Driving in Qatar
You probably think I am cursing when I am talking to you on the road.
I am not.
I am saying “Your poor father! He told you about turn signals! Weren’t you listening???”
I am saying “If your mother could see your bad manners, she would be so ashamed of you!”
I am saying “Hahahahahahaha! You got your picture taken!”
Moving into my lane when I am already in it, is bad manners. Honking at me to make me let you in is WORSE manners. Didn’t you see me? Oh! Here’s a thought – did you check your side mirrors before you thought to change lanes??
Have you noticed? I let the guys in who USE THEIR TURN SIGNALS! They are communicating in a polite way. I let them in in front of me. I am nice about it.
Back in Traffic; How Do You Alphabetize / File?
So today I became, once again, a legal driver in Qatar, five months to the day from my arrival. Yep, for those of you who never have the joy of trying to maneuver through the complexity of getting a license in a foreign country – you have NO idea. NO idea. There are people who try and try to get a license and never do.
We are really lucky. We have some very good people who help us get things done. Somehow, it’s my turn to be lucky today.
When I showed up at the office, however, one of the HR girls told me “Oh! Flana is not here today! You will have to come back.”
You all know how nice I am. I smiled at her and said “my husband told me to be here today to get my driver’s license. Someone is going to help me.” Smile again, big smile.
Sure enough, someone is going to help me, and it is someone who I like, someone who has helped me before and who is always calm and patient and knows how to persist pleasantly until he gets what he wants from the bureaucrats. In fact, I admire him, because people end up liking to help him. He is low key. He takes me to the driver’s station, where, because of my advanced age (DO NOT ASK) I have to have an eye test. This leads me to wonder. Doesn’t everyone have to have an eye test?
Then I wait, in the special ladies’ majlis:
I had to wait quite a long time, but I was comfortable, and while I was waiting, I read all the driving safety signs they had up along the ceiling. They were all in English and Arabic, and they were great thoughts, but too many words. Like if you are reading that many words: If you are driving too fast you may not get home alive (that is not a real one, but that was the gist of most of them) so I was creating a new driving safety campaign called the equal campaign:
Speed + Texting = (shows a vehicle turned on its side and all smashed
Speed + Weaving = Two or three crunched vehicles
Texting + Driving = QR (enormous fine)
Something simple to read, graphically simple, something you can glance at and get the meaning.
When I got my driver’s license, I was really happy, except for one tiny little thing – it’s kind of my name but not exactly my name. It’s an easy mistake to make, names can be complicated, but . . . it isn’t my name on my license. It’s my face, it’s my information – it isn’t my name. For half a heartbeat, I consider saying something and then Wisdom kicks in and I zip my lip.
So then, driving home in traffic, I got to thinking about names and how we file things, alphabetically, and even Europeans sometimes file us wrong, which has led us to first class seats because airlines can’t find us, etc. It isn’t always such a bad thing.
Then I started wondering about how Arab speaking people file. Like do you have half the files in the “A” drawer, like Al So-and-So and Al Somebody Else, and how do the sun and moon words affect the filing, like Ar Rayyan, or Ath Thalaka, or As Shams, etc. Once you have filed someone, the goal is to be able to retrieve that information? How does alphabetization work in Arabic? How are things filed?
So being stuck in traffic might not be so bad if someone answers my question and I learn something. 🙂
Stuck in Traffic on Musheirib
With all the re-routing off Al Rayyan as we convert to the Heart of Doha, I found myself inching along Al Musheirib this week, along with the noon-time crowd. When there is nothing else to do – take some photos. We drive right by every day, but do we look?
Many of these spots will disappear.
Boutiques? (!)
And here is one of my favorites – see it, just over the street sign? Cheep and Best?
The More Things Change
“. . . When we first came to Doha,” I laughed to my friend, “the first thing my husband warned me was never never to get behind a truck carrying concrete blocks. They weren’t tied down, and now and then a bump or a lumpy corner would send concrete blocks all over the roads. They don’t do that any more. They have rules now.”
Spoken too soon.
The very next week, I saw three trucks in a row, laden with concrete bricks, moving slowly down B-ring; one red, one white, one blue. I got stuck, first behind one, then behind the second.
No one was endangered as I took these photos. Traffic was at a standstill.
Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran
I saw a mention of this book in an Amazon.com referral as a book I might like, and was almost set to order it when something said “go check the stack of books Little Diamond left for you” and sure enough, I already had the book.
I use books as an incentive to get me through life’s inevitable tasks I don’t like – like “if I finish this project on time, I get to read this book as a reward.” It works for me.
When I first started reading Marsha Mehran’s book about three Persian sisters starting up a cafe in a small Irish town after fleeing Iran, I found it sour. The author has a critical point of view, and generally speaking, I don’t like hanging around with people who criticize others and judge them harshly. At the beginning of the book, Mehran introduces a lot of people, many of whom we are not meant to like.
Even the sisters are not all that sympathetic – at the beginning. But also, near the beginning, she discusses Persian cooking, the idea of balance in a meal, hot and cold, spicy and bland, so you kind of get the idea that if there is sour, then there will also be sweet. In addition, at the end of each chapter there is a wonderful recipe, a wonderful, fairly easy-to-follow recipe, and she included one, Fesanjan, that is my all-time favorite Iranian dish and now, I know how to make it, Wooo HOOOO!
Three sisters, orphaned by fate, held together by love and duty, start a cafe, which, against all odds, becomes a raging success. Raging success does not heal all the old wounds, however, nor the hearts that bear them, and we learn through the book what the sisters have borne and overcome.
It turns out to be a sweet book, one well worth reading. And oh! the recipes! In each chapter, there are also hints that make them even better, so you can’t just copy out the recipes and use them, you really have to read the book. 🙂
It’s a pity that two of the most wonderful countries in the world – Syria and Iran – are off limits. We’ve been back to Syria, and it was everything we remembered (see the Walking Old Damascus blog entries) but oh, how we would love to explore Iran. Sigh. The world turns, and we can only hope to be able to get there in our lifetime. Stranger things have happened.
Little Mosque on the Corner
This is for my western friends, but anyone who sees me saying something wrong is welcome to jump in and fix it so it’s right.
We have a little mosque on the corner near our villa. Now, having a mosque on the corner is nothing special, in fact, when giving directions, it is kind of a joke, because you can give landmarks and then say “and you turn right at the mosque” but there are SO MANY mosques that using a mosque as a landmark is almost sure to confuse whoever is trying to find you.
Nonetheless, every neighborhood has its own mosque, and then there are bigger mosques where everyone gathers on Fridays, we call them Friday mosques, and then there are even bigger ones where everyone gathers on the two big holidays called Eids.
But this is our little neighborhood mosque:
I think it is very beautiful.
In the back, around this time of the year, they start a garden. I think it is for poor people to have something to eat, but I don’t know. I love it that they take a tiny little space and make it useful.
We live close enough to hear the call to prayer five times a day – it seems like more. There is the “get ready” call and then there is the real thing. During Ramadan, sometimes there are prayers over the microphone (it is on low) all night. It isn’t so intrusive; when it is hot and the air conditioning is on, you can’t even hear it. It’s kind of reassuring, to me, hearing someone praying all night long.
The Heart of Doha – Disney Does Doha?
“No, it’s not DOHALAND!” I snapped at my friend. ‘It’s called the ‘Heart of Doha’ project.”
We were exploring the project in it’s first phase, the destruction phase, which is turning old haunts into several circles of hell – shopping hell, driving hell, parking hell, disorientation hell. And just as we were inching our way into a new diversion, I saw the big sign describing the future this funky area of Doha and telling us to go to ‘Dohaland.com.’
Oops. I apologized profusely and she very humbly pretended not to be gleeful that she was right and I was wrong. Well, actually, we are both right. It is both ‘Dohaland’ and ‘The Heart of Doha,’ but I shouldn’t have snapped at her over something so inconsequential. Blame it on the rain . . . umm . . . .err . . . the traffic.
Dohaland. I’m sorry, it sort of cracks me up. It’s just like Disney – JungleLand, FutureLand, etc.
I remember when the Suq al Waqif project first started, how outraged I felt, and how delighted I am to go down there now, where the shop-keepers have electricity that is reliable, even air-conditioning wafting out into the corridors, the appearance of ancient woven mats shading the twisting cobblestone street which no longer reaches out and grabs your heels, or changes levels unexpectedly. How can you be a successful curmudgeon when it turns out so positively? Even if it is a little bit Disney-does-Doha, it is so attractive!
What I love about what has been accomplished so far is how it has enhanced the experience for everyone. If you go down into the souks, you see more people. You used to see only a few westerners, now you see all kinds, even tourists, even your neighbors; you see every nationality down in the souks now, and people are actually buying things, not just killing time. There is a great variety of shops and restaurants, and even if the parking spots are tiny, there is parking.
Have you visited the website yet? Dohaland.com? I love the vision, although in one shot with people in suits crossing the streets, I want to shout “Hurry! Hurry! Or you’ll get run over!”
Here is what it is going to look like – and you can go to the Dohaland website and get a great big full screen map:
And here is what it looks like now:
These machines are like huge dentist’s drills, with points that pound down into the hard-packed Qatar soil to break it up so that foundations can be built:
It’s not unlike house-cleaning. When you pull everything out of the closets, out from under the beds, the drawers, those piles of things in the corner, for a while everything looks worse than it did before you started. Slowly, slowly, you create areas of organization and calm amidst the chaos, and slowly, slowly those areas expand, join, until the chaos is eliminated, you know where things are, and your living area is a calm and peaceful and organized oasis. I hope I get to see that day in Doha.
Update: Dohaland AKA Heart of Doha is now known as Musherib
Mermaid Fabric
One of the things my friend and I were seeking on our Souk Quest was mermaid fabric. My friend has a grand daughter who loves to be The Little Mermaid, and I knew that the exact right fabric existed in the souk, I had seen it and didn’t have any excuse to buy it.
We found it. It is perfect – sea green, and shiny scales:
Doha is full of wonderful fabrics for dress-up.
Where Al Rayyan Used to Begin
Leaving the Suq al Waqif, we got a shock – where you could once go straight ahead onto Al Rayyan, you can’t!
There is a left turn, a shaky bridge, and then you can go right to access Al Rayyan. It all appears temporary, and when the fix is accomplished, it will probably be a better intersection.
But this is Doha. When you think you know the route, suddenly, and often without notice, your traffic pattern makes a sudden change. The temporary diversion may last for weeks, or months, or . . .
I’m a map person, I remember once discovering that the road I intended to take, the road on the map, wasn’t there yet! In Doha, a map is only an overview, it is not reality based, the roads you see may or may not be open. In the end, I am sure there is going to be a smooth traffic pattern, but oh, in the meantime!
This is a relatively small change, with a relatively easy fix.
The Majliss in Doha
When we lived in Doha the last time, we often brought people to The Majliss. Most Americans had never been there, never knew it was there. It is off Al Sadd – if you are going from C Ring to D Ring, you turn right at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and stay on the slip road that goes in front of the stores. At the second possible right, you turn right, and you will see the Royal Tandoor on your left, and The Majliss on your right.
There two really great things about The Majliss. First, the food is really, really good. Second, they have a bunch of individual rooms where you can sit on the floor, majliss style, with cushions and a big, low table. Some rooms are small, some are large enough for maybe 12 – 14 people.
They also have booths, some that have curtains you can pull if you need privacy, like if you are a woman wearing niqab and you want to eat without people seeing your face. They also have booths without curtains, and a more open area where mostly just men eat.
There was a time when soldiers would come here from Iraq, and you could sort of check them out like library books to take out for dinner, or to the malls, or to your house. We often took them to the Majliss, and it always blew them away, it was such a great experience. The Majliss is also where we took our son and his wife when they first came to visit us in Doha. We have so many happy memories at The Majliss.
This time, it was our visiting Kuwait friends, and since we all know what it is like to sit in a Majliss, and we all have older knees and hips, we chose to sit in a booth. Here is what is cool – our Kuwait friends loved it as much as our American friends do.
This was our first time back at the Majliss since our return to Doha. We worried that it had changed, deteriorated, that the food would not be so good as we remembered. We had a happy surprise – it is the same, but even better. 🙂
I have to admit, one reason I love the Majliss is because they have Mohammara, made of walnuts and chilis and other good stuff. This one was really good, a little spicy!
And oh, the fresh, hot bread . . .
Now, I am embarrassed to tell you, when our main dinners came, I forgot to take photos until late . . . so this is where the delicious Majliss hammour used to be – my very particular and discerning Kuwaiti friend ate every bite!
And here is what is left of my Shrimp machboos, before we gobbled the rest of it all up:
And the kabob, just before it disappeared entirely!
We were all so full, we didn’t even have room to order the creme caramel, which always comes swimming in caramel, yummmm. We had Turkish coffee and rolled ourselves out the door – stuffed!
Prices are reasonable, it is a great place for good local food at reasonable prices – the Michelin red “R” in Doha.
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