Safely in Doha
Yes, my friends, we are safely in Doha, with the normal out-of-touch sort of things that happen when you move. For some reason, and partly it’s because I am a technology dunce, unless things are clearly spelled out in the instruction booklets, I could never figure out how to include the plus sign in phone numbers, and without them, things don’t seem to be working. I still have my Kuwait phone, but I all my messages fail, and the only ones I am getting are from advertisers.
Just after I wrote the last entry, a team of FOUR customer service – or maybe three and some slightly more elevated personages – a guy in a suit with a radio – came to get me in the lounge; they were taking me to see my cat. The lounge – God bless them abundantly – came up with a plate of salmon for Pete, and with my escort, we went down to immigration.
This is the really funny part – and it’s all technicalities, but my residence visa has been cancelled, and I have been stamped out of the country, so I cannot go to Lost and Found where Pete is being held pending our flight, the immigration police are very clear about that, but since he is just baggage, they can send someone to bring Pete to me.
Surrounded by my escort, and now also by four or five immigration policemen, they bring Pete to me, and I get to give him a little scratch under the chin and collar, he gets to hear my voice. He is not terrified, but he is healthily intimidated by all the unknown persons and noises – and he is alert, so alert. He is not hungry. His pupils are dilated. I only keep him for about three minutes when I send him back; I am holding up about ten people at this point, all of whom dropped their duties so that I could comfort my cat.
When it came time for my flight, I asked the lounge to call Lost and Found and find out when the cat would be loaded, and the answer was – he was just being loaded now. I checked again at the gate, and they were prepared. Everyone apologized profusely, and explained that the pilot on the first flight just could not take a chance; the ventilation in the pressurized cargo compartment was not working and he didn’t want to put Pete at any risk. God bless him. I don’t mind the inconvenience; I honor his carefulness. Sometimes what appears to be an inconvenience is really a protection; the blessing I had this time was to know and understand that this, truly, was a blessing.
But I also needed to tell you about it, or you might have the wrong impression. It was not an airplane annoyance. It was a conscientious pilot. Thanks be to God.
Pete was carted separately to and from the plane, and hand carried to me in arrivals. LOL, I had no other baggage, just Pete! I got through the screening quickly, AdventureMan had schmoozed his way into arrivals and was there with the importation paperwork, and we were out of the airport in a flash, and in our villa a mere ten minutes later.
Another LOL, by the way, at all of you who like the name Qatteri Cat better than Pete! Honestly, one reason I don’t unveil is that as long as I am Intlxpatr, married to AdventureMan, I am so much more interesting than the very ordinary person that I really am!
Pete will always be the Qatteri Cat, because he was found, as a small, tiny, hungry kitten, wandering on the Doha Corniche by a family who had to give him up when he was around 5 months. I loved him the minute I saw him, but he only had eyes for AdventureMan. And poor AdventureMan, he was so worried about Pete he was in a nervous tizz when we arrived, he had been so afraid something would go wrong.
Seeing the two of them reunite in Doha was a beautiful sight. Pete’s food and cat litter were all set up, and he has a whole new environment to explore.
Even When You Do Everything “Right” . . .
The most amazing things can happen.
“Just bad joss” says my inner Chinese guru, as I sit for another seven hours in the lounge, waiting for a flight on which I am assured, my cat will also fly.
“Woooo HOOO!” we whopped and hollered and danced around our house with Qatteri Cat when we were told that YES, the flight we had booked had a compressurized baggage compartment, necessary for transporting a cat.
QC was a great sport this morning when I wouldn’t give him any fresh water or food – it’s just a short flight to Doha; he can survive without food and water for this short time. He wasn’t such a great sport about going into his cat cage – that usually means going to the vet, and he struggles and moans loudly, so loudly we were afraid he was going to wake the neighbors.
He quiets down on the drive to the airport. He can hear AdventureMan and I talking quietly, and he is calm. He is calm as we go through the long check in process. We like to travel light; this time we are burdened with bags and bags – one bag just for QC’s food, bowls, blanket, cat litter and babies. AdventureMan has to pay excess baggage, and, of course, cat passage.
From the Gate, I can see him carefully loaded on the plane. AdventureMan and I take our seats, the plane fills, we are beginning to breathe easy . . .
And then . . .
Everything changes.
The customer service rep is in front of us; the gates are closing, Qatteri Cat is being offloaded because the compartment is NOT pressurized – or something. The story shifts. AdventureMan talks with the CSR, he talks with the captain – in Arabic – and nothing works. They say they will fly QC to us on the later flight.
QC has had nothing to eat or drink. Now, he has to remain confined in his cage for seven more hours, no food, no water, on the chance he will make it on the plane later in the day. No. I tell AdventureMan “You go ahead, I will stay here with QC to make sure he gets on the later flight.” AdventureMan likes that idea. He will get the cat litter set up and meet us at the plane.
No, they will not allow the Qatteri Cat in the lounge with me, no matter how nice I am, no matter how concerned I am, even when I get a little angry, no, he has to wait in Lost and Found. That just breaks my heart.
They are being as nice and helpful as they can be – considering they screwed up, right up to the last minute we thought everything was OK and it wasn’t. We don’t even know what the real reason is, but meanwhile, I am sitting here steamed in the lounge – no, the A/C is working overtime, I am just royally annoyed that we did so much forward planning, and all for naught, AAARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
I feel so sorry for the Qatteri Cat (whose real name is Pete, by the way.)
This is the same airlines – a really good airline – that lost my bag for three days last year when I flew to Doha, during a time when I had a whole weekend full of social things, and I had to wear my same clothes to all the things – I didn’t even have time to go to the stores and buy anything, I just had to buy what I could in the hotel gift shop.
It makes me wonder if I just have bad karma on this airline? I don’t want to complain too much, because what if it were a protection? What if some other airline might have transported Pete without thinking about pressurization and what if he had been badly hurt, or died or something? There’s a part of me that knows this might have been a good thing, it’s just hard to see it now. It’s hard to see clearly when you are feeling angry.
One good thing in all this is that AdventureMan gets to handle all those bags and get the cat litter set up and cat food out and then come pick up the Pete and me when we arrive.
There he goes:
Bye, AdventureMan. See you in Doha, Insh’allah . . .
Busted
Today, as I was getting ready to leave the church services, one of my very special friends hugged me and said farewell, and then said “But of course, I can keep up with you on your blog.”
It was as if time stopped for a second, then started up again.
“My blog? You read my blog? You know?” I stammered, not loudly because there were other people around.
She laughed.
“I figured it out when you described this guy,” she said, punching AdventureMan lightly on the shoulder. “I KNEW it was you.”
When we got into the car, AdventureMan had a big smug grin on his face.
“I almost told her I read your blog quickly first, to see if I’m in it,” he said, “but then I was embarrassed that I am so vain.”
LLLOOOLLLL!
I’ve gotten less careful. It’s becoming less and less relevant as I get closer to leaving.
Breathless Day
The air is still, and there isn’t a single wave on the vast, flat glassy Gulf. At eight in the morning, it is already breathlessly hot:
It’s not getting any better. Maybe by the beginning of next week, as you can see, a little “cold” weather will be moving in 😉
The only way you can determine the difference between water and air is the layer of yellow tinged haze on the far horizon:
Here is what my life looks like right now:
Yesterday, a sweet friend dragged me away from all the packing and focus on moving and treated me to a day at the Aquatonic Spa. I admit it, she had to drag me – I can get so immersed in my misery that I don’t even want to do something fun.
In spite of my churlishness, we had a great time. Playing around in that fabulous pool, and then having beauty treatments afterwards – it just took all the misery out of me. I felt great for the first time in weeks. I slept last night without waking, and awoke refreshed, thanks be to God, and thanks to my friend who knew what I needed better than I did.
Shutting Down
Yes, I’ve been busy. Yes, it involves movers, and bureaucracy, and parties, and the normal getting-ready-for-summer activities.
But the reason I’m not blogging a lot is that I’ve been shutting down, emotionally.
Here is a truth about me. I handle bad situations by shutting down. If I feel too much, I just get overwhelmed and don’t function. When I was packing boxes – and sighing – I could only pack a couple boxes and I would have to go lie down. It wasn’t physical so much as emotionally draining, packing up a life. I can’t really even begin to think about starting up a new one; I just need to get through finishing up this one.
So I just pack away all my grief with my household goods. Honestly, it works for me. I probably appear cold and unfeeling. The unfeeling part is true – I can make myself not feel, or at least postpone the feeling part. It gets me through the tough parts. I think it helps me survive. You go on automatic pilot. You go through the motions. You are only half there.
For me, the hardest part is being around people. Keeping all the feelings shut away is hard work! It’s exhausting! Or maybe it’s the scorching heat, but I come home and cannot stay awake, I have to take a nap. I wake up feeling better. I read late into the night – late for me. It’s OK, when I count up the nap sleeping with my night sleeping, I am getting enough sleep.
I have a very few good friends who know exactly where I am emotionally, and they shield me. We talk as if life were not going to change drastically, and for us, it won’t, there will still be the e-mails and visits. When I make a good friend, she/he is a friend for life. They don’t ask too much of me right now, but they are there to protect me when I need it. They are getting me through the tough times, and these are tough times.
When I get to Doha, I will start feeling again. I will allow the grief to seep in slowly, I will cry a little when no one is around to see, and slowly, slowly, as I grieve, I will also be engaging in a new life – slowly, slowly.
The Qatteri Cat is going through the same thing. He has built himself a little hidey-hole back in my old project room / Little Diamond’s room. He crawls into a pile of pillows and comforter until he is invisible, safe, warm, and sleeps. When he is awake, it is too depressing for him – his territory has changed so dramatically, none of the old reliable places are there.
So we comfort one another.
Prayer Reshapes Your Brain
This is a very small excerpt from a much longer article I found on National Public Radio News, a special series on The Science of Spirituality. This article (you can read it all by clicking on the blue type, above) talks about measuring brain activity while a person is praying, how the brain changes. Fascinating stuff.
A Sense Of Oneness With The Universe
Newberg did that with Michael Baime. Baime is a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania and a Tibetan Buddhist who has meditated at least an hour a day for the past 40 years. During a peak meditative experience, Baime says, he feels oneness with the universe, and time slips away.
“It’s as if the present moment expands to fill all of eternity,” he explains, “that there has never been anything but this eternal now.”
When Baime meditated in Newberg’s brain scanner, his brain mirrored those feelings. As expected, his frontal lobes lit up on the screen: Meditation is sheer concentration, after all. But what fascinated Newberg was that Baime’s parietal lobes went dark.
“This is an area that normally takes our sensory information, tries to create for us a sense of ourselves and orient that self in the world,” he explains. “When people lose their sense of self, feel a sense of oneness, a blurring of the boundary between self and other, we have found decreases in activity in that area.”
Newberg found that result not only with Baime, but also with other monks he scanned. It was the same when he imaged the brains of Franciscan nuns praying and Sikhs chanting. They all felt the same oneness with the universe. When it comes to the brain, Newberg says, spiritual experience is spiritual experience.
“There is no Christian, there is no Jewish, there is no Muslim, it’s just all one,” Newberg says.
What Would You Take?
As I say farewell to all my current earthly possessions (I say current, because an entire other life has been in storage for the last 11 years, with all my European collection, early Tunis, early Amman, early Damascus – looking forward to retiring is kind of like heaven, I will be re-united with old friends, some of whom I’ve even forgotten. 🙂 ) which will be packed for the move to Doha, AdventureMan and I have a few things which we always take with us.
Of course, our first concern is the Qatteri Cat. He walks around crying as his environment changes daily, pieces disappear, rooms are re-arranged. He will go on the plane with us.
AdventureMan has a quilt, which takes almost one entire suitcase all by itself. His clothes, of course, his computers, and his camera equipment. He has already taken a suitcase full of my hobby gear down to Qatar, and it is waiting for me in his new office.
I will have my computer and Airport, my favorite clothes, my favorite shoes, my favorite jewelry, my small cameras – and my earring tree.
I think being mildly obsessive/compulsive doesn’t hurt me. I like order. Moving to a new place, being able to unpack my earring tree and place my earrings in careful order (stones together, gold together, pearls together, dangles together, etc.) gives me a small illusion of control over my environment.
I found this earring tree at the annual Street Fair at the University of Washington about 15 years ago – there were many larger, more glorious ones, and this one was on the sales table. It is made of oak, swivels on its base, is very finely made and has served me well all these years. It doesn’t even take up that much room in the suitcase, it is so flat.
If you knew that life, being what it is, is all about the unexpected, and if you knew you might never see most of your worldly goods again, what would you take with you? (Photos welcome :-), send to Intlxpatr@aol.com.)
Eliot Pattison: Prayer of the Dragon
As you can see, I am into some serious reading. Not heavy reading, but books like carrots – I am the donkey, plodding way, packing my boxes, sorting, weeding, throwing out – it is time consuming, and it is pitiless work. I need the promise of a great excape at the end of my day to keep me going.
Prayer of the Dragon was a GREAT carrot. I like all of Eliot Pattison’s Inspector Shan Tao Yun series, set in Tibet. In his very first book, we meet Shan as he is still in the Tibetan prison camp, imprisoned for exposing corrupt officials in China. He learns a huge appreciation, in prison, for a different way of thinking, and his treasured companions become the Bhuddist monks with whom he is imprisoned. If you want to read this series, you can read any book as a stand-alone, but it helps to read them in order, starting with The Skull Mantra. The Chinese eventually free Shan; they find him useful – as long as he is not exposing corruption in the Chinese bureaucracy. He is free on parole; he lives with the sword over his head. At any time, if he crosses an important person, he can be sent back to the merciless gulag.
In The Prayer of the Dragon Inspector Shan finds himself involved in a series of murders on the mountainside, in a small mining village. The village headman has a great scam going, skimming the miners take, charging passage on the mountain trails, and keeping his village hidden from the Chinese bureaucracy.
Here is what I learned that surprised me. There appears to be a connection between the American Navaho nation and the native Tibetans. They share some body-prototype similarities, and they share many symbols and earliest legends. An first-nation Navaho and his niece are exploring similarities, and commonalities, when two members of their party are murdered while sleeping. The Navaho is charged, by the headman, with the death, because he survived although he is covered in blood. It doesn’t make sense, but it doesn’t have to. The headman needs a scapegoat, and he chooses the Navaho.
It is a fascinating read. Here is an excerpt from a conversation Inspector Shan has with the local director of Public Security:
“I know your type so well, Shan, ” Bing said. “God, how well I know you. I was responsible for ten barracks of prisoners, like you – pathetic, morose creatures with no vision, only bitterness about the past. They would sit in reeducation classes and copy out slogans from the little red books like robots, praising the Chairman, reading aloud apologies printed in other books, using someone else’s words. Never a one among them with the balls to stand up and say Fuck the Chairman, screw the Party secretaries, and screw the limo drivers who brought them to town.”
“I tried at first,” Shan replied in a weary voice. “They sent me to a special hospital for the criminally insane.”
“Unfortunately,” Bing said soberly, “you are the sanest person I have ever met.”
AdventureMan knows I love these books. “Do you want to go to Tibet?” he asks me, and I say “No, if I went I would want to hang around with Inspector Shan and his gang of monks, not do tourist things allowed by the Chinese.” These are great reads, Pattison is doing a great job of bringing the plight of the Tibetans to the conscience of his readers, depicting, in graphic, horrorific detail how the Chinese are systematically crushing and obliterating every shred of Tibetan culture, while claiming they are not. I think one of the very worst things they have done is taking over the Tibetan monastery system and corrupting it into something it was never meant to be, a cruel, ugly deformity.
I can hardly wait for the next book to come out. I am on the waiting list for The Lord of Death, yet another book about Chinese bureaucratic corruption and the adventures Inspector Shan has in Tibet confronting and evading all its manifestations.
Susan Wittig Albert: Nightshade
In her ongoing China Bayles mystery series, China and her husband investigate the death of China’s father, with some amazing outcomes.
These are not heavy reading. This series features a burned-out criminal defense lawyer, who, sick of the slime and the jockying for power and position, cashes in her retirement plans and buys a shop in the small fictional town of Pecan Springs, Texas, where she opens an herbal shop, Thyme and Seasons, which sells live potted herbs, but also herbal wreaths, herbal soaps, herbal bath bombs, herbal teas, herbal shampoos, etc – and shares space with a new age shop called The Crystal Cave, a tea shop called Thyme for Tea, a catering company called Party Thyme and a personal chef service called Thymely Gourmet. She and her girlfriends have a lot of fun.
And, somehow, even in this idyllic life, mysteries seek out China, and she is often involved in crime-solving outside of her normal business. This time, her brother – the brother she never knew she had, the brother her father had with his secretary while China was growing up, wondering where her father was all the time – is murdered, in what appears to be a hit-and-run accident, but is no accident at all. Her brother was trying to get China involved with finding out how and why their father died – another apparent accident, which was no accident. When China isn’t interested (she is still very angry with her dad for what she perceives as a betrayal of her and her mother), her brother hires China’s husband as a private detective to examine the evidence. Then – her brother is killed. China gets involved.
It’s great escape reading, but you often end up learning something, too. China is an idealist, fighting crime and corruption, and God knows, there is enough of that, all the world around, to keep a legion of fictional crime fighters busy.
“After I grew up and joined the Houston legal fraternity, I began to understand what was common knowledge in that gossip-driven oil company town: Robert Bayles and his partner Ted Stone had built their legal practice on dubious oil and energy deals, questionable land transactions, and political dirty work. Their clients included polluters, looters and influence peddlers. Both Ted Stone and my father were frequent guests of the Suite 8F crowd, the group of influential conservatives who met on the eighth floor of Houston’s Lamar Hotel and collectively decided who was going to run for what political office, at the state level and beyond. To ensure that their picks – LBJ had been one of them – made it to the winner’s circle, Suite 8F slipped wads of campaign cash into the necessary pockets. Their contributions decided which politicians moved into positions of power and influence.
Just as important, their money brought them preferential treatment when the bidding opened on lucrative government contracts for dams, ships and shipyards, oil pipelines, military bases at home and abroad, NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The Lamar Hotel was demolished in 1983 to make room for a skyscraper, but the political influence of 8F lingers like a foul odor, a dirty fog. It’s the subject of books, of doctoral dissertations, of documentaries. It’s common knowledge.”
Reading Albert is a great escape. Even knowing that sweet little Pecan Springs is a microcosm of the rest of the world, not untouched by human frailty, it is a sweet place with a culture all its own. China’s life, surrounded by her loving husband, her stepson, all their pets, their friends, the places they eat, it’s all comfortable, an herbal scented different world.
Neuleiningen Castle and the BurgSchanke
For many many years, we have been going back to the BurgSchanke in Neuleiningen. We would see the ruins of the old castle, high on a hill, as we would be driving by on Autobahn A6 between the Heidelberg area and France. When AdventureMan got his company command (it was a big deal) I saved up my money and treated him to dinner at the BurgSchanke.
This is where we sat:
The menu doesn’t change much. Most of these entrees were the same ones on the menu many many years ago:
Here is what AdventureMan likes to have – Franzosiche Entenbrust, or French Duck Breast (I think the French part is all the vegetables)
I don’t eat meat very often, but when I do – this is what I had – the Knoblouchsteak (garlic steak)
It used to be served on a wooden platter. I am guessing that health and sanitation standards now require porcelain or something less porous and prone to bacteria than wood.
And here is what we had for dessert. We totally hate the presentation, but it never fails to make us laugh, long and loud, and in spite of how it looks, the mousse is truly delicious.
We talked about all the years we had been coming to this restaurant, all the guests and friends we had brought with us, where we had been sitting with different people – including, more than once, my parents, coming back for their own sentimental journey. Ahhh . . . sweet memories. 🙂
One time, my youngest sister and her family came for a visit, and their son also tried the duck, and thoroughly enjoyed it. His father ordered the Eisbecher Burg Neuleiningen, and we didn’t tell him . . . we waited to see his face when they brought him a bowl the size of a punch bowl, filled with fifty scoops of ice-cream. 🙂 Oh, what fun!
We stayed in a truly darling hotel, and felt very lucky to get the last room. “Two hours ago, we had four vacancies,” the very nice manager said, “but now, we have just one!” In a heartbeat, we took it. The view from the Burggraf was amazing.
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