By the time my plane rolled down Doha International Airport’s runway, I had been asked 19 times if I were Filipino. 19 times, just at the Bahrain and Qatar airports. 19 times I answered Yes, and the follow-up questions were: 1: “Have you come straight from Manila?”, 2: “Ah, what’s your job in Doha?”, and 3: “So, what, are you staying with an aunt or something?” I fell, weary and bleary-eyed, into the arms of my husband, who in a span of three months had grown thinner and wild-haired, for he hadn’t had a haircut ever since I bid him goodbye at the airport. The ride to our apartment offered me a glimpse of what would be my home for the next couple of years: large, imposing, gaudy-looking houses (or should I call them mansions?), minarets looming in the horizon, and terrible driving.
Our apartment though is not bad at all: a newly-built, mustard-yellow or pale orange- coloured building (I had a debate the other day with the taxi driver) in a little street just off the main road, whose highlights are a car repair shop, a tiny Arabic grocery store, a Fruit Juice stall (fruits are a big deal here, apparently), a laundry shop, and what is most probably another Arabic grocery store, but I can’t be sure, since it’s closed all the time.
Curiously, the highlight furniture of our apartment is a huge liquor cabinet, the heavy glass and wood kind, with spotlights no less, meant to display and highlight your wine bottles to your future jealous house guests (who haven’t yet obtained their liquor licenses). A very ironic piece of furniture, in a country where pork and alcohol is banned; albeit acceptable considering that our building is for expatriates only. Alcohol is served in hotel bars with a 17.5% tax on top of the cost of the drink, which is not far, really, from the prices in France.
A huge TV sits balefully in our living room, feeling snubbed since we are anti-TV, although I do watch Arte and Al Jazeera from time to time.
There is a mosque just outside our building window. Every day at 4:45 am, the minaret plays holy prayers of the Qu’ran. The first morning, upon hearing the prayer, I started in bed, my body clock awry, blinking in confusion. I could hear prayers from other mosques, their tones blending into a gradient, like the sun that was starting to set. I found it beautiful and exotic and was transported to another world; a reminder that I am now living in a Muslim country, where it is polite to cover up even in the heat of summer, or where holding hands and a harmless peck on the cheek in public is something to be avoided, if only to show respect.
So yes, that first morning, filled with wide-eyed wonder, I found the prayers beautiful. The next day I was slightly irritated, especially since a cellphone from the building across (under construction, as is common here in Qatar) starts to ring just after the prayers, ring tone the unfortunate tune Lambada, its midi-cheerfulness echoing in my brain like nails being scratched along the length of a blackboard. By the third morning I was ready to scratch someone’s eyes out. By the fourth morning I got up automatically and started to read, as if my body just got used to it. I think now that my mind and my body and my soul can and will get used to anything. Maybe it’s all a matter of perspective, or the choice between allowing ourselves to listen to some things, and to ignore others. I still get up when the prayers start. It’s pretty loud.
Currently listening to:
Explosions in the Sky
All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone
