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Dubai’s unfathomably high skyscrapers, reaching into the clouds, are matched only in size by its vast, sprawling shopping malls and its residents’ bulging bank balances.The occasion provides an opportunity to wax nostalgic as we look back at the Middle East in a different time, both in aeronautics and geopolitics. Here, a selection of archival photographs of the UAE capital’s first magnificent airport, which opened officially in 1960.
Desert development: The Clocktower roundabout in the neighbourhood of Deira stands surrounded by sandy, undeveloped lots. Today (below) the clocktower is ringed by towering hotels but, for a time after it was built in 1964