Melons and Moons

Hello,

Ramadan continues here. There’s about 5 days left, though no-one is certain. The end (like the beginning) is marked by the sighting of the new moon which will mark the beginning of Eid Il Fitr (cue a lot of family celebrations, presents, sweets and money for children, all round chaos). It seems the moon isn’t as predictable as one might like so maybe Eid will start on Tuesday, maybe on Wednesday. And no-one will know until Monday. It seems extraordinary to me that the whole country (and the whole of the Muslim world) will come to a halt for at least 5 days (Government organisations will get about 10 days off) but no-one’s willing to declare when it’ll start, even though one presumes some very clever astronomer types have super-duper computer models to sort these things out. Anyway, Mr A has lined up a special trip for the holiday so fingers crossed that our Eid days off work coincide with the plane tickets. We are headed to….. wait for it…. Sudan. As you can imagine, he had to really fight for our tickets – Doha-Khartoum is a pretty popular route what with all those tourists heading out to soak up the Sudanese vibe. No, no, jokes aside, we will get to spend (fingers crossed) five days with lovely friends so we are really looking forward to it.

The place to go in Doha to experience the Ramadan thing is to Souq Waqif. The Souq is constantly expanding as they build more and more ‘traditional’ buildings to look like they’ve always been there. Whilst this may not sit well with my thoughts on architectural pastiche, it is undoubtedly one of the nicest places to spend an evening in Doha (and happens to have a bookshop which sells some of the only contemporary Qatari books we’ve seen).

It’s one of the few places in Doha where they have put up Ramadan lights, rather tastefully done I think.

Loads of people head down there after breaking their fast and it cannot be denied that sitting outside a cafe, drinking juice and smoking shisha with Muslim friends as the world goes by on a Saturday night is an extremely pleasant way to spend an evening. As is sitting outside a cafe, drinking juice and smoking shisha as the boats go by on a Friday night. Can you tell how we spent last weekend?

Conversations with an Iraqi / Australian friend over mint tea reminded me of similar chats in Syria. We were talking about tipping (which her husband is inordinately fond of doing, to anyone and everyone, in large quantities) and she said that she always tips people 5/10 Riyals (about 70p/£1.40) so that ‘nothing is left in their hearts’, a translation of an Arabic phrase that doesn’t make much sense in English, meaning that the person that has served you feels appreciated and you are no longer indebted to them. Arabic (and Arabs) are full of these phrases which so perfectly sum up small feelings or moments that English sometimes doesn’t quite cover. I also like the one about marriage being like a watermelon – no-one can know what it will be like until the melon is cut open….

A feature of the Doha Ramadan scene is The Iftar Cannon. Every night the setting of the sun, and therefore the breaking of the fast, is marked by some soldiers firing the eponymous cannon on a patch of wasteland near the Post Office. Dropping in to see it on a Friday evening, we arrived early and added our car to the huge circle of cars parked around the aforementioned cannon – kind of like people around a campfire but larger and vehicular. There were loads of kids happily climbing all over the cannon as their parents took photos. Soldiers milled around trying to stop cars from parking directly in front of the cannon mouth. Adding to the general solemnity of the occasion, the mascot from a local Football team (looking suspiciously like a badger) embraced surprisingly enthusiastic grown men while being mauled by kids.

As it got darker, the soldiers gently removed the kids and began to look anxiously at their watches, as everyone headed to their cars where children hung out of windows, sat on roofs of Landcruisers or stood through sunroofs to get a better view.

The tension was palpable. Everyone waited. Then the soldiers agreed by their synchronised watches that the time had come (I made that bit up), one fired a starting pistol, and off went the cannon.

Which was really bloody loud, made the car shake, and produced an impressive amount of smoke (possibly the most military action the Qatari Forces have seen, I'm guessing). But the assorted crowds seemed to have forgotten they were there for the cannon and only registered the starting pistol which was their cue to reverse, turning their wheels, at high speed. If one goes back to the campfire analogy one can see that this might produce a certain amount of 4x4 chaos, which it did – not dissimilar to a gigantic game of bumper cars in which having kids head poking out the car definitely helps your cause.

My personal admiration was reserved for the zen-like Qatari who had parked his yellow Ferrari round the corner from the cannon (close enough to hear it going off but far enough away to avoid the smoke, ear damage and ever-present threat of a collision) and sat cross legged on top of it, in his white thobe, gazing out to sea. Wish I had felt brazen enough to photograph him.

I’m off to eat the dates that a very kind man stuffed through my car window as I waited at some traffic lights at sunset last night…… And reminisce about the dinner party we went to last night where the main course included chorizo.. mmmmmm… (and where we met a Catalonian independent filmmaker who got arrested in Tehran for filming women flirting with boys, but that’s another story……….)

xx