Hangovers, hard-hats and helipads

Hello! Remember me? I know it’s been a very long time since I last sent one of these. Somehow December disappeared in work, weddings, Christmas and general coldness/fog in the UK. Then January disappeared in work, laziness and general coldness/fog in Qatar.

Before we went ‘home’ over Christmas, we went to some more Al Jazeera parties and drank far too much. In fact, neither of us have felt that bad the following morning for an incredibly long time (probably not since the day after our leaving party in London) and did that thing of waking up quite early because your dehydrated brain hurts so much you can’t even sleep. After some Nurofen, we passed out again and didn’t wake until 3.30pm. Considering we had a load of people from Mr A’s office coming round for drinks at 5.30pm, and we didn’t have any drinks, this was less than ideal. We sprang in to action and while I manically cleaned the flat, Mr A went to purchase said drinks and snacks. Of course, everyone else in Doha had been up for hours and there is nothing the average Doha-ite likes better than to do a spot of shopping/mooching at the Mall on a Friday afternoon. So he sat in a traffic jam for half an hour and failed to get a parking place so failed to get into the supermarket. He then went to the other, slightly rubbish, smaller supermarket which didn’t sell half the things we needed. Colleagues arrived just as we had made ourselves look human and our flat presentable, and asked innocent questions like ‘what have you been up to today?’….’Um, you know, hanging out. Not much really.’ I didn’t touch anything but orange juice and water until 11pm. The smell of serving wine to others almost made me vomit, and both of us had to keep disappearing in to the kitchen for some bites of an emergency sandwich.

In the UK, we realised we were not in any way prepared for the cold. Mr A almost left Doha with one jumper and no coat. We went to a beautiful Lebanese/British wedding and, almost as good, went for a huge fry-up the next morning with LOADS of bacon and sausages. We then went to Debenhams and bought as many hats, gloves and scarves as we could realistically fit on ourselves. All this made us late for Aladdin the panto, but luckily we snuck in and apart from my sister very loudly asking what time we thought it was, no-one noticed. Especially not my sister’s boyfriend who was far too busy belting out catchy panto songs and throwing sweets at children to bother with us.

Christmas and New Year passed in a very pleasant blur of pork, potatoes and wine. We spent huge amounts of quality time with our families doing wholesome things like playing charades and walking the dog. My sister made me almost pee myself with laughter by hitting herself on the head with a muddy Wellington boot whilst trying to sort out her tangled sock in the middle of a wood. And she almost made me kill myself by singing Leona ‘I keep bleeding’ Lewis songs at us all. The other sister managed to do all her shouting whilst we were staying with Mr A’s parents which was lucky. And she gave me a Habitat mug which is making my tea drinking in Doha a simple but never-ending pleasure.

Since we’ve been back, we’ve been working hard. The joy of driving a brand-new car is yet to fade, though sitting at traffic lights is definitely boring. I continue to appreciate the subtle diversions Doha has to offer. Like the fact that barely any construction workers wear hard-hats when they’re welding huge pieces of steel or walking under moving cranes, but a gang of 50 of them were all wearing brand-new yellow hard-hats to sweep a road. Or that the only piece of abandoned furniture or rubbish I’ve seen is a huge, brown armchair neatly placed at a bus stop.

I’ve been spending many a lunchtime in Costa coffee, appreciating the genuinely Qatari experience of them not having had any hot chocolate for over two months – ‘sorry Madam, would you like an espresso instead’. It is an amazing place to people watch – I followed the progress of a young Qatari man pushing a trolley with two small shopping bags in it down a flight of stairs, along a half-build pavement, across a flower bed, across a grass lawn, down a kerb, along a road, through a trench, and up another kerb. Rather than just picking up the bags and carrying them to his Land Cruiser. I continue to be mystified by Qatari women wearing a full veil (with thin black fabric over their heads so you can’t see any facial features), and then sunglasses over the top. Inside shops. I also got to go up on to the helipad of a new building (about 35 stories up) where there are no side-rails or walls on the edge. Amazing views. Less amazing stories from the (Lebanese) Contractor who built it, earnestly telling me that when they were laying the concrete screed it was so windy that (Indian, Pakistani, and Nepali) workers were being blown from one side of the helipad to the other. But of course they were strapped to a harness, and he couldn’t stop them working because ‘once you show them you’re soft, they won’t have any respect for you’.

I can tell that I’ve been at my office for a while because the call to prayer that I can hear from my desk is a way of measuring the day, and I am highly discombobulated when it’s not the usual muezzin. Mr A can tell that he’s been at his office for a while because he had to clear up all the pieces of paper that he’s been putting on a big pile for 3 months in order to move to a new building.

We have been spending time to doing all sorts of things that would never occur to us in the UK, and appreciating the sporting diversions Qatar has to offer. Of course, not actually playing any of them, but watching Andy Murray win the Qatar Open, and lots of quite camp golfers not win the Qatar Masters. I found the tennis quite stressful because they’d obviously got some local kids to be ball boys and they permanently looked like they were going to take out a player with one of their balls. And old Murray is really quite aggressive with a split personality disorder where he shouts at himself between games: ‘you can do better than that Andy, you f***ing twat’.

We celebrated Australian National Day (and no-one mentioned that apparently the Aborigines call it Invasion Day) at a compound barbecue. We continue to walk along the corniche almost every week (us and a lot of women in black abayas and bright white trainers) and visit souq waqif, where if you’re lucky Qatari men are banging drums. We also visited the Islamic Cultural Centre where a very nice man wrote our names in Arabic calligraphy, and a very nice woman tried to convert me to Islam.

I went to meet Mr A in Cairo for the weekend mid-January, since he was already there for a conference. We spent a fantastic 48 hours visiting pyramids south of Cairo, looking around mosques (including Ibn Tulun – one of my favourites, though you do have to wear special foot covers which make you look quite silly but better than the ewok outfit in Damascus), climbing minarets, drinking in smoke-filled ‘pubs’, going to posh-British-Arabic-students parties and eating curry.

It was really enjoyable being in a bustling, chaotic, grubby city where there are people on the streets and everyone speaks Arabic. Almost as different to Doha as being in London.

Hope you all enjoyed January…
xx