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{ Category Archives } Life in Qatar

Stranded Nepal labourers in Doha

A well-shot report by Omar Khalifa about Nepal’s stranded Gulf labour force.

“Abandoned at Qatar’s international airport for days, Nepali workers who come hired, with a visa and contract, on the promise of a steady job and a regular wage, are forced to go without money, without food and with no idea if the companies that they have been contracted to, will ever pick them up.”


Lost in Migration from Omar Khalifa on Vimeo.

Currently listening to:
Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes

2008 10 30 Comments (1)

Appreciation

A list of things that have pissed me off recently:

1. Crazy drivers in their 4×4s who flash you, tail you, and cut you off at roundabouts. Imagine this. One tranquil afternoon you decide to go to the mall (because other than that, there’s not much to do here) and the street is practically empty. Suddenly a 4×4 materializes in your rearview mirror and its headlights starts flashing. Which is Qatari talk for “Get out of the way, moron, I have a bigger car!” You’re driving at the allowed maximum speed but this doesn’t matter; Asshole in 4×4 absolutely wants the left lane. But you can’t switch lanes because a pick-up truck is to your right. Asshole in 4×4 keeps at it; he guns his engine and sticks to your bumper, flashing you the whole time, and you can see him gesticulating at you in the rearview mirror.  Finally pick-up truck decides to turn: you swerve to the next lane, Asshole in 4×4 rolls down his window, glares at you, and then speeds off. Just another normal day in the streets of Doha…

2. Family days at the souk/malls. There is a bizarre ritual here in Qatar, and it’s called Family Day. The malls, the souks, and other public establishments ban single males at the entrance; they deny entry to bachelors. Majority of these bachelors are workers from construction sites who are here without their families, and they take advantage of their only day off to go to the mall to buy some gifts to send back home. Or who want to go to the souk’s Western Union outlet to send their hard-earned money to their families.

During the last Eid holidays, this was a hot topic, and there were even reports of police beating bachelors away from the entrance of the souk. An article from The Peninsula quoted [shopping mall] Villagio’s Security Manager, Mohammed Khan:

“It is a matter of the mall’s honour. We are not allowing people in from the Industrial Area or those dressed in plastic slippers and wearing shorts. They do not have money to spend in the fashionable shops and if they do have money they will spend it in Carrefour [grocery store chain]. Groups of these people tend to create trouble.”

But Family Day has a selective process. Single male Qataris and Westerners had no problem getting into the malls or souks. Again, Mr. Khan provides an insightful answer:

Asked why western residents were allowed in, as well as nationals and other Arabs – a few were spotted entering without hindrance in shorts and slippers – he said nothing could be done about single Qataris being allowed in. As for westerners, he said: “Westerners are good and will spend money.”

To say I feel absolutely, totally disgusted by this is an understatement.

3. Websites being banned. There used to be a website that focused on the negative aspects of Qatar. The only ISP in the country banned it.

4. Customer service. Last month I sold my car but had to renew my car insurance first. I arrived at 7:15 for the 8am opening and was fourth in line. We dutifully grabbed a number and waited. The windows opened at 8:15. They called my number an hour later. The reason why I had to wait an hour for my turn (there were only three people who went before me, and two tellers, mind you) was because these men in dishdashas would come up to the window, shake hands with the teller, sit down, chat for 20 minutes, hand them over a huge stack of papers, and chat some more while the teller processed their papers first.

When my turn came, the teller was pleasant enough, but spent fifteen minutes giving his colleague an in-depth tour of the features of his brand new mobile phone. Fifteen minutes, I fucking timed them. He even took his colleague’s photo and sent him a copy via Bluetooth while I sat there clutching the rim of the table so hard that knuckles turned white.

I am, however, making an effort to appreciate the brighter side of life in Qatar. So here is another list:

What I Like About Qatar

1. Wide roads. I don’t like driving here, but at least the majority of Doha roads are wide enough. When compared to the streets of Paris, Doha roads seem like fucking tarmacs.

2. Take-away. A lot of restaurants do home delivery.

Currently listening to:
Archive
Londinium

2008 10 23 Comments (7)

Golden Slumbers

If you think that there are less cars on the road during Ramadan, you are sorely mistaken. From 8h to 14h, the streets are clogged with impatient, thirsty, fasting commuters. It’s madness!

But during the daytime, between 15h up until 19h, the streets are unusually quiet. Since the risk of getting run over around this time of the day is slim, we took a stroll around our neighborhood.

Ah, our neighborhood…

We live in an area surrounded by construction. There is a stretch of road that has been under construction ever since we moved here – that’s more than a year ago – and has remained untouched to this day. The worst part is that it is in front of the French school, which makes traffic even worse (our area houses 3 schools – the French school, the Lebanese school, and the Qatar International school).

But last Friday was tranquil, the roads were empty, and the construction workers were absent. When all these buildings will be finished, the skyline will most probably be impressive; but as of now, it’s nothing but bordel.


No idea what this shopping cart is doing here


Construction behind our building


A wider view


Buildings and sand


Tile formation (French school behind)


Our neighborhood mosque


Neighborhood petrol station (the neighborhood grocery stop as well)


Freaking old trucks


Doha street tags


“Why yes, I am very happy.”


Telling me how to adjust the camera settings

Et voila… that’s my neighborhood.

Currently listening to:
The Beatles
Abbey Road

2008 09 14 Comments (9)

Climb

When your dreams get synchronised with the dreams of your partner, it means you aren’t the only one going mad.

“I just woke up,” I wearily told Julien over the phone. “I kept waking up and going back to sleep.  First I was climbing stairs in what looked like my old school, and it was really steep so I had to drag myself up, holding on to the rungs. Then… somehow I fell asleep again and then I was at a friend’s flat, and she lived on the fourth floor, and I had to climb the stairs — only, I had to climb over doors and step on the doorknobs to get to the next flight of stairs…”

He told me that he too has been having the same kind of dream lately. “It’s me climbing a hill. Covered in grass. But it’s so steep that I could fall backwards if I didn’t hold on properly.”

Qatar is officially sucking the life out of us.  We have become zombies.  I sit here all day, sometimes talking to myself to hear voices around me, never mind that it’s my own.  Sometimes I wake up and find myself momentarily lost, confusing the greyness of the sky caused by sandstorm for a grey winter morning in France.  I miss being with my husband.  He works six days a week, leaves the house at 5:30am, comes home at 8:30pm the earliest, with a total of 2 hours of driving a day. And in between the hours of dusk and dawn, we dream the same dream – climbing stairs filled with obstacles; trying our best to hold on.

Currently listening to:
Black Mountain
In the Future

2008 08 12 Musings Comments (10)

Geography

I find it interesting that world maps are hard to come by in stores here in Qatar.

So after combing the shelves of Carrefour (all three branches), Villagio, and that little bookstore at the 3rd floor of City Center, I decide to go to Jarir Bookstore along Salwa Road.

I ask the guy for a world map. "Follow me," he says, exuding an air of authority. He leads me to the Travel section and hands me a map of Qatar.

I hand it back. "Errr… actually, I need a world map."

He opens the map and shows me Doha, filled with little yellow and red boxes indicating Doha landmarks.

"WORLD map," I tell him again. "With all the different countries?"

He flips the map over and shows me Qatar, and points to Doha, Al Khor, Ras Laffan, and Dukhan, then tries shoving the map into my hands.

"Asia," I say. "Europe. South America. Middle East?"

"This is the map," he tells me.

"This is a map of Qatar," I inform him. "I’m looking for the WORLD map. Qatar is NOT the world."

He doesn’t respond. He looks a touch irritated. I can see he wants to move on to another customer.

With a sigh I take it from his hands, wait until he disappears behind a bookshelf, and put the map back on the shelf. After a few minutes I find a world map hiding behind some photography books.

Jeeeeesus, I am so thankful Qatar is NOT the whole world.

Currently listening to:
Spiritualized
Songs in A&E

2008 07 29 Stuff that happens to me Comments (18)

Drove through ghosts to get here

Last week, the tiles on the kitchen floor started to swell, as if there was an octopus lurking underneath, trying to get out (even though I know that octopuses… octupii?… can fit thru a bottle’s neck. Saw it on National Geogrphic years ago. Fucking amazing, those creatures! I am quite obsessed with them). Then followed a strange sound, and suddenly the cement holding the tiles together started to crumble. Ah, construction in Qatar. At first glance everything looks ok, but the truth is that buildings, and their finishings, are put together haphazardly. I’ll bet that in 10 years most of the buildings here will start crumbling.

This afternoon I took a nap, which lasted 5 hours. I woke up because of my bad driving. In my dream, I was driving à la Qatari — recklessly. My sister was with me and I was breaking about a hundred and twenty rules of Safe Driving. What really woke me up though, was when I overtook another car and found myself at a stoplight (of course, it was red, and contrary to my earlier driving, I actually stopped). The road was titled at a crazy angle; it was a slope, but we were practically vertical, the car almost tipping over backwards. Panicked, I realised that I didn’t know how to handle slopes (which is crazy, because I aced the hanging part in the driving exam, where you stop and restart the car at a slope). I was yelling at my sister, my foot frozen on the brakes, knowing that we were going to tip over. She was teasing me, saying “You mean you don’t know? You mean we’re going to hit the car behind us?” and finally she pulled up the handbrake, but my foot still wouldn’t leave the brake.

There are a thousand interpretations for this dream but I’m too bored to even think about them. My mind, it’s mush. It’s filled with work and music and the biography of Marie Antoinette (which I’m reading right now, and it’s fucking brilliant!). And my body feels different — I blame Julien, who is currently in this Healthy Zone Bubble. I find myself in the gym more and more, even though I pass my time on the treadmill raising various existential questions, the most popular being, What’s The Point Of Running When The Goal Is Unknown And I’m Not Really Moving And Anyway I Know I’ll Never Get There?

***

The area where I live is under constant, irritating, massive construction. Actually, ever since we arrived at the West Bay area, practically half of the streets have been under heavy travaux. Orange cones protect nonsense construction (for example, there has been a hole in the middle of the sidewalk that hasn’t been closed for months – and in this hole is a ladder… that leads to nothing but soil. Existential questions, all over again…), and now the roundabout leading to City Center has been closed (it’s being replaced with stoplights, finally), leaving clueless drivers to navigate themselves thru a maze of diversions, which blatantly lack the appropriate arrows and road signs.

It’s madness! No wonder I’ve been dreaming of reckless driving.

***

In response to all the hysteria, I plug my ears with math rock.

Currently listening to:
65daysofstatic
One Time for All Time

2008 07 10 Music
N'importe quoi
Uncategorized Comments (2)

End and start again


Dukhan


Beep & Bop, my Uglydoll keychain, suntanning


Beach finds

Currently listening to:
Syd Matters
Syd Matters

2008 04 07 Travel Comments (9)

Thinning Scissors

The other day, I bought a pair of scissors that hairdressers use. I found them at the pharmacy in the mall. “Thinning scissors?” I mused aloud, which made the Chinese pharmacist come over. “It’s used for shearing your hair.”

“Shearing?”

“You know, thinning your hair at the ends.” She touched her perfectly-thinned hair tips.

“Thinning scissors, then.” I was overcome with a sense of power. I can thin the ends of my hair!

A few hours later, Julien came home from work and gaped at me while I twirled for his benefit. “What did you do to you hair! It’s uneven!”

“I bought thinning scissors!” I snapped it several times infront of his face, hoping to impress.

That was the last time I saw my thinning scissors. He hid it somewhere, and I didn’t have the time to look for it before my flight to Paris.

2008 03 06 Stuff that happens to me Comments (1)

Myth takes

For several days now I’ve had the same headache; some terrible pounding behind my eyes. I always wake up with it, and though I want to start the day right — breakfast, work, shower, Jeopardy on tv — I find myself staying much longer in bed than usual, holding my head and willing the pain to stop. This happens sometimes, during certain periods I think, but I have yet to crack the code to these mysterious immobilizing headache incidents.

Nevertheless, I forced myself to go to City Center yesterday, this mall that isn’t too far from where I live. I figured I’d need a change of environment. Boy, what a mistake that was. Some radar probably picked up that I was heading there, so all of Doha decided to join me and stink up the whole parking lot as well. I spent damn near 20 minutes circling the parking lot looking for two empty parking spaces, since I’m too chicken to park between two cars, as I’m not too confident in my parking skills at all yet.

Afterwards I walked up and down the mall feeling lonelier with each step. There is something depressing being in an enclosed space full of neon lights. If only City Center had a decent bookstore, like Villagio’s Virgin Megastore, then it would be a great place to hang out. But City Center is a huge building filled with nothing interesting at all; and it’s the only place I feel confident enough driving to. So I guess I’m stuck in Uninteresting Land.

I shot down the idea of a movie, of going to Carrefour, of looking for a bag. I have this huge yellow bag I bought last year; it’s so huge, you could fit your cat and its litter of nine in it and still have some space for car spare parts. A neighbor of mine told me last week, “Your bag is huge, I always see you with it, what do you put in it? Plus you’re so small.” So, self-consciously, I thought of downgrading to a smaller bag. You should see the contents of my bag. Julien shakes his head each time he borrows a pen or asks for a piece of paper; I can spend hours digging in that bag for the said items. One time I found around fifteen pistachio nuts in my bag. Seriously. Fifteen!

Finally I decided to sit in this ridiculous café with swings hanging from the ceiling, next to the cinema. When the waiter approached, he asked me for my order, and I told him I wanted a lemon mint iced tea. Normally, a waiter should nod his head and place the order. Instead, he stood around and asked me if and where I had ordered this alleged drink in the past. I couldn’t believe my ears, so I asked him to repeat the question. “Have you ordered this drink elsewhere, ma’am? And where?” What was this, a quiz? An inquisition? I almost expected the Gestapo to jump out from the kitchen and start going thru my bag for past restaurant receipts (and you can be sure they’d find millions, in my bag). So I told him that I’d ordered it before, in some other restaurant, waving my hand vaguely, perhaps, to indicate somewhere else. I mean, really. Ordering lemon mint iced tea is becoming a serious business in Doha. Believe me.

When I had finished my drink I made a tour of the food centre, hoping that seeing all that cholesterol-laden food would jog my appetite. But it did nothing for me, so I dejectedly took the escalators to the first floor. There was a child crying his head off in front of me, his mother looking pointedly away, trying to ignore the source of what was shattering our eardrums.

Going home wasn’t a joy either. There was a lot of traffic and this Land Cruiser kept at my tail, blinking his lights and annoying the hell out of me, willing me to go faster while in traffic. The laws of nature don’t mean a thing to certain people. Cars cannot move, or get the hell out of your way, in traffic. I wanted to tell him that.

The trip wasn’t a total waste though. Somewhere during my aimless walking around that place, I went to Carrefour and bought a can of Enchilada sauce.

Myth TakesCurrently listening to:
chk chk chk (!!!)
Myth Takes

2008 01 28 I rant Comments (5)

Damn the spam

Last week it rained for almost a week here in Qatar. Drivers, confused, got into accidents (”Why is water falling from the sky? How strange. I shall drive faster than usual!”), the endless Doha construction didn’t help either (”I am a pothole and covered in water, therefore I am invisible to man and their cars, cars will fall into me and I will block traffic for hours!”), while some people like me stayed indoors and relished at the sight of rain after almost a year of sun (”Wow, it’s raining!”).

And then my blog got spammed, causing my webhost to shut this blog down. I got off with 72 hours of shutdown and a second warning, and I am angry at spam, I am, I am.

The temperature then dropped, sometimes down to 7°C at night, resulting in cough and colds and panic sweater-shopping. We were given one measly heater, which doesn’t heat much unless you stand 2mm next to it. I have been cornered to the room by the cold, where I work covered with two comforters, a cup of tea beside me, music from my iPod, several books to read, and the useless electric heater pitifully trying to prove its worth.

So to summarize, winter has arrived in Qatar. Except for the spam thing.

I promised that I would write more often, so I probably will.

Probably.

Currently listening to:
Pinback
Summer in Abaddon

2008 01 19 I rant Comments (5)