23 An American in Qatar

In 1994-95, I spent a year in the Middle East, a Fulbright Fellow who received requests for sperm donations despite having foolishly thought he might have an impact on the water resources in Qatar. Instead, I had been more of a trophy, not personally but generi-cally, like a penis-stiffening rhino horn or a glass-eyed ibex head. The royal family controlled most of the natural water resources of the country which, with three inches of rain per year, were pretty limited. All practical sources of water came from desalination of Persian Gulf—scratch that, Arabian Gulf—waters using the abundant natural gas that propelled Qatar towards becoming one of the world’s richest countries. Still, for a brief time, I was a celebrity, even appearing on Qatari television, a predecessor of Al-Jazeera, as a B-list big fish in a desert.

Whenever I was out and about and ran into a local Qatari, an invitation for coffee almost always followed. The people of my host country were invariably gracious and welcoming. With one dangerous exception—when they were behind the wheel. The anonymity coupled with the power of technology allowed escape from a restrictive society. Their cars became secret hideouts and pimp mobiles. The Qatari behind the wheel and the Qatari in the corner office gave no indication of originating in the same culture. Being a woman in a car was to invite unwanted advances, including having a cassette tape of introduction tossed in the window. Being at an isolated bach alone with your wife was to invite a local in a truck to drive a quarter-mile across the sand just to slowly pass 10 feet away. Daring to stroll through a cross-walk was to invite being run over by a driver in sunglasses peering anonymously through his windshield. Yet such behavior would never happen in a face-to-face encounter, or at least we never experienced it.

When my wife and I first arrived at the Doha airport, married only a couple of months prior and practically on our honeymoon, an Egyptian engineering professor had picked us up. That night, he and his wife graciously took us out to eat—at the Taco Bell, one of the many American fast-food restaurants that seemed to dominate the dining possibilities. But we wanted to know more about the local culture, and Khalid became my interpreter. Early in my time in Doha, I met him at the American consulate. He was a big, jovial guy who wanted to learn more about Americans—not exactly a consulate groupie, but certainly an active presence. Khalid became the one who gave me the greatest look inside the windshield.

But being a pet koi for rich people of nearly unlimited resources wasn’t my goal. In fact, I applied not for Qatar but Sudan—I studied water resources in grad school after two years in Africa, and I wanted to help poor countries. However, a new eruption in Sudan’s multi-decade civil war kept Americans out, so the Fulbrighters offered me Qatar as a consolation prize. No doubt, it was just as well, because after I applied, I met the zookeeper who became my wife. Qatar beat Sudan as a place to spend the first year of marriage.

My wife and I enjoyed our year-long honeymoon in what one travel book called “the most boring city on Earth,” perhaps because of its lack of bars, dance halls, and fine dining. Yet we had a great time—climbing to the highest point in Qatar (a sand dune), swimming at night in the bioluminescent coastal waters, watching flocks of flamingoes as the tide crept in a quarter mile across the nearly flat coastline, pulling chunks of gypsum from the sabbkha, or lying in our apartment and reading out loud from bad books and good—my first encounter with the original Ian Fleming—shopping in the souk, buying Persian carpets with tiny knots tied by Afghan child labor, eating out at least once nearly every day, teaching the local Arabs geology and mathematics and songs from the Lion King, watching camel races and real camel jockeys (not an ethnic slur but young imported boys who put little weight upon the camels back)—all of it filled a year both joyful with new experiences and people and frustrating in my inability to make any difference with the use of water resources.

With no trees in Qatar, most of the building were of concrete. Khalid’s apartment was typical—a living room area with carpets and a brightly colored painting or two, overstuffed chairs, and a shut door to the back where any female family members lurked unseen. Most of the housework and cooking was done by Pakistani or Indian women or boys who quietly brought in bowls of rice, chicken or lamb, and Arabic tea. Invariably, a bare bulb hung from a wire overhead, beneath which I began to learn more about Qatari life and customs. However, at times, Khalid seemed as mystified by the changes taking places in his country as someone on the outside looking in.

Once the university semester started, I grew to enjoy the daily break for snacks that the Engineering Department, mostly Egyptian, had built into its schedule. I’ve never before or since eaten so much falafel. We took turns purchasing the snacks, so when my week came, I diversified into baklava and other wonderful pistachio treats from a nearby bakery. The tea, too, was super-sweet, served in the same little cups used for Arabic coffee. The baklava, like my presence, introduced a bit of variety in the gatherings, and both seemed welcome.

At a wedding celebration that Khalid invited me to, a large tent was erected whose inside floor was then covered with dozens of carpets. Large stuffed sofas ringed the outer edges. Platters of rice with a whole lamb in the middle were placed on the carpet, around which we men gathered to eat with our hands—even I knew to use the right hand only. Another time, my wife was invited by a co-worker to a wedding celebration. At the nicest hotel in Doha, the women gathered, dressed in their black abayas. But once the doors were closed so men couldn’t see them, they revealed to each other the designer dresses and jewelery beneath. As the wedding buffet was opened, the women descended upon it vulture-style in what my wife first viewed as repulsive and wasteful but came to see as a celebration of abundance, something lacking a generation or so before.

In the spring before I left, Khalid invited me to visit some friends camping in the desert. By then, I was pretty trusting despite his picking me up in his SUV well after midnight. Still, I wondered, “How are we possibly going to find a tent in the desert the dark?” I suppose I had in mind my college camping trips—2-person tents, a few flashlights, lying out looking at the stars.

As we drew close to our destination, I saw a glow. A huge tent with neon lights powered by a generator rose up out of the desert, looking a bit like The Aladdin, a Las Vegas casino. We parked alongside it with four or five other SUVs and entered the tent.

Inside, the Qataris (all male, of course) were watching body-building videos by another cross-cultural icon—Arnold Schwarzeneg-ger. I don’t recall the assembled group taking much notice of my arrival. An American? No big deal. They were polite but not particularly interested, probably used to Khalid dragging along another new American. After a while, someone pulled out an oud, a type of Arabic guitar, and another person kept time on a tabla. Many of the group joined in singing songs that most seemed very familiar with. The occasion reminded me more of a church youth group than a frat-house party. I was meeting Arnold’s acolytes. Like Arnold, they seemed to be synthesizing their past, their aspi-rations, and their dislocations. The world they knew, as was mine, was not so much being terminated as transformed.