Eastward to Doha

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

The Color Gatorade

It has been around long enough now that we stop seeing the yellow. But when it first went up at the beginning of this academic year, all we could see in every direction was that yellow, the color of lemon-lime gatorade. It is the Qatar Foundation's attempt at an international publicity campaign to promote their goal of making people THINK. Or at least to start thinking, according to one of the signs up in Education City. Whether the 'eye-catching' color was a well thought-out plan, however, is questioned by the aesthetic senses. Big plastic letters on the grass, signs on every light post, gigantic billboards, t-shirts and placards--all yellow.

   

 

 My personal favorite: the THINK campaign in Dulles airport in Washington, DC, next to an ad for a wine bar. It can also be seen in London Heathrow. 

 

Westward from Doha

After a vacuum of silence for most of two years, it occurred to me on the way work today that the final thirty days in Doha might be worth chronicling. There could be a few before and afters, some new landscapes, and more odd stories. There's the gatorade campaign and the potential of melting astro-turf; more construction and destruction; more pictures filled with monochrome landscapes; more facades, visual and otherwise; some meditations on how money can't buy happiness; near-death driving experiences; and some more flying horses. At least the blog is something to do during the commercial breaks while I am servicing my new addiction to various television series re-runs from years ago that are now being broadcast here...

Story #1: This is a plant I bought, growing with the building outside of my window. The plant died when I went away for a week, but the blossoms dried crisp on the plant, making it look alive when its actually dead. Very Doha.

Arabians in Wales

Three Arabian horses. Two Welsh women raised in Qatar. And an American along--for the riding, the horse shows, and the adventure.

Avril and Anton, official fans of the trip, after spending the day at Qatar Airways cargo trying to get the paperwork through for us.

The three Arabians were inside here, awaiting transfer to the air pallet.

Ibn, a.k.a Herbie, the Sheik's horse, dressed up for the cold weather in the barn in Wales.

Next to the cows, this was our abode for the first week, above, while we cleaned out the apartment-to-be, below.

Lacking a functioning toilet in the apartment, this was our pit stop for the first few weeks.

And it rained a lot, too, with lots of attending mud.

But we had this cool old beater of car we bought, and I learned to drive on the other side.

And the Arabians learned how to do their training exercises among the sheep.

And how to put up with cold water baths from the hose, not to mentioned getting rained on.

And we got to see the new babies each morning on the farm.

And there was time to take naps.

---

Eventually we went off to horse shows with the three Arabians.

It was naturally pouring rain as we set off.

And still raining when we got to the show ground. (Too wet for the camera, even, after we got out of the truck.) It rained most of the night as we slept in the horse trailer. And kept raining when we had to ride. And was still raining when we were coming home. 

Later on, other shows were better.

And we even won a little orange ribbon for all the trouble.

So who knows how we'll look back on it all...the grass was nice.

Balcony, 8pm, 1403 West Tower

Old Place New Place

Views of the same old Doha, but from the new apartment

Nice view from the 14th floor, anyway!

Your Childhood School Bus

Have you ever wondered what happened to your childhood school bus once it got too old to be used in the US? Not too many have given it a second thought. Many of them, however, have to come this part of the world to be used as trasportation for construction workers, who live in camps outside of the city and ride old yellow BlueBird school busses to work each morning at 5 am. After working 12 hours in the Arabian sun, they wait for the busses to come retrieve them. The treatment of these workers, and the condition they live in, is the not-so-discussed human rights violation in the fast-growning oil states of the Middle East. While Qatar is not in the spotlight as intensely as Dubai, the situation is quite similar. Didn't think your childhood school bus could be implicated in a human rights violation? Have a look at this.

Hundreds of busses can be seen all around Doha. Here are a few glimpses:

While some construction companies have re-labeled the busses, as above, others have been less thorough about erasing the origins of the busses, as below.

Perhaps Lubbock Texas?

The County R-2 School District, according to a Google search, is in Missouri.

Apparently the busses are made in Missouri as well. The new Mayflower? Not quite...

Not to focus too much on Missouri, the French seem to have a similar trade deal with Qatar.

There are also white TATA busses in addition to the yellow Blue Bird busses, which are used for the same purpose. One is seen here gassing up at a station next to the Baskin Robbins, with workers inside. These busses were featured in the film "Syrianna," which makes a certain argument about the problems created by the poor treatment of these workers--that is, they become angry terrorists. Maybe, maybe not, but the film got the busses right...

These are the workers lining up to get on the busses outside of the compound where I live. They are usually lined up out there waiting for over an hour each night before the busses show up.

The stop signs haven't been used in a while...

Riding in the Sea

 

The warmer weather has been an occasion to extend our riding adventures into the waters of the Gulf. With dozens of sting rays darting about under the water, the horses are a bit nervous while enjoying the cool water.

Then animated version, complete with a horse spooking at a sting ray (=big camera bobble), with soundtrack, here: Download Beach_Riding1.wmv

The dunes were also picturesque this morning.