Hallie Engel decided to move to Qatar on a whim. It's not as weird there as you might imagine. Pretty weird, but, you know, it could be a lot worse is all she's saying.
Doha, the capital of Qatar, is the end of the line. Bordered by the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, it’s not a swinging hotspot. However, it’s also pretty far from what people imagine it to be; women are allowed to drive, no one is legally required to wear a headscarf and they don’t chop off limbs as punishment for theft or anything like that. It’s not the most enlightened place either, but it is tax-free and most jobs, like my gig as a telephone operator, come with free housing. This is a shot of a local souq- a traditional Arab marketplace.
I ended up in this beige paradise after finding a posting on Monster.com and thinking “I’ll never get that job, so wtf, I’ll apply.” An hour later I was all but hired. At the time, there was barely anything about Qatar online; just a few encyclopedia-style articles and the same three photos over and over again, meaning I had to get on the plane and just hope the for the best at the end of my 14 hour flight.
Fortunately, I was welcomed by the statue of Orry the Oryx, the mascot of the Asian Games, which Qatar hosted in 2006.
This is the City Center Mall. If you move to Qatar, you’ll probably spend a lot of time here, in part because there is not too much to do. Filled with a variety of European, Asian and American chain stores, it also has a movie theater and an ice skating rink. Since the Qataris are fairly open minded, they put up a tree at Christmas and allow a dude in a Santa to hold court and talk to little kids. Also, the movie theater is Doha’s top spot for “secret dating.” You see, locals aren’t generally allowed to date openly, so they find sneaky ways to exchange phone numbers and then sit in the same movie, texting each other the entire time. Until I found out about this, I was at a loss as to why people would always enter the theater an hour into the picture and leave after 20 minutes. Also, the movies are censored to remove anything sexual or romantic, like kissing or nudity.
Here we have a typical cafeteria. These cheap eateries are all over Doha and have everything from schwarma wraps to sandwiches and fresh fruit smoothies. Some of these joints are actually pretty good; I used to live next to one that made 30 cent falafels stuffed with French fries and eggplant that I still dream of. Some are pretty crappy. But they are always there when you need them and represent the apex of the dining scene for most of the low-wage workers in the country.
Many Qatari women wear the traditional face veil known as the niqab. While it’s a controversial garment in the west, it’s just normal in Qatar and you can buy them just about anywhere. However, in my personal opinion, they’re not good. I mean, dude, it’s your face, you know? That, and they sometimes cause other, more direct problems. Case in point: a friend of mine dated a Qatari man who said that once, when he was little, he was following his fully-veiled mother around the grocery store. At some point, the woman he’d been trailing turned around and asked who he was -- he’d lost his mom, but had been unable to tell her apart from the other identically cloaked women.
The Pearl Monument, dedicated to Qatar’s early days as a pearling center. Basically, everyone goes to see this once and is like “meh.”
According to a friend of mine, Qatar decided to build the world’s largest shopping cart to get themselves an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records, and constructed this monstrosity. Unfortunately, they were disqualified because the wheels are non-functional, thus, rendering it a fake. Now, it sits outside of one of Doha’s many malls.
Yes, drinking alcohol is allowed in Qatar and this is the logo of the only bottle shop in the country. All of the bars are located in hotels and they actually have a couple of decent ones these days, a nice change from the old days, when everything felt like an airport lounge staffed by Filipino women. To purchase alcohol for home consumption at this store, you need a special license that requires a letter of permission from your employer. The monthly amount you are allowed to spend it based on your salary and Qatar Distribution has a semi-decent selection of beer, wine and spirits. Occasionally, they get pork- that most forbidden of meats. In the days leading up to Ramadan, when the shop closes for a month, as do all of the bars, this place is a madhouse.
This is a typical compound house. Most well-off expats (and many locals) live on huge housing compounds where all of the homes are identical. The digs are usually pretty nice, but feel quite sterile and are rarely homey. It’s also a trip seeing row after row of identical houses or stepping into your neighbor’s place to find your own living room, just rotated a few degrees. There are usually a few laborers who wander around these compounds, watering plants, sweeping the streets and doing odd jobs for a little extra money.
My two years in Qatar were at once boring, fascinating and fun. You have experiences there you’ll never have anywhere else- chilling on the balcony of your friend’s mansion while the servants fetch you drinks, calling your Sudanese driver for a ride home after a raging expat party, pulling up beside a truck full of camels at a red light. Being a girl there is tough though, and I was mistaken for a prostitute more times than I care to remember. Still, I have a soft spot for this little chunk of Arabia and if you ever have the chance, I recommend checking it out.
-HALLIE ENGEL
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8 comments:
This was really cool. Are there not many American women there? Is it assumed that the ones that are are prostitutes?
do people SM0k3 h3rb there?
There aren't tons of American women, but definitely a few and many work for the collection of American universities that they have there. The being mistaken for a prostitute thing, well, it's based in some unfair stereotypes of westerners and an assumption that a woman walking around alone is probably up to something naughty, as the local ladies don't really go out on their own- they travel in groups.
As for "relaxing substances," there is a lot of that kind of thing in Qatar, actually. Much of it is smuggled in from Afghanistan and its presence is something of an open secret. Many locals like to partake. I never heard of anything serious though, ie, something that would go up one's nose or be used with a needle.
So no boogers or medicine in Qatar you're saying?
Well, there was a period when you couldn't purchase any medicine made in Denmark due to the cartoon crisis, which also made it really hard to buy butter. But drugs that would touch your boogers, not so much.
What about pharmacies? I scored Valium in Jordan w/no script.
Huge Qatari clam ftw! I don't mean the statue.
)h)oof
FORGOT TO MENTION: DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE WEIRD OR SOMEWHERE NORMAL AND WANT MINOR, FLEETING INTERNET ATTENTION?? WRITE ABOUT IT FOR US.
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