Abayas and avocados

Assalaam aleiykum,

Greetings from Doha. I hope this finds you all well.

We continue to settle in to Doha. Perhaps we are now settled, but in the absence of any definable criteria it’s difficult to tell. I have been working away on an interior design project with a client who wants the building finished as soon as possible but never makes a decision about anything. I went to a meeting with a Qatari gentleman who is building a new house for himself, his wife and his youngest daughter. It’s on a new development – the ‘rediscovered island’ called The Pearl. ‘Rediscovered’ seems to be stretching the definition of the word – it’s a brand new series of islands much like the World or the Palm in Dubai. It’s going to be Doha’s ‘premier address’, so it’s lucky there will be plenty of place for people to revel in being premier – they’re building at least 20 identical multi-storey towers. Anyway, this guy is building this enormous villa for himself (8 bedrooms, multiple reception rooms, servant quarters etc) and has bought the 5 adjacent plots so his married sons and daughters can build their homes nearby. His house will include an outside swimming pool, and an underground ‘den’ which has a big window opening on to the swimming pool so you can see people swimming underwater. Is that a bit weird?

Otherwise, I’ve been working on an office-refurbishment which is on site at the moment. I visited last week to check construction progress. Visiting sites in the UK was always a pretty male affair, but here you would have thought a wild animal had just walked in judging by the look of awe/surprise on the face of builders. I think the clients find it a bit strange too – an Egyptian guy swore (mildly) in front of me last week during a meeting before apologising profusely and saying it’s just because he’s not used to working around women.

Mr A has been busy too. His office has moved to a spanking new building where the air conditioning works and it’s not a national disgrace to invite someone to a meeting. He’s realising the lack of work/life separation when living in post, as everyone we ever meet asks his opinion about the latest political issue, hoping they’ll get some titbit from him that they haven’t yet read in the press. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they get the longest, most diplomatic explanation. That’ll teach them to ask questions.

The day-to-day reality of living in Qatar continues to amaze/ divert/ amuse. I sat next to a Qatari family having lunch in a shopping mall where the mother was wearing a full-black abaya, with a huge diamante ‘DIOR’ on the back. You can bet that it was probably genuine. Her daughter were all eating Café Paul cakes, or not eating them because the portion of cake was huge and the girls were tiny, so the Philipina maid (who was about the same size as the 7 year old) was eating the cake remains. Driving around, I have got used to seeing at least one Hummer a day. Generally being driven by a Qatari man on his own, stopping off to buy some chicken shwarma. I’m sure that’s exactly what the military designers had in mind when they finalised the bullet-proof exterior. In the local press, they are careful to keep astride of breaking news. Page 3: Brigadier Honours Young Qatari National (who handed a wallet he found in the street).

The weather here is a total mystery. Some days it is beautifully sunny and if you go outside in the middle of the day, it’s hot. Mid-February, it was truly appalling (ah, the shimaal wind, the old-timers say knowingly). It was really windy, cold and there was yet more fog. Leaving work one day Mr A warned me to be careful of the fog. I said I would, thinking to myself that he really was a bit worrisome since there was near-perfect visibility outside my office. I merrily started driving home, and steadily saw less and less. I can’t remember ever being in such visible, thick clouds, only they are around your car rather than up in the sky. I could see the clouds being blown by the wind, and could literally only see about 1m in front. On the corniche, usually fast moving, everyone was driving at 30km/hr with their hazards on. The only time I’ve been followed by a Hummer, rather than seeing the back of it as it overtakes on the inside. (photos show the view from our balcony before- and after- superfog).

We chose the beginning of this weather-phenomenon to go to a beach in the North. It wasn’t at all warm, so we walked along it rather than sunbathing on it. This gave us the opportunity to see what a well-liked Qatari beach is all about – a long line of tents and portaloos on the sand with the odd abandoned vintage car.

Some of them have installed 3-piece suites to ensure a sea-side view in a comfortable seat.

You also walk along the 4x4 and dune-buggy tracks, but luckily the wind had scared off the drivers and it was brilliant to be in open air.

We had brought a picnic with us, and the new car came into its own as we put the boot up and camped out in the back, sheltered from the gales. Suitably sated, we went to find the infamous Qatar rock carvings. ‘Head right in to the desert’. Admittedly they may not be prime examples, but we did find at least 5 small circles carved in a line. And a lot of camels. All in a landscape which resembles the moon.

Of course, we celebrated Valentine’s day as the anniversary of us first getting together all those years ago. All of the alcohol-licensed restaurants were advertising hideous romantic meals, only four billion riyals each, including every sickly love-inspired trinket a girl could want. We decided to cook supper at home. Mr A was in charge of the starters. A lengthy phone call to Mum resulted in an idea for Avocado Surprise. A surprise it was when he realised that all of the 8 avocados he had bought were so unripe they were inedible. Abandoning that plan, we got stuck in to the champagne before starting on the main course of fish pie. I had bought some unbelievably expensive mussels and was geared up to cook Nigel Slater’s finest. Opening up the packet unleashed a foul smell but determined to get value for money, I steamed them anyway. The warm smell made Mr A feel so nauseous that he had to leave the kitchen and light every candle we own. I threw the mussels away. Ploughing on with the remaining ingredients, I realised fish pie takes a really long time to cook and so by the time we ate our romantic meal at 11pm, we were quite drunk, not very hungry, and certainly had no room for the delicious apple tarts I was going to whip up as the finale. Next year we might be tempted by the overpriced Italian….

In order to be good sports (hee hee), we participated in a sports day organised by the Qatari Olympic organisation. It was at a ‘camp’ in the desert – go to the resort and turn right in the desert, we’d been told. And that is literally what the meant – we got to the resort, and turned right across sand dunes and plains, in order to find a random assortment of tents and (very small) pitches surrounded by sand dunes. Unfortunately no-one seemed to have told the coach driver that you really need a 4x4 to drive through sand as we passed the 70-seater coach stranded 2 metres in.

Mr A marshalled the troops and there were full teams for football, volleyball, and ping –pong, which were all duly knocked-out in the first round. Mr A scored the team’s only goal in the football match, but failed to get his penalty in. He did better than his somewhat podgy team-mate who had a cigarette as a warm-up and lasted 5 minutes. The volleyball team hadn’t quite got round to training and the 17-3 score didn’t accurately reflect the effort they put in. I, of course, stayed well clear of any actual sport and only exerted myself in order to climb up a big sand dune.

Which was really quite exhausting. We had to go and have a boozy lunch looking out over the sea to recover.

On the sport theme, we went to watch some women’s tennis. We saw two Eastern Europeans play in the quarter-finals (I can’t remember what their names were. I think that gives away my marginal lack of interest in tennis) which was so packed (mostly men, can’t think what interest they had in two women in very short skirts) that we had to stand at the back. This was during the aforementioned windy spell and it was so bloody cold we had to leave as Sharapova came on. We then tried to go to the final. We had tickets, which you may think meant we might get in to the stadium. Silly you. Of course, they close the doors before the match starts and don’t tell you why. We met the Al Jazeera sports correspondent who couldn’t get in either. We went to eat Moroccan food instead and so missed Sharapova being presented with her Harley Davidson….

Finally, we have met lots of lovely people in the past month which confirms that enjoying a place is mostly about chatting / drinking / eating with interesting people. We’ve been honing our socialising skills at suppers with millionaires, and rating receptions (I’m going to start refusing to go unless they’re at the Four Seasons and have free sushi). We have also come across people who are unlikely to be our friends, but make up for it by being unfeasibly entertaining. We went for a swim yesterday and were next to a middle-aged European man. On approach, we’d seen him slip a plastic carton out of his bag and pour a clear liquid into his orange juice. Ah, suspicious. As we sunbathed and read papers, relaxing into our weekend, he put in his earphones (connected to a really old-school walkman the like of which you haven’t seen since the eighties) and began his karaoke…. ‘miles and miles…… miiiiyllles and mi-i-i-i-i-iles…… head wouuunnd…… on the magic buuuuus.’ This went on for about 25 minutes. I think he proved that some people are driven mad by Doha. And that drinking very strong vodka-oranges doesn’t improve one’s singing.

Very best wishes for March

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