Eastward to Doha

Arrival

Well, Jassas the lucky bastard horse made it to Colorado from Doha.

The pictures are enough, with photo credits to John and Laura.

Once we got the text message from Steve, the truck driver, saying he had turned off the interstate highway, we went to the road to wait. We passed the time by pushing Sydney's (my niece) stroller back and forth  between us, playing catch with the baby.

The truck turns down County Road 13 in Fort Collins.

Steve scopes out the driveway while I talk to Jas.

We make our way off the truck. He had the whole thing to himself for 1800 miles.

A first few bites of green grass.

A portrait with the mountains in the background.

Then he goes out into his field

Begins to stuff his face

Pauses with a full mouth for a minute to say thanks...

Into his corral so he can meet Danny through the fence.

Two only children soon to be surprised...one age 10, another age 30.

Free From Prison

Monday afternoon I arrived at the quarantine.

About an hour later, Jas emerged from the locked building, skidded across the parking lot trying to take off at a gallop, and after a few bites of grass and some snorting, eventually got on this truck.

He'll spend two days in a moving motel, seeing almost all of America, from trees to corn to wheat to sagebrush, as his westward journey progresses.

I followed the truck for half a mile, turned eastward to go back into New York to get a flight, while he and the truck turned westward onto the interstate highway. I said a prayer for no tornadoes, no hail, and no other such gift of the summer in the midwest...

Amsterdam to New Amsterdam

The morning of our departure from Amsterdam began with phone calls about Jas's certificate of innocence. We hadn't tracked down the right form and signatures yet. In official terms, his "certificate of isolation" was the piece of paperwork testifying that he had stayed out of the horsey red light district during his European vacation weekend in Amsterdam. He could eat all the leaves he wanted, but the last bit of departure paperwork required the vets to sign off that he'd had an otherwise pure and innocent three days. The US Department of Agriculture quarantines European horses for a sexually transmitted disease called CEM, and any defilement could extend his quarantine by thirty days. It was an important piece of paper. And unlike in Doha, when the piece of paper and actual signatures were missing, the people in the offices in Amsterdam sent around the right forms and got actual vets to sign them. The forms weren't signed before they were filled out. They didn't use blood out of the fridge to run tests they said were done on my horse, but weren't. They did things by the book, just a bit more slowly here in Amsterdam. Without urgency. A few hours before the flight was plenty of time for his innocence certificate. No need to worry. We're all relaxed here.

Like Jas's departure from the airport, the horse box was sealed for his return to the airport, to make sure there were no red light detours. We arrived when were told to be there, and stood at the loading dock to find everyone on afternoon coffee break, no where to be seen. Another truck with a load of tropical fish pulled up next to the horse box, wondering whether a fork lift could be summoned before the end of coffee break. No, it wasn't possible. How about the vet to unseal the truck? No, coffee had to be finished first. Or maybe it was a meeting. Maybe a shift change. But there was no one about except an officially innocent horse and three dozen boxes of live fish, ready to fly. 

Eventually Jas was loaded into the official KLM horse transport box, a more deluxe model than we'd flown out of Doha in. Jas was disappointed in the hay, too smelly for his sensitive tastes. Except he's normally a vacuum cleaner and not at all picky. So much for Dutch grass. He went in, eventually, and had the box to himself, thanks to more US quarantine regulations that prevented him from standing next to European horses, meaning this ticket was the price of three of the other tickets. Lucky bastard.

He's in there somewhere in his spacious quarters, not touching the hay...

I left him behind in his box with the smelly hay, and went back to the airport terminal to check into the flight as a passenger. The plane was a "combi" passenger and cargo plane. I had a seat in the last row, and then he was placed just behind the catering station on the other side of a wall. A small locked door led back into the cargo area. Once I checked in, I got around to the gate in time to watch them load the cargo. A KLM flight groom stayed with him. Jas was joined on the plane by a couple pallets of boxes, a car, and a stripped down jet engine going someplace for repair, or so it looked like. And then he went on last, again lifted up into the sky and slid into the belly of the plane.

There wasn't a great view of the loading, and as the sun came and went, so too did automatic window shades that blocked a decent camera view of him getting on through a door behind that huge jetway. At some point I peaked through the shades and saw him go in, but it was too obscured to photograph.

When they called for passenger boarding for first and business class, even though I had an economy ticket for the back row, I walked up to the gate attendant and said: "Do you mind if I go on now? I'm with the horse in the back." Having just refused several economy class passengers trying to jump the line, she smiled at me and said, "sure, go ahead." When I arrived at the plane door I used the same line: "I'm with the horse."

(When we were talking about plans for landing in JFK, the groom told me to use the same line at passport control. "Just tell them you came in on KLM with a horse. They'll let you jump the queue." I didn't have to; there was no line at passport control, but apparently it would have worked...)

I met the flight groom at the door behind the catering station, and we slipped back into the cargo section to pay Jas a visit and go over safely procedures for wandering around the cargo area. These were new to me, as on Qatar airways the pilot had just pointed to the location of the oxygen, and that was the safety briefing.  The KLM groom took 15 minutes to explain to me what I could and could not do, showed me a laminated demonstration card for the oxygen mask, and carefully explained all the drugs he carried in case the horses became ill or out of control. They used to carry guns in case the horses endangered the crew or structure of the airplane, but that's illegal now. Only sedatives and pain killers are allowed, with the idea that those can get them to the ground with a chance of surviving. This is all made moot by the description of what happens if the smoke detector goes off in the cargo area: the pilot shuts off oxygen to the entire plane to prevent fire, which is why you need the oxygen mask. And the horse? I didn't like that image, and I didn't ask...

The flight passed without incident. I fed him apples during take-off to help his ears pop, and once the flying was smooth and the groom had had his coffee and lunch, we turned him loose stretch his neck and turn around. He could have lied down to take a snooze if he'd wanted to. When I asked if I could go back and sit on the floor in the front part of the pallet to stretch my legs, I got an official and big 'no' from the groom. Remembering my blissful nap on the floor of the cargo plane leaving Doha, I missed Tim. I dealt with my economy seat and had one of those economy seat naps, uncomfortable and fitful. During the flight several passengers in the back rows got wind from my conversations with the flight attendants that there was a horse on board, and a group of college-age students gathered around me at one point and asked a bunch of questions about him. Was he a racehorse? Where did he come from? The flight attendants came back and visited him. He was flight 662's celebrity for seven hours. "Yeah, I'm with the horse..."

As we began our descent into JFK, I found I was out of apples, so I made a molasses bran mash with the water he had refused to drink. You can lead a horse to water, and while you can't make him drink, you can make it yummier to drink. It wasn't quite Fruit Loops, but he slobbered through a whole bucket of it during the descent. The flight groom looked impressed at my concoction.

When we touched the ground at JFK, it was a wet but warm summer day. (Which made me think of that poor guy who fell off his platform shoes and had to have back surgery...) The pilot made a crooked, rough, one-wheeled landing that threw Jas up against the side of the pallet, but he held his feet and managed to stay standing. Sitting in a regular airplane seat you never realize the extent of the g-force at that moment of touchdown and braking. Standing up with him in the cargo area was difficult enough for me, and he weighs ten times as much. His back muscles bulged with tension as I held his head trying to steady him. At least it was over in a few moments.

The arrival agent looks on while I welcome him to America.

After I got off the plane, I met Andrew and we drove around to KLM cargo, where he was about to be offloaded from the pallet and loaded onto the truck to quarantine---as it turned out, simultaneously. I learned what the line item on my invoice for "transfer pen rental" meant: the odd cart-like platform contraption that goes between the pallet and the truck, used for approximately 10 seconds by the horse to walk from one to the other, so he never has to touch the ground. It makes a very good hourly rate, that pen, I will say.

Jas refused to come out of his cargo pallet palace for a few minutes, but eventually thought about it all, looked at everything, snorted at the rain, and decided he didn't want another pat on the rump by the guy in a USDA hat. Yeah, I thought, the USDA scares me too, after all this. But by law I had to bequeath to them my officially innocent horse for a week of quarantine--for the Arabian peninsula worm disease, not the European sex disease. I told the truck driver to tell them he didn't like Dutch hay and to give him something else. They drove away into the summer dusk. Andrew and I walked back through the cargo building, no one taking notice of our lack of official badges or escort. We were "with the horse." Then we drove into Brooklyn.

When I called the next day and asked how he was doing and whether he was eating, they told me that they were used to horses twice his size eating half as much. He's fine, then, I responded. "That's my boy." I guess he likes American grass...

Weekend in Amsterdam, plus horse

The six hour flight from Doha to Amsterdam passed quickly. When I woke up from my nap on the cold floor of the cargo plane, much to my surprise the silence did not instantly break. Tim had a headache and had stopped talking. He even asked for some aspirin, then sat in the corner with his headphones on, watching a movie on his iPhone. I went and fed the horses some apples and carrots, gave them some more water, and counted manure piles. All systems were a go: eating, drinking, and pooping away. When they stop manure production at 30,000 feet, its a real mess; a clogged system can lead to sharp pains that can make them tear the pallet apart, or worse, just die.) But all was well. They enjoyed their carrots, drank the water, and other than a few flirtatious nickers from Jas at the mare, they were quiet.

When the aspirin kicked in, and after the copilot made coffee for us and told us to stay in the seats during some turbulence, twenty questions resumed, but thankfully this time it was about the horses, not me. I told him the story of Jas coming to choose me as an owner, how the mare had nearly died several times in Qatar, and how no one thought the foal would be born after a serious illness during the mare's pregnancy. They were all, in their own way, rescue cases, horses that otherwise would have had painful lives staying behind in Qatar. Jas had chosen me by deciding I was the one person he wasn't going to run away with, buck off, and bite in the stable (at least most of the time). It was his way of telling me that he was going to be unhappy with anyone else, which I knew meant he'd probably get beaten and abused by another owner. The mare needed a cooler climate to stay healthy given her vulnerabilities, and the foal would grow up that much stronger and faster in France. But for Avril and I it was never about the money the horses would make us, either Jas as a breeding stallion or the foal as a future race horse, or how much it would cost us to get them out. It was about doing the right thing for vulnerable creatures who had become part of the family.

Landing proceeded as did take-off, with me in the cockpit and Tim with the horses. When they opened the door and the horses and flowers came out, the sky was blue and the runway was surrounded by green grass. It was 14 degrees C, about 60 F.

After I told Tim the story of the horses and started laughing at his jokes, the manically over-the-top tone gave way to a much more human discussion, that is, until it came time to plan our arrival into Amsterdam customs. As we discussed sequence and procedures, including how to dispose of the monster suitcase in my hotel room before anyone noticed (yes, he managed it...), he made a point of explaining to me that he was "loved like syphilis is loved" at the Amsterdam animal import center. It was the 2008 Olympics, when Amsterdam was the main transport hub for horses en route to Hong Kong, and he was the operations manager. The Dutch were more concerned about their coffee breaks and cigarette breaks, apparently, than they were concerned about processing transit horses through customs any faster than 45 minutes per horse. When twenty horses arrived at once, this had been the bane of Tim's existence. He had managed to get them to speed processing to 20 minutes each, but it hadn't been pretty. There was some incident involving a undercover CNN reporter, the embarrassment of some high government officials, and a threat to move operations to Germany. And he loved having someone to tell the story to again. Each punch line had been carefully worked out, a testament to a career where meeting new people is a chance to tell good old stories again, to humorous perfection.

Here he is (below) grinning to one of the customs vets who loved him like syphilis, and who had, five minutes before this picture was taken, held up a spool of wire he was sealing the transport truck with and said to Tim that it might also be useful for his mouth.

There was indeed lots of evidence of coffee, (below) and it took much longer than 45 minutes to get our three horses through, a problem Tim blamed on KLM favoritism. He insisted the horses flying on KLM got processed a lot faster than horses on other airlines.

The real hold-up, however, was the presence of a 40 million dollar racehorse that had just flown in from Japan, on his way to Newmarket, in the UK. The Emirati sheik's private airplane that was going to fly him to Stansted airport hadn't been cleared for loading. Until the racehorse left the unloading area at customs, our horses had to stay on the other side of the wall from him because he'd been in Japan, a different quarantine status. We weren't allowed on the other side of the wall, even with yellow jackets. I spent half an hour wondering how many times they'd pooped, and chatting with a vet from Newmarket who had been flown to Japan to accompany the expensive racehorse back to the UK, and who, like me, was getting too tired to stand on two feet at this point, after spending 30 of the last 48 hours in the air, the last 15 sitting in the pallet with the horse. Eventually everyone's attention turned to a loud rant about how all vets are stupid and who, moreover, don't have a social life. Then the tired vet's eyes popped out of his head when Tim asked him how many women he'd had in the last month, in order to back up his argument. I can't remember how it got deflected, but once Tim wasn't paying any more attention to us, the vet looked at me and said: "You must have had a long day." A little better than syphilis, I thought, (but didn't say!) I just laughed and told him it had started at 4 am, and I'd met Tim at 9 am.  Eventually the vet and his racehorse were carted away to their private plane. 

Our horses came out of the pallet, had their vet inspection, and were loaded onto a truck to go to a nearby horse motel. The truck was sealed with official stamps and wires, procedures followed to abide by US quarantine laws.

Jas looks out of the back of the truck and enjoys the cool breeze.

The back of the truck is officially sealed with the wire the vet wanted to use on Tim's mouth.

Tim bid us farewell at his point, leaving to fly back home (to his wife and kids I'd learned about sometime during the headache), and handed us over to the people at the horse motel. I got a business card, a handshake, and after he took a few steps away, a kiss blown at me. When was the day going to be over? I laughed and thanked him.

At the horse motel I served the horses a dinner of carrots, bran mash, molasses and oats. They were dressed in their warm blankets and tucked into their stalls for the night. The driver from France had arrived for the mare and foal, and informed us of his 4 am departure plans. Oui? Really? When I announced I'd be there, the director of the horse motel looked me up and down and implored that my presence really wasn't necessary. Did I look that bad, really? We made strategic loading plans to ensure the foal's safety, and then I conceded to let her handle it. The barn was spotless and the competence level had just increased exponentially from Qatar. And I wanted to be in bed at 4 am. And I was. 

**Day Two**

The next day, Jas had a play in the indoor arena, admiring that handsome horse on the other side of the glass.

I then went to have a play in the Dutch grocery store at the Schipol airport, reveling in European-ness, coming back to my room with brie, bordeaux, bananas, and bon bons, among other things.

So my second night in Amsterdam I fell asleep watching the tally come in for the Eurovision song contest, out cold before I knew the result. I only remember that Serbia voted for Bosnia and Bosnia voted for Serbia, a delightful fact--which  I think led me to have a strange dream about giving a lecture on how Eurovision symbolizes trends in EU politics, but to kindergarten students. Weird, but thank goodness it wasn't about horses!

The Great Escape

The day began at 4 am. I finished packing up the apartment and was out the door by 5. It was the usual travel day: the suitcase weighed too much; I spent a panicked hour thinking I'd lost my second mobile phone with my US number (it reappeared by itself, right where I thought it was, just underneath the Vic's vapor rub in my fanny pack); I had to make an emergency stop for $3 of gas on the way to the barn (spent my last 10 qatari reals...), as I hadn't noticed last night the tank was about dry. Five minutes out the door I was sweating like a pig, the temperature already 40C (over100F). I sped north to Jas's stable, coming across a typical Friday morning livestock shipment in Qatar, camels in a flatbed:

I arrived at the barn. Ten minutes into stuffing nets full of hay and packing the carrots into Jas's suitcase, the driver of the horses' truck calls. He showed up an hour early. Brilliant. That's not like here. Thank goodness. I go to meet him at the petrol station and escort him back to the farm. That's the air conditioned horse box in the review mirror:

After schlepping halfway around Qatar to get Avril's mare and foal, and a thankfully uneventful loading process, the three horses arrived at the airport. The horse box went through the entry gate in less than half an hour, another small administrative miracle by Qatari standards. I went around to passport control and immigration, to check in for the flight and meet the flight groom, Tim. After some confusion over the phone about whether he's at Costa Coffee or check-in gate 27, he appears around the corner, standing out with his yellow vest and blond hair. When I walk up to introduce myself, he insists he's not Tim, and that Tim has a different haircut, or something weird like that I didn't quite understand through his British accent. He asks me if I use foul language. Huh? He has "Equitrans," the company I've hired to execute this, written across the back of his yellow vest.

Dazed and confused, I just stand there, holding the dirty horse feed bucket I forgot to leave with the horse in the box, still sweating, being starred at by every passenger coming and going. Finally he shakes my dirty, sweaty hand, introduces himself as Tim, and asks if my parents were hippies when they gave me my name. It doesn't help he knows the horse is going to Colorado. There's some discussion about the parents/hippies/under-a-tree business, as if its not the thousandth time I've been through this with my name. I'm sure my facial expression was brilliantly cheerful at his point, so amused I was to be having this conversation on this day. Still not getting any laughs at his jokes, he asks me if I've had a long day, it being 9 am. I respond with "Yes, and I think it just got a lot longer."

He responds to the challenge by cursing, in really foul language, at my suitcase. I've had these precise feelings towards this overstuffed menace for the last 24 hours, so I sigh: "I would have sent it, but Aramex and DHL are closed on Friday mornings in the Gulf." He understands, and begins to earn his fees by getting the heavy monster past four objecting airport officials and onto the bus platform to go to the cargo terminal. He even carries it. Maybe my day just got shorter. But after the security check he comes out of the men's room from a pit stop, looks at me with grave seriousness, and says, "how on earth could you not have told me how bad my hair looks today? What were you thinking?" I stare, uncomprehending. Maybe the day did just get longer.

We arrive at the pallet, where the horses are parked in their AC limo waiting for us. Tim inspects the pallet and starts scurrying about, moving dividers and directing the show. I exhale slowly. He knows what he's doing.

A few minutes later, the horses come out of their limo, and we stuff them into the pallet. Its economy class. Jas isn't terribly amused going in first, but as soon as the mare arrives next to him---right next to him--and decides to pee in the shavings, he snorts and bellows loudly, remembering he's a stallion, the instincts of smell overcoming inexperience. I smear his nose with another layer of Vics vapor rub, which he begrudging endures. His pallet space has a sun roof, which is really useful in this weather. Ventilation, I guess.

Once the horses and gear are loaded, I bid farewell to Anton and Avril with hugs and near tears, as most of our anxiety was about this morning, dealing with all this in Qatar, the place being what it is. Once on the pallet, we know now that all three horses are a huge step closer to being much safer in Europe and America.

Crinkling his nose and making fun of our gooeyness, Tim announces to me that he will ride out to the plane in the pallet with the horses, but that he has arranged an air conditioned bus for me. Since its a long ride ride around the end of the runway to the other side where the plane is parked, he explains, if I'm in the pallet for 30 minutes with him, I "surely won't be able to keep my hands off him for that long." We stare at him in silence, trying to crack a smile awkwardly, and Anton asks me if I'd like some ear plugs. There indeed has not been a moment of silence from him yet. A shrug, another hug, and then off to the bus I go. Half an hour later, after a long solitary trip to the other side of the runway, the bus approaches our plane. Here it is:

A little while later, the horse pallet is parked outside the plane, sitting on the scorching hot runway. And there it sits. And sits. A pallet of fresh flowers going into the cargo plane seems to have toppled over, and the conveyor lineup reverses. My blood pressure rises, cursing Qatar airways, and the driver won't let me off the bus to go see the horses. I don't have a yellow vest, he says. No yellow vest, no wandering around the loading area. Right. Got it. I twiddle thumbs, starring out at the box:

Then out of the little door on the front of the box emerges Tim, in his yellow vest, seeking out the air conditioning on the bus. He deftly avoids my question about how much the horses were sweating by going on to twenty questions: am I married, where do I work, where's my family, how did I come to be able to afford this, what I'm doing in Qatar, where did I grow up, how did I learn about horses. Me: one word answers, and "how much are the horses sweating?" The day is getting longer. He tells a story about a trip out of Qatar many years ago, a six hour delay where he sent the horses back to the stables, and another story about how the laws in Dubai are strict enough that horses aren't allowed more than 30 minutes outside of air conditioning when its over 20 C. By the laws of Dubai, we were already in violation; they've been out 45 minutes and it was 45 degrees C. Great. 15 minutes more of eternity passed, and they'd sorted out the flowers and the conveyor was moving. Thank god twenty questions was over, too, at least for a few minutes. (There was still a seven hour flight ahead for the rest of that!) The horses were lifted up to the plane, going on last so they'd be at the front. We walked up the stairs and found our jump seats bolted to the wall behind the cockpit. We passed our hand-written boarding passes directly to the pilot.

Once everything was bolted down for departure, Tim explained to me it was my job to flirt with the pilots in the cockpit and distract them, so he could be with the horses during take-off, rather than in his seat, where the pilots told us to be during take-off. My eyebrows stayed raised for more than a few seconds, then I looked down at my dirty sweat-soaked hay-covered clothing with a question mark. And distracted pilots, really?! It was clear he was earning his fees, though, as the goal was to mind the horses first. And sitting in the cockpit was good fun, anyway, and the pilots told me the only rule was that I wasn't allowed to talk. I enjoyed a few minutes of silence, and had a very good view of Doha receding into the distance, getting very far away, very fast. And thanks be to God! Alhumdulila...shukran...

After 10,000 feet the pilots released me to go back to the horses. Tim was shocked to see me grinning and giggling. "It laughs?" I could see him thinking. Goodbye, Doha! It laughs. We gave the horses some water, the co-pilot served us drinks and lunch, we chatted about how Tim got the horses to Hong Kong for the 2008 Olympics, and how he was organizing the 900 horses flying into Kentucky for the World Equestrian Games in September. I passed him the cherry cheesecake dessert off my meal tray, endured a rant about women who think they're too fat to eat puddings, and a few minutes later I curled up in the corner on the floor and fell fast asleep.

His Highness, Horse

He is otherwise known these days as The Lucky Bastard. I tell people about the endeavor of his trip, always to be asked variants of the question ‘why this horse?’ I was asked by my boss, the Dean at Northwestern whether I “was bonded with the horse,” a sideways way of asking why on earth this beast with four legs deserved a trip halfway around the world to the greener pastures of America. Well, yes, he’s my buddy, friend, and has good breeding he might pass on to some American mares. Yes, there will be mares waiting for him. Lucky bastard…

And the trip itself has only been half of it. Investing in the plane tickets has made me paranoid about his health, each day picking over him like he’s a piece of fine fragile china about to break. His feed has been monitored down to the last piece of grain and hay; he has been receiving daily vitamin supplements to do everything from increasing his hydration levels to calming his anxiety. He also has his psyllium supplements, too, to clear the sand out of his intestines, as they pick up tidbits of dirt as they eat off the ground, and it accumulates over time, potentially blocking the system, something that can kill a horse very easily. Each set of blood tests has been about all those diseases that could kill him: blood parasites, infectious anemia, plasmosis something-or-other, etc, etc. The insurance company wants to know his replacement cost, should he die. (The customs agents hope he lives, though, as they want to know his value to charge a duty…)

If I could wrap sheepskin around the whole beast to keep him from breaking I would. But unfortunately it would make him collapse ( and yes, die...) of heat exhaustion. So I've settled for padding the halter/head collar he'll have to wear for ten days, to keep it from chafing his preciously thin Arab skin...

*

So what do paranoid horse owners do? They become spa attendants, actually.  In the last month he has received not just his vitamins, but daily fresh alfalfa, a daily kilo of carrots, a daily grooming, a daily bubble bath, daily hoof conditioner (like hand cream for dry cuticles), and a daily dressing with fly repellant (per the orders of the USDA disease prevention regime). This treatment has come as I have stopped demanding any exercise of him, as his saddle and various riding accoutrements went back to the US last week in the luggage of a friend who came to visit, to prevent the lovely aged leather from being incinerated, or at the least, dunked in disinfectant, at the quarantine. (Yes, they do that, I was warned...) So each evening he awaits his fresh salad and spa treatment, sans exercise or effort. He’s remarkably happy to see me arrive. If he’s out in the paddock he trots over to my car. ‘Where’s my alfalfa, then?’ he asks. Lucky bastard, indeed.

Its actually chilled alfalfa, taking up three quarters of my fridge…

Today I spent half the day running about town to arrange his air conditioned horse box ride to the airport, to collect more alfalfa, to buy him molasses for his water on the airplane (which is not a grocery store standard in the Middle East, so it required three grocery stores to find it…). At the office I was printing copies of his import permits, entering emergency numbers into my phone, updating his website (to find those mares…) and emailing the driver that will pick up from quarantine and whisk him across country to Colorado.

Its not like they lose them en route, and I'm going to be with him most of the time, but the paranoid mother joined here with the desire not to lose the new sheepskin covered leather halter...which can indeed disappear en route.

*

So, in the end, what about packing and shipping my own belongings? Cleaning up my own office papers? And how about that manicure and spa session?  My own colon cleanser? Some calming supplements? Please, I wish someone thought I was going to die riding an airplane!

Colon cleanse, anyone?

 

Ode de Corniche

Somewhere in an old quotation book, I remember having written down a saying that went something like this: “It is one thing to see a thousand places with the same set of eyes, but quite another more impressive accomplishment to see one place with a thousand different sets of eyes.” I cannot remember the attribution. It sounds a bit like Thoreau-a-la Walden Pond, but that could be wrong.

The one place (beyond home and office) I have been to a thousand times in Doha is the corniche, a curved six kilometer pathway along the water in the center of the city. It is here that I exercise daily; it is the one place in Doha where it seems socially acceptable to sweat, run, jog, and otherwise exert oneself. Exertion is not all that popular, so there is indeed only one place, and it is never all that crowded. The aqua blue water, green grass, palm trees and skyline view together create a scene that is aesthetically pleasing--also another anomaly. I have repeatedly told my visitors that if it weren’t for the corniche, I never would have made it for four years in Doha.

Stanka and I stretching before a jog on the corniche during her and Tony's visit in January, 2010.

Since I do most of my thinking while I’m running, it is on the corniche where I have tried to see Doha with a thousand different sets of eyes, each day conjuring (or trying to) a different view of the same world. It has made me flirt with the idea that if the place you’re trying to find by traveling the world is the landscape of your own soul, you don’t actually have to go anywhere. You just have to learn to look at your place in the landscape in those thousand ways, and relearn each time what you already knew. 
The corniche has taught me a lot about what I already know about myself. A few examples:

Number One: I take pictures all day long, with or without a camera. Since I mostly go running about the time of sunset, I had seen this photograph hundreds of times before I went back to take it. It is the sculpture in a nearby roundabout, but at this particular spot on the corniche it aligns with the setting sun, creating beauty out of the mundane.

Number Two: The gatoraid campaign is just as ugly to me here as in Education City, but here it has the brilliant effect of making people take pictures of it, generating free advertising ad infinitum for Qatar Foundation. That does make you think...

Number Three: I like equality, but especially equality with men, and Plessy vs. Ferguson still exists here. Bathrooms and urination are two needs one occasionally has while exercising. My first two years in Doha, the only available facilities at the mid-way point of the corniche were in a restaurant, and I learned how to slip through the back door from the waterside patio and make use of them. Simple enough. Thereafter, they built a fancy automated underground public bathroom near the restaurant. It seemed like progress. Except the women’s side was always malfunctioning. The door remained locked, while the men’s side seemed to always be working perfectly. There was no apologetic sign on the door, and the men went in and out of their side without an issue. This made me very angry, especially when I was tense for other physiological reasons. The difference persisted for months; separate meant unequal. I would revert to the restaurant, but it put me in a very foul mood to do so. One day, having walked down the stairs to the locked door, I decided to just pee on the door.  This surprised me, but I was teaching a class that semester on dissent and civil disobedience. It seemed necessary. It made me feel very American. After the initial adrenaline rush, I was glad no one saw me. But not sorry I did it.

The fully automated toilets, in Qatar, still require the humiliation of an attendant who does nothing, and who was still present when it was not operational.

Number Four: I have personal space issues and feel persecuted. At its narrowest point, the corniche is about five meters across. There is lots of space for everyone. Yet on many occasions, while walking with my headphones on, men come up behind me, within six inches, practically breathing on my neck, and carry on with their exercise. Listening to my music, sometimes it takes me a moment to register this invasive presence. When I do notice, I have done many charming things, including screaming obscenities, shouting, and coming very close to physically assaulting these men. 90% of the time, the reaction of the men has been to laugh loudly. It’s a game they play, apparently, called ‘prove that the expat woman is crazy.’ It means I limit my walking and run most of the distance. They can’t keep up with me if I’m running; they’re not fit enough. When I walk, I glance behind every few steps, as if being persecuted.

A typical corniche scene: Dhow boat operators waiting for customers.

Number Five: I believe in manners, including sidewalk manners. Some days the corniche inspires me to run sociological experiments with other people's manners. My favorite is an old game: I run or walk straight toward someone and measure how long it takes them to step out of the way. I have in my mind those funny sidewalk moments, especially in the UK, where two people get so obsessed with stepping out of the way for the other that they inadvertently step into each other, mocked by the silent comedy routines of Charlie Chaplin and others. It’s funny because they’re both trying too hard to be polite and mannerly, and in the process run into each other when they’re trying not to run into each other. What happens in Doha? The opposite. It’s an aggressive game of chicken where no one will step out of the way, and with me, at least, they proceed on a collision course assuming it is my responsibility to step out of the way. Is it because I’m a woman? Because I’m a foreigner? I’m supposed to be subservient? I have entertained all explanations, but the fact is that reproducing that comedic moment of excessive politeness has been impossible for me on the corniche. Unless, of course, the other person is a white foreigner, at which time we engage in the dance routine of trying to allow the other to pass first. Stereotypes and clichés are sometimes most amazing when they’re true.

Number Six: I like to run away from my problems. It doesn’t matter if I run the same path every day, afterwards I still feel farther from my problems. Until the next day, when I’m no further away, and I start again.

Numbers Seven through one thousand: too boring to detail here...

Ritzy

 

The place setting for my official farewell dinner.

Before coming to Doha, I had set foot inside a Ritz Carleton Hotel only once before. Since being in Doha, there have been dozens of occasions to take advantage of the Ritz's valet parking, uniformed service staff with permanent smiles, views of giant crystal chandeliers, private beaches, champagne brunches, and those little embroidered cloth towels in the ladies room. In fact, I don't even notice those things anymore. Its just a place we go.

As the wait staff came around to take my order at Northwestern's farewell dinner for those of us who are leaving at the end of this semester, I did suddenly realize I needed a photograph of my place setting, to someday remind myself that yes, indeed, I had been shown off in a truly Ritz ritzy style. Two seats to my left was the NUQ dean, entertaining us with his strange dry sense of humor and complaining about the slowness of the service. Immediately to my right was the President of Northwestern University, visiting Doha to meet with Her Highness Shaikha Moza and attend NU-Q events for a few days.

Left to right: me, Marwa, John the dean, Bob and Erin in the foreground.

Left to right: Erin, Brian, Tim and his wife, NU President Morty Shapiro, me, Marwa. 

If the conversation drifted between impressions of royalty, jet lag, seat belt use (or the lack thereof) in Qatar, making movies, halal vs. kosher food, and yes, my flying horse and upcoming cargo plane ride---it all seemed rather typical of Doha. The only one who probably found the setting and topics remarkable was the President himself, still new to Northwestern and newer yet to its Doha campus. As a graduate of Williams College, and both a professor and an administrator there previously, I tried to make him feel at home with a few Amherst-Williams jokes and provocations. At least every time I felt like I said something stupid, I made a joke of it and told him I should have gone to Williams instead. When the dinner ended and I walked out of the room having left my purse on the chair, he was polite enough to tell me that even an Amherst grad might want to go back for her belongings.

This, I suppose, was the night's real reward, this conversation. We end up feeling sorry for ourselves lost on a desert island a lot of the time, but then there are these occasions that never could have happened in the US or elsewhere. A seat at the head table next to the president, an evening at the Ritz, and a public speech by the Dean about the contributions you've made to campus start-up and the lives of the students who never could have imagined Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill before you came along. I might have received the purple bag and token book gift elsewhere, as I did when I departed previous jobs, but like my business class lounge routines at Doha airport and the free VIP box seats at the Roger Federrer tennis game, some things only happen in Doha.

Me and the Dean. My outfit matched the wrapping paper, evidence that I finally gave into the Northwestern tradition of wearing purple, living purple, and breathing purple. At least for one night.

He looked good this close up!

Concave and Convex

Multiple times in the last month I have been asked how I “made it” for four years here. My colleagues at Northwestern are ending their first or second year “on the ground” in Doha, and most of my former colleagues at Georgetown who arrived at the same time I did have left already. So when I speak of 2006, the year I arrived, its like I’m an old lady talking of a distant yester-year.

How does one manage, then? It is a story of architecture, this mode of endurance: the architecture of a city, a soul, and a society. It all depends upon what you are able to build and un-build.

Concave and convex

Doha life occurs within a convex fishbowl. Everyone sees everyone do everything, in the traditional sense of a fishbowl, because ultimately it is a small town and a small country. Then, like starring at a foggy reflection on the convex back of a spoon, we are also privy to an exaggerated version of everyone’s faults: big noses, crooked eyebrows, receding hairlines, and proliferating wrinkles—actual and metaphorical—which happen to stick out like sore thumbs in the convex fishbowl, because everything is exaggerated and distorted. We live together in housing compounds and apartment buildings; we work together in the hallways of the university; we socialize together on the weekends; we ride too many elevators together. It’s like being in undergraduate college again, except instead of playful gossip, because we’re old, cynical, and tired, when we get together everyone just complains about everyone else. Our faults grow large.

Home sweet home; my convex apartment building.

These conversations create that convex fishbowl, and they have spoiled many fish dinners. The predictability of these exchanges has made me hesitate to go out to dinner with my colleagues. We become both the bored onlookers and the bored goldfish swimming around in endless circles, having the same conversations over and over again, forgetting how to say nice things about each other, and only vaguely remembering how we still sound the same as we did last time. When you see someone in the hallway, the elevator, or the front driveway, its hard not to think about how so-and-so was complaining bitterly about him or her the night before. And then everything goes bitter.

Concave mirrors, unlike convex fishbowls, turn everything upside down. Look at yourself on the front side of a spoon, and the world goes the other way around. Every time I drive by Doha’s recently completed concave skyscraper, I am put at ease that at least one architect got it right: if you reflect Doha upside down, it can be lived, and you might also be able to endure the sight of your own reflection. 

Tornado Tower

The developers decided to name it “Tornado Tower,” given its spiraling outer décor. The wind blows in a straight line here, never around in circles. But it’s a nice thought something might come full circle, if only hypothetically. New buildings are all hypothetical; no one knows what place they will really fill until the whole landscape fills in around. And that will take a while yet in Doha.

2006, a sunny day

 

2010, a gritty air day

Enduring the sight of your own reflection in Doha is no easy task, and the convex fishbowl makes that worse. The ambient laziness scrapes at the protestant soul. Life requires no physical discomfort: from house to car to office, everything is brand new and upgraded, air conditioned, more spacious, more luxurious, and more cushy than anything before or after your Doha chapter. Swimming pools are cooled in the summer, because the sun makes them too hot to endure. Lawns and trees are excessively irrigated. SUVs dominate the highways. Hopping on a plane to fly six hours somewhere for a weekend doesn’t yield a second thought. Flying 15 hours for a two-day conference is routine, twice a year minimally, and paid for by the Foundation. Taking time of off work is never a problem, and work is lite. Not light, but lite. Most Qataris can be found in their offices from 8 am to 12:30pm. If I spend six hours at the office, I consider it a long day.

 

Thousands of years ago the Arabs built the first Dhow sailboats, convex.

This one is at a boat graveyard in Al Wakra.

To add to the carbon count, recycling bins only appeared about a year ago, and occasionally disappear, while rumors are rife that the contents are just thrown away with the trash after the American and European expats have been made to feel better about themselves for using them. No one knows where the paper, cans and plastic go. A colleague who teaches science told me that per capita water intake in Qatar is five times the global average. The price of gas for the car has not changed in four years; it’s still about 30 cents a gallon. Fresh fruits, vegetables, flowers, and every kind of food you can imagine is flown in daily from northern and southern hemispheres, so nothing is ever out of season. Occasionally wares disappear from the store shelves, but this is supply chain management inefficiency, never about cost.

The trees you’d have to plant to offset this carbon-crazed existence might cover Rhode Island.

The IMF identifies Qatar as the world’s richest country, with an average annual income around $80,000 per person. A colleague doing research on the politics and economics of the Gulf recently told me that the IMF number is actually very distorting, because it calculates into that average the salaries of ex-patriot workers, including close to a million poorly paid construction workers. If you recalculate that figure to include only Qatari passport holders and citizens, the per capita income is closer to an average of $450,000 a year. That’s what you feel on the streets, as the workers are hidden away on the outskirts in crammed temporary housing.

The waistlines of locals and expats alike (except those construction workers) are just as bloated as everything else; a tax on carbs is needed as badly as a tax on carbon. The New York Times recently found interest in Doha’s obesity levels, likely due to the connection with Cornell Medical School, part of Education City and tasked to do longitudinal studies of health issues, including birth defects from cousin marriages and diabetes. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/world/middleeast/27qatar.html

Even jogging and riding my horse almost every day, consciously minimizing consumption, my clothes no longer fit. Its like the air makes you fat. And then there are the wrinkles. While the humid salty air has been good for the pores, the last four years have brought lines all over the face.

The concave building, like a concave mirror that turns everything upside down, has its aesthetic appeal because it’s the antithesis of convex Doha.

 

Another recently completed part of the Doha skyline, convex

Horse Plane Ticket!

Import-Export Office

International child adoption must be easier. So must be abduction. But he has four legs, isn’t potty trained, and weights about a thousand pounds. If only I could tuck him under the airline seat…

 

 Since the day this creature chose me as his new owner, I’ve been traversing the canyons of confusion about how to give him his ‘Coming to America’ day. I have had the pleasure of learning many new biology lessons about equine venereal diseases, a parasite with the beautiful name of ‘screw worm,’ the desirability of various tranquilizers, vaccination regimes, and how elevations of 30,000 feet affect the equine digestive system, which happens to be the same as with humans: constipation and dehydration.

 Along with biology class, there have been new courses in international relations, something I thought a PhD in political science might actually help me in understanding. But it turns out that when the US Department of Agriculture, the European Union’s veterinarians, and the Qatar Ministry of the Environment (apparently responsible for animal exports) try to agree on something, all the academic theories of alliances and trade regimes seem to be rendered non-sense. 

 

How could you leave him behind when he looks at you like this?

 

I have called the USDA at various intervals since I first decided this horse could not be left behind in the Qatari desert to an uncertain fate, which was more or less the day I bought him. Each time I got a different answer. When someone at the USDA animal import office finally picked up the phone—definitely not the first time I tried—I had an optimistic conversation with one Dr. Buck, who seemed to think that he needed three days quarantine when he arrived in the US, as long as a European vet did some certain sort of paperwork on top of the Qatar paperwork. Grand, I thought. That’s easy.

Then I called shipping agents. First scenario: 60 days in Dubai, then 7 days at US quarantine.  Second scenario: 15 days in Europe, then 37 days quarantine in the US. Third scenario: 24 hours in Amsterdam, 7 days quarantine in the US. The sixty days in Dubai had something to do with a fluctuating interpretation of the presence of African Horse Sickness in the Arabian peninsula. (But it turned out for these purposes, Qatar was not indeed part of the Arabian peninsula. Who knew?) The 15 days in Europe had to do with the European interpretation of Screw Worm, a disease easily treated with one dose of horse aspirin equivalent. The 37 days in US quarantine had to do with the American interpretation of an equine venereal disease known as CEM (contagious equine something-or-other). It’s sexually transmitted from stallions to mares and causes abortions, but apparently if he stands next to a European horse on a shipping pallet, to the USDA this counts as a possibly infectious scenario. (And no, they can't lose themselves to the air of springtime and eagerly jump the barrier between the compartments...quarters are too tight.) The Europeans were always a bit too promiscuous for Puritan Americans, even when they’re just standing next to you…

With the exception of African Horse Sickness, all of these diseases already exist in the US, and a recent CEM outbreak brought Kentucky breeding farms to a halt just a year ago. But laws lagging behind realities, they go onward with the quarantines, because if for nothing else, they raise a lot of revenue for the USDA.

When I was offered scenario #3 in mid-March of this year by a shipping agent, the shores of America seemed suddenly close, and in a great whiff of excitement, I gave the agency the go-ahead to start booking the trip. I felt like we’d be on a plane tomorrow.

But then the problem of international import-export regime cooperation moved out of the realm of the hypothetical into a new reality: getting actual people on the ground in Amsterdam (the European transfer point), JKF airport (the destination), and Doha (the origin) to agree on a set of procedures and blood tests.

I called the agent every few days: “I’m waiting on America.” “I’m waiting on Europe.” “I got word back from America, but now I’m waiting on Europe to respond again.” A few days turned into ten, and once word was confirmed that representatives on the ground would approve the horse’s health condition based on certain blood results, it turned out that the Qatari office that processed the final schedule was on vacation.

And here began the latest lesson in the culture and sociology of the Arab world. In a small country like Qatar, there actually is only one person who can organize the export blood tests in the whole country. His stamp, which only he can wield, is the only official one to get the process of blood tests underway. This particular vet was in Sydney, on vacation. (At least he wasn’t under the ash cloud in Europe!) When the agent announced to me that he had returned, I asked her if I should go to his office in person. “Oh, no,” she said. “I’ve emailed him.”

This is a laughable statement, which prompted me to call her boss, who explained to me she hadn’t done many shipments out of Qatar, and had really only done things out of Dubai. In the UAE, he explained in his British accent, things mostly worked normally. After apologizing for the slowness and explaining the problems they routinely encountered in Doha, he blurted out to me: “What’s wrong with that country, anyway?” I responded that I had been working here for four years, had been unable to answer that question, so I was leaving on the cargo pallet with the horse. He laughed. And told me to engage all local resources I knew to help out his inexperienced colleague.

One phone call and a trip to one vet clinic got me the cell phone number of the gate-keeping vet in question at the import-export office, recently back from his vacation.  One phone call to him, with the proper Islamic greetings in my pigeon Arabic, relevant (or irrelevant) thank you’s, apologies, flattery and reference to how the other vet who gave me his number was a good friend, he faxed me the paperwork within an hour. Nothing like a bit of kowtowing and obsequiousness to get things done... 

No small accomplishment, this.

Since the agent in Dubai had been waiting nearly ten days for this paperwork, and I managed to secure it in a couple hours, her embarrassment spurred her into action. The next morning, we had a shipment date: May 28^th. It was, indeed, about two weeks later than I had planned, but the international relations lesson and the Arabic sociology lesson had taken two weeks.

Closed doors. The usual.

At seven a.m. the next morning, I was at Dr. Yousef’s office, going over paperwork and planning the blood tests. When I gave him my business card and he saw that I was a professor, he asked what I taught at Qatar Foundation. When I responded “politics,” he chortled and responded: “That’s trouble!”