosques broadcast their sermons on loud speakers. If you’re parked in the vicinity, you’re highly likely to get blocked in as people flock to pray, leaving their cars in every available space, on the pavement, and on the sand.

The call to prayer (azaan) is heard five times every day (seven days a week) and I really enjoy hearing it when we’re out and about. It’s such a part of life in Dubai and always reminds me where we are.

The children here, for whom going back to school on Sunday is perfectly normal, can even be trained to come home when they hear the call to prayer.

“I have to go when I hear the noisy man,” one of BB’s friends told me once during a playdate at our previous villa, located in a compound right opposite a mosque.

“The noisy man?” I enquired. “Ah, of course!” When you live so close to a mosque, it is pretty loud – and the first call to prayer is at sunrise!

But, as I said, I love listening to the echoing song of the iman (and quickly learnt to sleep through the dawn call). You can also hear it in shopping malls, where even if you don’t practice Islam, it’s a signal to think beyond the shopping.

Have a quick listen below!

*As an aside, in several other parts of the Middle East (Saudi Arabia, Oman and Yemen), the weekend is still Thurs-Fri.