Patriotism, Pelicans and Pilgrimage

So, Cyprus. Or Kobros as the Arabs call it (not that it’s any of their business). My parents were going to be there for a conference my Dad was speaking at so we went to meet them for a pre-Christmas minibreak. I’d taken charge of the itinerary since Mum had attempted to ask a (Greek) colleague where we should stay in Northern Cyprus and mortally offended him. Armed with insider tips from a friend of a friend who had been posted there, I had booked some hotels. First night was going to be spent with Mum and Dad in Limasol/Lemesos (running theme of everything having up to three names - guaranteed to ensure the name on your map will be different to that on the road signs) at their conference hotel. This we were looking forward to having read the guidebook: “ the city has several reputations: ‘the city that never sleeps’ is one, and the cliché is thanks to the tourist area’s exuberant nightlife, rivalled only by that of Agia Napa; another is ‘sex town’”. I think the clubbers and perverts had been put off by the late-November temperatures and we spent a very pleasant evening in a posh hotel on the coast surrounded by doctors. Mum paid for a facial for me, 90% of which I was asleep for. Then two pelicans attacked her while we were sunbathing the next morning. Dad was too busy sitting in the shade to help.

We spent the following couple of nights in Nicosia in a rubbish hotel with an astoundingly grumpy receptionist and a bathroom where it wasn’t possible to sit down on the loo and have the door closed. Ah, the mystique of our relationship. The Classic Hotel in case you’re visiting. Very nice bar though. And the breakfast must have been okay because I watched a fellow guest pile her plate up 3 times and scoop the lot in to her handbag.

We perambulated around Southern Nicosia/Lefkosia (Greek) enjoying the sunshine and avoiding the English Pubs. Then we perambulated around Northern Nicosia/Lefkosa (Turkish) enjoying the sunshine, the architecture and a mosque (originally a church). We crossed South to North on foot which involved walking through No-Mans-Land, past the 16^th Century Venetian Walls of the old city, rolls and rolls of barbed wire and lots of No Littering signs. Flashing our EU Passports the Greeks were utterly unbothered by our movements, while a terrifyingly officious Turkish Immigration lady wanted us to fill in a form. Our first international border (or at least, UN buffer zone) on foot: tick.

In my role as Chief Planner, I booked a restaurant for our second night. Having perused aforementioned guidebook I chose one in the Old Town “a pretty little Greek-style mezedopolio (a small restaurant specialising in mezedes). Try a selection of the mainly Greek wines on offer’.“ So in we walked to a restaurant that was straight out of Paris – all large mirrors, cream walls, white tablecloths and chandeliers, a menu with not a single Cypriot dish (smoked salmon, beef carpaccio, steak) and a wine list with endless French wines. It seems the restaurant had had a makeover. By 10pm it was full of beautiful Cypriots (the ‘intelligentsia’ according to Dad who can’t understand a word of Greek) and we sipped complimentary Amaretto feeling slightly smug.

The problem with contested International borders is that neither side is very keen on showing you where to cross. One tip is to look for signs of patriotism – when we eventually found the checkpoint it was buried under Greek and Turkish flags and banners (‘I am glad to say I am a Turk’). The Turks haven’t stopped there – they’ve also painted an enormous flag on the side of the mountains visible from Nicosia just in case anyone wasn’t sure where Turkey began.

We stopped off at Famagusta to get some Turkish money, admire some ruins, visit a mosque (originally a church), despair at British tourists on their 3^rd beers (10.30am) and have some morning coffee in a delightful restored old building with an obscene cocktail menu (‘after this headbanger she’ll be yours all night’).

We spent a couple of nights on the Karpaz peninsula – a relatively remote bit on the Turkish side. I had booked some self-catering ‘houses’ so we stocked up on pasta and beer in case there weren’t any shops. We arrived at beautiful stone buildings with no kitchens, a restaurant next door and two shops. We scampered down to the beach before it got dark, passed a lady milking her cow, and then returned to while away a dark, cold evening.

It seemed that the guys running the houses occupied their nights watching extremely informative state-produced documentaries about leaf rot and other agricultural pests, so rather than joining them we spent our time drinking rather good Cyprus red wine and eating fish. As we were just about to leave a bunch of weather-beaten men arrived and offered to buy us a drink. One particularly stubbly chap would only stop rubbing his chin on Dad’s bald head and kissing him when we promised to drink Raki with them tomorrow. The following night me and Mum ate quickly and coincidentally became extremely tired just as Stubbly walked in, so Mr A and Dad were forced to drink a bottle of wine each whilst bonding with the locals.

By chance, we were in Karpaz on the day of the bi-annual pilgrimage to the Monastery of Apostolos Andreas. Over 4000 Greek Cypriots travel over the border to this remote, decrepit, normally deserted Monastery where miracles reputedly take place. The first sign was the streams of Mercedes on the single track road. At the Monastery police were keeping control of the coaches as middle aged ladies elbowed each other out of the way to get in the door. Once inside they lit candles for friends and family (unceremoniously cleared away every 10 minutes by a helper and dumped out the back), kissed icons and handed bundles of cash to the besieged Priest. Outside, market stalls catered for all your religious needs – bottles of holy water, Jesus trays, duvets, plastic toys…

All too soon it was time to return to Greek Cyprus (Larnaca: ‘All Day Breakfast with free Beer refills’) for a last lunch with the parents before leaving them at a seedy Chinese-run internet café. We stocked up on Cyprus Delight (remarkably similar to Turkish Delight) before Mr A headed back to Doha and I embarked on Phase 2 of my holiday…..[to be continued]

Robert de Niro and Russian dolls

So before we gallivanted around the Eastern Mediterranean (more of which later), Mr A’s brother, H, came to visit. We showed him all the highlights of this fair city – pointing out the skyscrapers (H: ‘Do you think they’ll turn to each other in 20 years and say “Mate, do you think we went a bit over the top?” ‘), ordering Indian takeaway, lying on the beach etc.

We took him on the compulsory visit to the souq where I found an Arab-family Russian doll: Gulfi man splits in half to reveal his black-abaya-ed wife, who reveals her son in a little white thobe, who has a sister also in an abaya who, finally, seems to have swallowed a capsule shaped camel. You have no idea how excited I was, and am.

I dragged him to a shopping mall where he loved the gondolas, but was particularly taken by the LARGEST SHOPPING TROLLEY IN THE WORLD outside the next door mall.

Of course we also took him to brunch, ate far too much, then rapidly moved in to action as we prepared for the party we had rashly planned that evening. After a speedy zoom round the supermarket and a trawl of backstreets to find the ice factory (cubes, chips or block?), we were ready to set H to work cleaning the kitten room and stocking the fridge while I made dips and Mr A tidied the entire flat. Having not had a party since we arrived we decided to kill many birds with one stone and invite pretty much everyone we knew. I had visions of either a) a fantastic mixture of ages and backgrounds as lots of people milled around our tidy flat sipping chilled white wine or delicious fruit mocktails whilst having fascinating conversations, or b) 6 people standing in our spacious flat trying desperately to find something to talk about since they had nothing in common. Luckily, after a minor blip where Mr A got an urgent work call just as the party was about to start, it all went well. Lots of people came throughout the evening with the mass exodus of parents leaving at 9.30pm replaced by our younger more carefree friends. I drank enough wine to overcome my neurosis about the balcony collapsing under the weight of hoards of people, and found H in the kitchen at 1am teaching an Italian diplomat how to make Seabreezes. A Qatari friend drank copious quantities of red wine (haram) whilst chatting up European women (haram), and everyone ate lots of cake (halal). All in all it was a great success except that my squiffy catering arrangements meant we had 12 leftover baguettes to plough though the following day.

During that week the Museum of Islamic Art finally opened. I will no doubt write more about this later as it is almost impossible for you to imagine how excited we are about this. Not only does it mean there is now a museum in Doha (the ONLY open museum), but it’s actually filled with beautiful things. Really beautiful things. That are more than a couple of decades old. In an amazing building which is well built, and well designed, and open every day, to everyone.

We watched the huge firework display at the VIP opening from the corniche. There was so much gunpowder involved (or whatever the explosives are) that a huge black cloud almost obscured the entire building, but it was still one of the most dramatic and most expensive firework displays I’ve ever seen. One thing this Museum doesn’t need to worry too much about is a lack of funds.

We were lucky enough to be invited to a Symposium during the opening celebrations where the architect I.M. Pei (he of glass pyramids at the Louvre fame) spoke, along with Sheikha Mayasa al Thani (who kept her sunglasses on for the whole event) and her mother, Sheikha Moza (wife of Emir). My name badge was nestling next to Robert de Niro’s on the way in but he didn’t seem to make it.

We went again the following day for the opening of a temporary exhibition, where the Pisa Griffin has been united with another metal animal, both of which are stunning. Apparently this is a Very Big Deal in the Islamic art world. Our friend took us on a little tour of the permanent exhibits and I almost wept at the joy of being in a gallery. I wouldn’t let her take us round all of the galleries because I didn’t want to see too much at once. We’re going to go back on our own and it’s going to be amazing.

So, after a week of almost overwhelming cultural stimuli, manic work for both of us as we tried to clear everything up before going away and mourning for the sleeve of a brand new jumper that the kittens ATE, we jumped on a plane to Cyprus to met Mother and Father Ajnabiya, woefully ignorant of Greek-Turkish issues [to be continued].

Serbians and Serena

Unfortunately we haven’t been to any unconventional animal races since I last wrote, or acquired any new animals. The kittens continue to grow (absurdly quickly) and cause chaos. They climbed up our curtains TO THE CEILING.Curtains which we do not own and will have to give back.

What we have been doing for the past two weeks is working and eating. Mr A had a Very Very Important Visitor passing through, was busier than he has ever been in his entire life, and I suspect has some sort of permanent brain malfunction due to having a mobile glued to his head 24 hours a day. He appears to no longer listen to anything I say, and tells me the same stories three days in a row. The visit went well, and he has been told he probably won’t have to organise anything so complicated for the next ten years. We’ll see… Meanwhile, he got to travel in motorcade at over 100km/h, straight through roundabouts and traffic lights, which appears to have been the highlight of his entire professional life. I’m just pleased we don’t get woken up in the middle of the night by people in London who don’t understand time differences.

We did go to watch tennis last week to admire how long Venus William’s limbs are, and to realise that every other woman ranked in the top 10 (apart from Serena) is either Russian or Serbian. Serena got injured so pulled out during the tournament, but came out to the court in some extremely ugly tracksuit bottoms to apologise to us, her fans. Ivanovic also withdrew due to a ‘virus’ but she wasn’t going to make it through to the quarter finals anyway and Mr A thinks she’s a ‘spoilt brat’ which seems harsh for someone who’s probably done nothing but play tennis since she was 4.

Between the games they played extremely loud music to the assorted crowd, which hadn’t necessarily been checked for cultural sensitivity. In a country where drinking in public is illegal and you can be arrested for snogging on the Corniche, the Arctic Monkeys were happily singing about sex tips and some woman had had too much red wine. On the way out, we caught the closing minutes of the entertainment show near the burger bar, which appeared to involve a semi-naked woman (in a sheer gold catsuit) writhing around an oiled man, to loud rousing music. Most of the male spectators had conveniently chosen this moment to purchase their burgers.

Now Mr A has gone off to South Africa for ‘training’. This means he gets to hang out with our friend Chris, visit townships, drink beer outside, look at trees, witness proper rain and learn about computer systems. I am eating quiche for one and wondering what we do with our time? I went to bed at 9.30pm last night for the first time in years. What do we normally do in the evenings at home? (I already know the answer to that. We watch West Wing, drink wine and talk about work). The lack of a husband leads me to wonder what I’m going to do over the next few days. I’m thinking sunbathing, shopping and Jane Austen DVDs.

Meanwhile our year anniversary of arriving in Qatar has led me to ponder the pecularities of this country. I have been spending a lot of time working with a large local company and working from their HQ, where everyone has an individual office and even the Document Controller has a man who stands nearby ready to do his photocopying for him. Where it’s not physically possible to make yourself a cup of tea – you have to phone a waiter who brings you a lukewarm cup of brown liquid with powdered milk in it. And where you have to wait 10 minutes every time you want to move floors because there aren’t enough lifts.

I am further mystified by why a significant proportion of all drivers in Qatar have their headlights on full beam all the time. Or how places decide what music to play? Loads of restaurants have hideous bands playing way too loud – Croatian crooners looking as though they’ve already died, Filipino men with their Casio keyboards, Ukrainian women wearing inappropriate clothes. The common theme is that none of these people are native English speakers, but all sing English songs. Badly. Yet they were playing Hot Chip and the Ting Tings last time I went to the supermarket, and a sunglasses shop had the 4 Non Blondes blaring out this evening. The only time we hear Arabic music is if we listen to Arabic radio stations in the car, which we have to because the English language radio station is beyond dire. And why Virgin Megastore doesn’t sell any of the CDs you want, but does have lots of dreadful R+B and plenty of Hezbollah DVDs? And why does every hotel have security scanners at the entrances which beep when you walk through them but no-one cares?

I am hoping that by the time Mr A returns from his African trip I will have persuaded someone to finish repairing our ceiling, where a leaking pipe meant water was dripping onto our furniture for a couple of weeks without us noticing. This will involve some nice men not coming to the flat when we arranged and taking at least twice as long as they said they would to paint something white. When I say I have to leave to go to work, they will look utterly surprised, ‘you WORK, madam?’, and then carry on taking forever. It seems builders are the same the world over. Wish me luck.

(I leave you with some photos of the growing kittens, just because I can’t resist)

Camels and cats

These days it’s all about animals.

A couple of weeks ago we went to the camel racing. Mr A had been once before and knew that the most essential component of spectating camels is a 4x4 so off we went with our saloon-confined friends. The roadworks around the track had us momentarily confused – I had the bright idea of following the pick-up full of camels, but it turned out they were going somewhere else.

Once we found it, we ditched the saloon in the carpark, piled in to the 4x4 and headed into the throng. We watched the first race from the startline whilst we figured out what the hell was going on: lots of camels are brought out from the paddock by lots of men in white robes, they are held at the start line, the barrier is raised, the men quickly run out of the way of stampeding camels, the 4x4s speed off, everyone disappears into the dusty distance. Then you wait around at the start line for 15 minutes whilst everyone else is off around the track.

So Mr A was brave enough to participate in the next race and joined the extreme sport spectators. Basically, there are two tracks. One which the camels run round, and an adjacent one which cars drive around. Some are spectators who drive in order to keep an eye on the race. Others are owners/trainers who are controlling their camels – they used to be ridden by Pakistani boys who were malnourished to stay light but someone realised that might be cruel so now their riders are robots (who still wear colours because otherwise the camels get freaked out). The robots have whips that are controlled by the people in the cars; apparently they use the equivalent of car-key beepers to get the whip to whizz. This means that there will always be a couple of cars drifting around at the back of the race longing their camel on. Everyone else is trying to be at the front, treating their Landcruiser much like a cross-terrain bumper car. So, Mr A toddled along at the back of the car-herd and reported that it was do-able.

Next race, we all jumped in and Mr A pretended not to be nervous about driving our 6-months-pregnant-with-twins friend around. Meanwhile we ate sweets and listened to the special camel-racing radio station which commentated on which beautiful beast was winning, and how many foreigners had come to watch Qatari traditional sports (in Arabic).

Having done the circuit a couple of times, we decided to withdraw from the moving dust cloud and hung out at the finish line with all the tired camels, the blokes who look after them and their robots. We had a chat (‘where are you from?’, ‘Britain’, ‘but you speak Arabic…?’), found out they were all from Sudan, told them we’d been to Khartoum for Eid (causing significant surprise), admired their robots, and showed them photos of themselves on our cameras.

At which point we realised the last race was about to end but we had wandered away from the finish line, so we sprinted off and made all the camel guys laugh a lot. Then we almost got run over by the speeding spectator cars and realised that camels literally foam at the mouth when they race.

Moving on to smaller mammals, last weekend we went to pick up two little kittens. A friend of a friends cat had unexpectedly given birth and we (I) felt the time had come to have some dependents in the flat (i.e. tortoise substitutes). We headed off on Friday morning with the extremely large cat box I had purchased to find that the Mosque adjacent to the guys flat was obviously pretty popular and not large enough for all of the men who would like to pray in it, so they’d spread their prayer mats out across the road. We reversed, drove round the block, and found somewhere else to park. Not wildly keen on walking amongst prayer mats with aforementioned cat box, we attempted to approach from a different angle. One wrong building, significant perspiration and a lot of long lines of men praying later, we found the kittens. I gave their human dad muffins in exchange for two bundles of joy, and we emerged into the sunlight to find all of the praying men had moved on before prayers even started so we could have just parked outside. Doha has a split personality – wandering around that area is much like I imagine parts of Pakistan would be: everyone is from South Asia, living in crowded old housing, washing lines, lots of little shops, no pavements. Where we live is probably more like the (dustier) US: tower blocks, everyone driving 4x4s, shopping malls, 5* hotels…….

The kittens are utterly delightful – two brothers who are totally white and almost identical who are in the process of devastating our flat. One of them finally did a poo in the litter box yesterday which I celebrated A LOT. All subsequent excretions have been next to the litter tray, but compared to under our bed this is huge progress. Mr A can’t decide whether he’s totally freaked out by having kittens attacking his head as he watches TV, or enchanted by small animals that sit on his lap as he works. Certainly it seems I’m in charge of scooping poop.

A Qatari man we were talking to the evening that we got them suggested names which have stuck: Fahed (Panther) and Nimir (Tiger), although since Mr A is incapable of distinguishing between them their individual personalities are pretty academic. I have become predictably neurotic about their health. Apparently they can have their inoculations from 8 weeks old. They are 8 weeks old today so I’m taking them to the Vet this afternoon. You can never be too careful. I can pick up some overpriced cat accessories whilst I’m there. The only question is whether I really need one of those really ugly scratching posts. I’m guessing that since the boys can’t work out that the litter tray is the place to poop, they’re unlikely to realise the post is the place to scratch. They seem happy with our very expensive Syrian carpet anyway.

Right, I’m off to wash the bedsheets that seem to have got in the way of litter training progress….

Khartoum and Kayaking

So Eid was called on a Monday night – contrary to the expectations of several important Qatari astronomers and most of the general population who thought it would be Tuesday. We’d chosen that evening to Iftar on the corniche – far enough from the cannon to avoid hearing damage, close enough to know when it was allowed to sip a little water. The call came through that Saudi spotted the moon and had declared the start of Eid, but that Qatar hadn’t announced anything. A bug bit me between the eyes, my face swelled up… still no news. Mr A called a contact at the Emiri Diwan who wasn’t certain. We waited. Finally we gave up and came home, turning on the TV to find a long bearded man announcing the end of Ramadan in Qatar. It turns out that Sudan, Saudi, UAE and Qatar were able to see the moon on Monday night. Odd then that Egypt (geographically between these countries) didn’t see it until Tuesday night, but then who am I to question religious men with very good eyesight and large telescopes?

This news meant our flights to Sudan no longer fitted with the national holiday. We split up – Mr A headed to the Airport, walked straight through the queue with a quick flash of his pass, and rebooked our flights within 10 minutes. I on the other hand was responsible for getting hold of US Dollars printed after 2003 – the only way of buying things in Sudan – so I joined the end of a queue for the Exchange. Where I stayed for over an hour, while the Ramadan ‘entertainment’ belted out beside me from a 3-storey high fake castle, several Qataris jumped the queue and two Filipino guys started a fight. By the time I got to the front I had totally forgotten about the whole 2003 thing and bought $200 we wouldn’t be able to use in Sudan.

This experience may have traumatised me a little. Back at home in holiday mood, Mr A prepared me a Tinto Verano (aka red wine with lemonade) which I spilt all over my dressing table, my packing and several extension leads and plugs. I then screamed at Mr A to help me clear up and lay on the bed weeping for a while.

Convinced it would be chaos with thousands of Eid travellers (the result of having believed doomsaying colleagues), I made us get up at 4am to get to the airport, only to find it quieter than we have ever seen it. Deserted in fact, apart from a chirpy little bird in the lounge.

Our half full flight (strangely Khartoum didn’t seem the most popular of destinations) was an amazing mixture of striking, tall African ladies in jeans, small Arab women entirely covered in black from the top of their heads to their fingertips, ladies swathed in huge lengths of multicoloured fabric and men with wide white turbans and flowing white robes, all of whom clapped when we landed. We were in jeans.

In Khartoum we found airport security somewhat keen to scan our bags, which was not ideal as Mr A was carrying some contraband champagne, a present for our hosts. He did some hasty negotiating, offering his rucksack as a conciliatory prize for not looking in the offending bag, and then finally a Boss agreed with our view of things. Hurrah for champers in a dry country.

We did some hanging out in Khartoum – Mr A and F talking about politics and any other topic they could both pretend they knew something about, and Z and I sharing our thoughts on being a ‘trailing spouse’, home-baked bread, luxury chocolates and Claudia Roden – and took surreptitious pictures of the “Mugran”, the point where the White and Blue Niles converge, from behind the tinted windows of the backseat of the car (taking photos without a licence being one of the numerous illegal practices in Sudan).

Then we headed south to camp by the White Nile, which is really wide at that point and feels almost like a sea. The drive took just over an hour and took us out of Khartoum via hectic, bumpy roads with competing tuk-tuks, cars, buses and people which then fell away to one, straight road with occasional mud-built villages either side.

We put up our tents and had a lovely swim in the river at sunset, hoping the occasional brush on our legs was a Nile perch not a crocodile.

The boys laboriously made a fire (‘careful we don’t run out of matches’) for very tasty supper, only slightly disturbed by the large squishy insects that began dropping onto us from the trees above us. The next morning the girls took control of making a fire. We quietly collected some kindling (avoiding the enormous thorns poking out of anything resembling twigs), screwed up some newspaper, and loaded on some charcoal. One match and a little judicious blowing later and we were away. Ah, the warming feeling of being better than men at things they think they have a caveman-like monopoly over. A feast of sausages, bacon, eggs and tomatoes, eaten while avoiding huge dung beetles and a small scorpion (‘the smaller they are, the more dangerous’), was delicious.

After brunch we took some kayaks out on the river. Mr A had a few problems and only made it one metre from shore before he violently capsized, depositing his sunglasses somewhere on the riverbed (half an hour after waxing lyrical about the benefits of sunglasses in sunny climes). I, in an identical kayak, paddled off quite happily. We were the only people around and the river was so calm. Mr A was a little miffed at my obvious superiority and threw himself out again a little later, muttering something about his left leg being numb. A likely story – his leg seemed to recover rather speedily once we were back on shore.

On our last day we were woken by birds chirruping outside our window, and then wandered around the markets of Omdurman which felt more African that Arabian. In a moment of reckless abandon we stopped for fresh juices at a stall, only to realise that it was made with tap water – after a couple of sips we scarpered like the dirty-water-fearing-foreigners that we are, leaving the juice-maker to ponder what he’d done wrong. We also popped into a museum to admire very old British guns (it’s interesting the pride people can take in showing you the guns your ancestors used to shoot at theirs). All in all it was an unlikely but thoroughly enjoyable city break. Coming from Doha it was refreshingly green and colourful, though if you’d come from anywhere else you might think it looked rather dusty.

Now we are back in Doha which has returned to its pre-Ramadan ways – all the bars are open and people are doing some work. We have made friends with our neighbours and their daughter gave me a beautiful fossilised stone for my collection, and I’ve been reassuring newly-arrived, culture-shocked Londoners that there really are nice people to meet and things to do in Qatar. Time is flying; next week we will have been here for one year…………..

Much Autumnal love to all,

A xxx