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When the oil revenues began to flow in last year, everyone expected great things of Sheik Shakhbut. But it soon developed that what Shakhbut liked to do with money was count it, not spend it. He refused to accept checks from the oil companies, at first kept his cash under his bed. When the bedsprings began to bulge, he had the cash carted to a palace dungeon. It was only after rats began nibbling at the treasure chests and insects started eating the folding money that Shakhbut reluctantly agreed to accept the principle of banking. He now flourishes an outsize checkbook, emblazoned with the red and white flag of Abu Dhabi, but he still hates to sign checks.
Putting Off Payday. Britain, which has a mother-hen relationship to the allegedly independent Trucial States, last year promoted an Abu Dhabi development program calling for $70 million worth of roads, schools and public works. Sheik Shakhbut, 58, accepted the plan only in theory. Businessmen dealing with the sheik have a tendency to overnight grey hair. "He simply asks for 50% in every business deal!" sputtered a Levantine entrepreneur. Shakhbut may amiably concede that he has signed a contract for work to be done, then adds cagily, "But I didn't say I would pay for it." His penny pinching even extends to Abu Dhabi's 47O-man army: each soldier is paid personally by Shakhbut, who stalls off payday as long as possible.
The sheik's mind resembles a revolving door. Since Abu Dhabi has virtually no water (a glass of water costs about the same as a glass of gin), there is a desperate need for modern equipment to distill sea water. But the sheik has three times shifted the location of a proposed new distillation plant and may well shift it three or 30 times more. Groaned a frustrated British engineer: "We frequently do six weeks' work for nothing." The British produced plans to make Abu Dhabi city into a glittering modern capital that would be the pride of the Persian Gulf, but as fast as engineers lay out a new boulevard, Shakhbut grants permission to a local merchant to build a store in the middle of it.
Bustard Hunting. In an effort to broaden the sheik's outlook, oilmen and the British government have given him red-carpet trips to Paris, London and New York. What interested him most was the large number of automobiles in the three cities. "Keep the cars going," he said earnestly, thinking happily of the future consumption of Abu Dhabi gasoline. New York City struck him as a "town where people are not civilized. They live like ants or swallows in cliffs. The sun never gets down into the streets." He was appalled by TV westerns: "All that shooting upsets the basis of good government!"