Doha: 2009
In 2009, Michele and I were invited to Doha, Qatar to give some lectures and teach some classes. We were there a week. This entry is the journal I kept while there. I originally posted in in parts on Facebook. I have not edited it or changed it in any way here except for adding a few of my amateurish photos.
Doha Journal 1: Death By Luxury
I often keep a journal when I travel. I thought it would be interesting (for me anyway) to post this here at FB. I know that all y'all think the intimate details of my life are really, really interesting. And, of course, this will be a great resource for my biographers.
Michele and I have been invited by Michele's former student Paul Leonardi to Doha, Qatar. Paul and his partner, Rodda Leage are both on the faculty of Northwestern University and are spending the year at Northwestern University in Qatar. It is true, you can look it up. The worldwide recession has not yet caught up to Qatar's oil revenues quite yet, as will soon become clear.
We left the kids in the care of my nephew, Alex, who doesn't like to brag but is, in fact, a pretty big deal. He is on Skype and everything.
On the day we left for our flight, it was snowing in Colorado. We'd had a couple inches overnight and the wind was pretty terrible. Perfect day to fly, don't you think? Once we got to the airport, we relaxed a little because our flight was apparently not cancelled or even delayed. We boarded the flight, was deiced and away we went.
First class. They flew us first class/ business class the entire flight. So our first leg (Denver-Dulles in Washington DC) was first class. Very nice. Once we got to Dulles, we had four hours to spend so we found a bar and had a bite to eat and watched Michigan State advance to the NCAA finals. Then we checked in with Qatari airlines and were told that we could go to the Business Class Club and wait for our flight there. Ah, of course. Trying not to act like the farmers we obviously are, we made our way down to the Club and were plied with free drinks and desserts. Very nice. Also in The Club was a family with four adults and a set of infant triplets. We are talking about the stroller equivalent of the Stretch Hummer here.
Once boarding for our flight was announced we made our way to our gate where we were quickly ushered away from the coach class passengers, with their overalls and no shirt, straw hats, and live carry-on chickens, to our own special gate where we could board like the lady and gentleman we obviously are.
The first thing that struck me upon boarding was that the triplets, and accompanying adults were just a few rows away from us. I guess they are letting EVERYBODY fly Business Class these days (it was fine, actually, the babies didn't make a peep for 13 hours). The second thing that struck me was that the seats were awesome. Wide, legroom, private TV, and 18 (yes, I counted them because that is the kind detail that my readers expect in these journals) controls for different seat positions. Among those buttons was a icon of a bed. Once pushed, it reclined the seat completely flat. Upon getting settled, the attendant brought everyone a little package with a complete set of pajamas, slippers, eyeshade, etc. Everyone took them, but I didn't actually see anyone wearing them ever.
The flight was just a bit under 13 hours. Michele, because she is amazing, was awake for all of it. I slept a bit. It was very comfortable. There was food and drink, very good in both cases. The attendants would unfold my table, put down the linen tablecloth, put the linen napkin on my lap, etc. Fella could get used to that kind of treatment.
When we arrived in Doha it was 6:30 PM local time. Northwestern had arranged for a service to get us through customs so we were directed to ANOTHER lounge whilst our passports were stamped, etc. Then we were escorted to our transportation to the hotel--the Ritz Carleton. Everyone knew our name, everyone asked how our flight was. When the car got us to our hotel, the staff was lining either side of the street and saluted. When we got out of the car, we were escorted, not to the front desk but to YET ANOTHER lounge while someone checked us in. Walking through the lobby to the elevator probably twenty people said "Welcome to Doha" and about half called us by name when they did so. It was kind of creepy to tell you the truth.
Ritz Carleton in Doha
In the Ritz Carleton Lounge, on the top floor of the hotel, we had yet another meal (I think our fifth during the trip so far, averaging one every four hours or so). It was explained to us that we were "Club" guests, which meant we had access to this lounge during our entire stay, including all the meals it serves right down to the chocolate buffet they set up at 9 PM. We didn't have the energy to stay up for that, but undoubtedly we will at some point during this trip.
Michele, because she is amazing, feel asleep about 9:30, I had a little more trouble and woke up about 3 AM and never really fell back asleep. This is pretty typical for me on this kind of trip--I never did get a good night sleep in Germany last summer.
This morning, after a luxuriant breakfast at the Ritz, we made our way over to "Education City" which is the section of Doha that houses all the American Universities they have purchased--Texas A&M, Cornell, Carnegie-Mellon, Georgetown, and, of course, Northwestern. The drive was very interesting. Not only is the landscape very different from anything in my experience with all its sand, but, as Michele pointed out, the architecture is unlike anything we've seen as well. We will drive past developments and we simply can't tell by looking at the buildings if they are commercial, residential, or what. We are having camera issues, but I'll try to post some pictures.
One thing that stood out for me was a stretch of buildings, about half a mile long, that was nothing but car washes. Abandoned, closed-down car washes to be more specific. When we got to campus, Paul explained that car washes are big social centers for Qatari men. About every other night, they take their car to the car wash, and while the immigrants wash the cars, the Qatari men sit outside and drink tea and socialize. This particular stretch of them had been closed down/relocated to make way for new development.
The car wash thing is an aspect of Islamic culture in one way. There are no taverns since alcohol is forbidden so the car wash becomes a social center. Qatar is an officially Muslim state, ruled a sharia law. When we arrived our suitcases were x-rayed to make sure we weren't bringing alcohol or pork into Qatar. The big international hotels, like ours, are some of the few places you can get alcohol. All the sausage, ham, and bacon at breakfast this morning was veal, turkey, or beef (just not the same, lemme tell you).
I learned from Michael Palin's travel documentaries that art in Islamic countries is usually non-representational and abstract. In particular, Islamic art does not represent people. This is from the rule that The Prophet must never be pictured. So, while there is beautiful artwork everywhere, I've yet to see a person in any of it. Later in the week we will tour the Museum of Islamic Art and I wonder what that will be like.
We've walked around the different buildings that make up Education City. It is really quite remarkable what they are doing here. I wonder if it is really possible to transplant American higher education in this fashion. Time will tell. Michele taught in Paul's class today and give a talk tomorrow. I'm slated for my talk on Wednesday and teaching a class on Thursday.
After Michele taught, Mimi White, the Dean of the school here took us to a Qatari restaurant for lunch. The first floor of the place was for men only, and mixed gender groups or women at on the second floor. If she hadn't told us this, we never would have known because it was late afternoon and we were the only people in the place. The food, however, was absolutely fantastic.
We then came back to the hotel and napped. Against the rules for those fighting to put themselves on local time, but exhaustion argued forcefully that a nap was in order. Then we took a walk around the hotel. Saw the various pools, Found the docks where the pleasure craft were tucked neatly into their slips. With my vast nautical experience I gained from growing up in Iowa, I divided the boats in to the following categories: Big Boats, Even Bigger Boats, Really Very Big Boats Indeed.
Then we went up to The Club in the hotel and shared a table with a women from Geneva and her children. She is a personal shopper for a living and her husband manages a resort here. Quite nice chatting. We then enjoyed a light supper and are unwinding for now.
*Club Level of the Ritz Carleton
Tomorrow, is Michele's lunchtime talk and then a tour of the city and dinner with Paul and Rodda. Stay tuned.
Doha Journal 2: Horses and Camels
Actually had a good night's sleep. 11PM-5:30 AM. So there is hope I won't feel completely loopy and spaced out the entire time I'm here.
Google and Facebook all know I'm in Qatar. My Virtual Big Brother is making sure that I'm getting all the proper advertisements for my region.
Breakfast was as nice as yesterday. The table next to us was occupied by two Americans who were Doing Business. Young Business Man was trying to sell, Sell, SELL! to Older Business Man. He was Sincere and Serious. It was watching a cliche unfold before our very eyes.
Last night, Michele and I sat out on our balcony and enjoyed the desert breezes, or at least the desert breezes that reached us on the seventh floor. Around ten PM there was a great commotion of car horns and shouting down on the ground. Many Gulf be-robed men drove up, piled out of their cars and made a fairly serious hullabaloo. No idea why. A football match? A wedding? Bought a new Land Cruiser with pinstripes? Lets start a pool on it.
Today, while getting ready to go we switched on the TV. There are dozens of channels, in English, Arabic, German, and Japanese. We watched the European version of VH1 which actually still plays music videos, a quaint custom that US "music" channels have grown beyond.
Today was Michele's informal talk for the students and faculty of NUQ (Which is the rather jaunty name they have Northwester University at Qatar).. Her talk was on "Internet 2.0" and provoked some very lively discussion among the gathered throngs. The Innernet is apparently a very big thing; who knew? I just know it is less like a truck and more like a series of tubes. My academic talk on history and race and stuff just isn't going to be as sexy tomorrow. I'll let you know.
Michele's talk was a luncheon affair. We were told that the Qataris weren't very good at these informal, serve-yourself lunches but they turned out a very nice spread. Many sandwiches, salads and some incredible cheesecake desserts. Much fruit juice. Since you can't get alcohol here (except at the big hotels like ours) they make up for it with nice fruit juices.
Then, we went on a guided tour of Doha. Our drivers took us to the equestrian center, which is so fancy that they have a swimming pool for horses. I'd never heard of such a thing, but then I'm just a simple Iowa boy. We also went to a camel market, which was much more reminiscent of Iowa than the equestrian center. The camels are used for racing out in the countryside but are primarily raised for meat. Apparently camel is served at special occasions like weddings.
Camels
One thing that is immediately apparent when you drive around Doha, as we did this day, is that this is a city that is being built right NOW! The entire city is a construction zone, rubble everywhere, buildings half finished, roads being flung up everywhere. There is money here and Qatar is racing, as quickly has humanly possible... somewhere. I'm not sure anyone, not even the Qataris know where they are racing. We saw a development that had 60 skyscrapers completed of a planned 180. What will go on these places? Are there enough people to fill them? Who knows? I don't think the Qataris do.
There is a lot of money here, but the money is concentrated in the 20% of the population that is native Qatari. The Qatari live lives of almost unimaginable affluence (and I say this as a person who lives in what is still the richest country in the world and in one of the more affluent cities in that country). Our American hosts tell us of private homes with elevators, of undergraduate students carrying around a different $5,000 handbag every day of the week, of air-conditioned tents in the backyard where the men can raise their falcons. That is your life is you are Qatari.
All of this is made possible by an enormous population of immigrate labor from places like India, the Philippines, Pakistan, etc. Life for these people is much, much different. They live in what are essentially camps, reminding me of apartheid-era South Africa. These people are cut off from access to any of the luxury they are building every day. Malls and parks have "family days" wherein only families are admitted. If your family is back home in Bangladesh that means you cannot go to the mall or the park on your day off. At the end of the day, I think the Qataris are terrified of being a minority in their own country, that the price of modernity will be the loss of their own culture and, like many terrified people, they react with oppression and discrimination. I say this well aware that every stitch of clothing I'm wearing was made by people living in conditions much like those of Qatar's immigrant populations, and that much of the manual labor back in my hometown is done by people who speak Spanish at home. We are all Abolitionists in cotton shirts sometimes.
OK, have I harshed your buzz now? Sorry.
Between the camels and the horses, we were taken to the Villagio, the latest high-end shopping mall in Doha. It is an enormous mall that was supposed to invoke Venice; complete with a gondola in a canal. We did manage to buy a camera there, in the equivalent of Target, so there will be pictures soon.
After the camels we went to the "gold market." This is a district of jewelry and gold shops. We were assured that "prices were negotiable." But the few attempts we made to haggle over a price were met with sharp negative responses. That is ok, the gold was basically all in the same style and while "cheap gold" it may be, it is kind of like "short mountain." Any mountain, even a short one is still pretty tall. We did visit a rug shop in the gold district, found the owner much more amenable to bargaining.
The Rug Market
After the gold district it was off to The Souk. "Souk" is Arabic for market and The Souk has been a continuously operating market for hundreds of years. It is now in buildings that are Genuine Ten Year Old Recreations of Eighteenth Century Buildings. All kinds of stuff here, in endless winding alleyways and corridors. Spice shops, fabric shops, bird shops (no Norwegian Blues that I could see), sweet shops, cookery shops, clothes shops. It kind of went on and on. And we discovered the answer to "How do you cook a camel?" The answer: "In a really, really, really big pot." Posting pictures soon.
The Souk
Paul and Rodda met us at The Souk and took us to a Qatari restaurant. We ate on the roof and we were seating right at sundown and, surrounded by the many mosques. the call to prayer went up. It was actually pretty cool. We are obviously in an Islamic state: our hotel room has a little cupboard that has a prayer rug and an arrow pointing to Mecca.
The weather has been spectacularly good: warm, breezy, cool at night and our dinner was wonderful outdoors. I had "Thireed Chicken" which I had never even heard of before. Quite wonderful. And it had the best hummus I'd ever tasted was our appetizer. When they were done with dinner, the folks next to us enjoyed a smoke from a hookah but we gave that a pass. Paul and Rodda shared stories of life in Doha and were delightful company. After dinner we all went back to the Ritz and upstairs to our "Club Level Lounge" because we could get a glass of wine there, one of the few places in Doha that is possible. We stayed up until almost midnight with them, not bad at all for still jet-lagged travellers.
Wednesday is my lecture. We'll see how a talk on Darwin goes in one of the two Wahhabi states in the world.
Doha Journal 3: Darwin and Bling
Today was kind of like work! Unbelievable! I gave my talk today at 3:30 in the afternoon. The talk was on different ways scientists have conceptualized concepts of human agency within Darwinian traditions. I was comfortable with the material, I was mostly focused on Madison Grant and Alfred Kroeber who are figures I've talked about in the past and I'm comfortable with them.
So, I had gone to bed about 1 AM after our loverly evening with Paul and Rodda. I woke up about 7:30 this morning, not an unreasonable amount of sleep. But I was obviously kind of worried about the talk since I had a really weird dream about being stressed out. So I got dressed, let Michele sleep in (she has already fulfilled her obligations the first two days, the next two days are mine), and headed upstairs to the Club to work. So, I gotta tell you, if you have to spend the morning working, it is better to do it in an easy chair, overlooking a stunning desert/Gulf landscape, with an staff of people to bring you food and drink and catering to your every whim. And it is best if someone else pays for that. So, my suggestion to you is to work like that from now on.
What worried me about the talk were matters of audience adaptation. At the most basic level, this is audience of people with very different cultural backgrounds from my own and from that of most any audience I ever addressed. I can't assume that the will pick up on even the most basic elements of the story I have to tell them. Like Kroeber got his PhD at Columbia and started a career at Berkeley in 1901. Do they know how far away California was from New York by train in 1901? Do they know that those institutions are in New York and California? So I was worried a bit about stuff like that. But I also had two other more specific worries.
First, the talk is about conceptions of human agency. How can we think about human choice within a system of thought that requires us to be biological creatures that are products of natural selection? Well, in Islamic thought everything happens by the will of Allah. Inshallah--"If Allah wills it" is just part of the cultural landscape here. The faculty tell me that students sometimes just explain that, hey, I didn't get my paper done, Allah must not have willed it. So, how do should it pitch the idea of human agency at all.in this context?
Second, I really don't know the status of Darwinian though within Islam. How to talk about Darwin, specifically Darwin as applied to human beings, in a cultural context of which I know, um, nothing? I had read about the rise of creationism in Turkey a bit, but that is all I knew. So I found a nice article on the History of Science Website (thanks HSS!) that explained this stuff in a little more depth.
In the end, my response to both these issues was to proclaim my ignorance, point out the existence of the issues, and indicate that these are possible ways we could think about them. The bottom line, I think, is that if Qatar is serious about building higher education, they need to have the biological sciences and if they have the biological sciences, they have Darwin. So, it is up to them, as the first generation of students to come through the new Qatari university system to grapple with them. I tried to point out the similarities with Kroeber, who was also a first generation student at Columbia in anthropology and then the founder of a department at the brand new U. of California. I think that was the right strategy.
So I worked on those aspects of the speech in the AM and then, for some reason that is completely beyond me, the graduate students took me seriously when I told them, "I'll be out of the country, but I'll be happy to answer any emailed questions." So I had a bunch of email to do. For a certain value of "a bunch." Michele came up about 10:30 and we chatted and she answered her email (about a "bunch x 10" worth) until they started serving us lunch. Grilled chicken sandwich, since you've asked.
After lunch, went back to the room, got cleaned up, put on grown-up clothes (A tie!), and wandered outside to catch my ride to Education City. I walked past the extensive pool system where Michele was already enjoying her day off. She told me she came downstairs and folks gathered around her, found her lounge chair to her liking, brought her towels, etc. When she spotted me, she swam over to say goodbye and took at seat at the swim-up bar in the pool.
I had a few minutes before the car arrived, so I wandered into the stores housed in the hotel. I steered clear of Gucci and Prada and went to a men's store that also had some briefcases and luggage displayed. So, you need to understand that I'm a sucker for nice bags and such. I'm very particular about this stuff and I'm willing to spend some money. So I was looking at a duffel bag. A leather duffel bag. I myself already own (and packed my things for this trip in) a very nice duffel bag (redoxx.com). So the salesman comes up and tells me that this particular duffel bag is on sale, 50% off. Normally 20,000 riyals, now only 10,000 riyals. There is about 3.5 riyals to the dollar. I consider myself something of a snob about this stuff, I am willing to spend some money on this kind of thing, but even I think that is just messed up.
When we checked in to the hotel, we were given an envelope that contained our schedules, local cell phones, and coupon books for a car service. So we can pretty much go anywhere in the city with our own private driver. This is good because I'm not sure I'd want to drive in Doha, a city where people think that speed limits and turn signals are things that happen to other people.
Got to Ed City, gave my talk, which went well, I thought. There were good laughs from the audience at the appropriate moments and a lively discussion at the end which are my only two measures for success in these matters. The thinking I did this morning was important as these issues were certainly raised in discussion by the students. Rodda told me I'd given them a lot to think about because no one has ever raised these issues with them before so there may have been some education that happened. We can hope.
After the talk I came back to the hotel, took a quick nap while Michele cleaned up from her strenuous day at the pool (poor baby!). Then it was back up to the club ("Mr. and Mrs. Jackson! How nice to see you again! How was your day!") for dinner. After dinner we summoned a car (!) and went to the City Center Shopping Mall and walked around looking at the jewelry shops and the skating rink and the myriads of people.
Skating Rink at the City Center Shopping Mall
It really was remarkably crowded, like a US mall around Christmas. Lots of women in the traditional abayyas, the rather beautiful and striking black robes the Gulf women favor. These are often decorated with embroidery that can be very nice. And, since the only accessories can really be the handbag and the shoes, there is some serious money spent on those items. The head is always covered, often there is a veil that covers the face except of the eyes, and sometimes there is a veil that covershe entire face. In the final case, it is apparently sheer enough to be able to see. I will admit that in these final cases, I just get creeped out, it is too much like a burqa and just makes me think of the loathsome patriarchy of the Taliban.
Labor is also cheap in the malls. We went into one store so Michele could look at their pens (she has a weakness for nice pens--art you can use). She never had fewer than two people helping her and sometimes had as many as five. Pretty amazing. We were shopped out fairly quickly and caught the car back to the hotel by ten. We just aren't cut out for that kind of thing.
Tomorrow, I teach a class with Rodda, Michele talks work with Paul. We visit the Museum of Islamic Art. And then dinner with our hosts at a fancy restaurant where it will be, I am not making this up, Mexican Fiesta Night.
Doha Journal 4: Gender, Race, Beauty
Today was the day I was visiting a classroom to discuss my work. So, got up, got cleaned up and had breakfast at the Club---same old same old--food, view, service. blah, blah, blah. Only new thing was that I tried the non-pork bacon. Veal? Beef? Turkey? Who knows? It was OK as long as you didn't think it was bacon. Kind of like getting something at Dairy Queen; it is OK if you don't think of it as ice cream.
So, instead of telling you about my Richie Rich breakfast, I thought I would talk about by bathroom experiences here. "Oh, John, thank you!" you are saying. You are welcome Imaginary Reader!
Qatar is filled with incredibly nice places with bathrooms that you might find at an interstate truck stop. While the shop or restaurant is quite elegant, the bathrooms tend to be smelly and of questionable cleanliness. Not at the Ritz, those are immaculate, but at the mall last night it was kinda scary. And the fixtures are, um, not what we are accustomed to always. 'nuff said. But, the night we went out to the Qatari restaurant with Rodda and Paul, I had kind of an interesting experience that I think says something about cultural differences.
To begin: the Qataris have a different sense of cultural space than we do, I think. You see this in their driving. If there is a space, you fill the space. If you are going in this direction, you go this direction and folks had better stay out of the way. At the mall, we noticed they just kind of walk where they want to walk and you don't have sense that they even notice you are there. I think they just kind of assume anything that happens to be there will not be there if they just keep walking. So, the other night at the restaurant, I excuse myself to use the restroom. If find it and it is a single seater in a small room with a lock on the door. Fine, it was last cleaned two or three years ago, but fine (the restaurant was immaculate in every other respect). Ok so I'm in there, going about my business and the door rattles. "Oh," I think, "someone tried to open the door and discovered it was locked. Happens all the time, I've done that myself. They realize now that it must be occupied and will return in a few minutes." Three seconds later the door rattles again, a little more violently. Then a pounding on the door, "Bam! Bam! Bam!" And another rattle. So, now, instead of hurrying a little because someone is waiting, I can't help but slow down, just to see if I can annoy the rude guy a little (which probably says a lot about my own cultural background). Maybe I'll hum another verse of Yankee Doodle while washing my hands. When I do exit, there are two Qatari men there who barely glance at me. And that is just it, they didn't shoot me a dirty look, it wasn't hostility. It was just the assumption that "if I want to go to the restroom the restroom shall therefore be empty." And when it wasn't, it was like they were puzzled as to why it wasn't.
I taught for two hours in Rodda's class today. They had read one of my articles that we were to discuss, but I really didn't think that they could understand the article without a lot more background about American racial segregation. So we spent the first hour of class talking about the origin of American segregation laws in transportation, specifically trains. This is something I've taught before but not in a few years so it was nice to have the experience again. It was fascinating to do it here because it is a gendered story having to do with there being a "Ladies Car" on a train from which men were banned unless accompanying a woman. Black folks were also banned from the first class cars, which were Ladies Cars. Which meant that Black women had no place to sit on the train. American students sometimes don't immediately spot this as I unfold the story, but these students, because they live in a society that is gendered along much the same lines, saw the Black woman's problem immediately and, in fact, pointed it out before I had the full exposition of the situation on the board (I draw a train as well as most 5-year olds). This used to happen when I taught it at FSU, where about half my class would be Black women, but hasn't happened at CU where I'm surrounded by white people all the time.
These people live in what is essentially 19th century US, at least as far as gender roles and "separate spheres" are concerned. So, at one point I told them I'd been to a Qatari restaurant during my visit and was told by my American host that women "weren't allowed" on the first floor but the second floor could have mixed gender groups. So I asked the students, "Is it the case that women weren't allowed on the first floor or is it the case that men aren't allowed on the second floor unless they are with a female family member?" I was quickly assured that the second situation was a more accurate representation. So while the concept of the "Ladies Car" was very hard to transmit to American students, the Qatari students live in that world all the time.
And, the racial politics, although not necessarily by that name, are also in play here. The huge immigrant labor force is definitely not considered equal to Qataris. So, when a student asked me, "Do you personally think segregation is wrong?" This is not a question I ever had from and American student, and I really can't imagine an American student asking it. I didn't really realize until after the class that this is a live question here. Most Qataris are probably fine to live in their segregated society, with a permanent underclass of foreign labor. So me saying I thought segregation was morally reprehensible was probably something I needed to say to them.
At dinner that night, Rodda told me that one student told her that she (the student) had never really understood why black people don't like white people in the US. Slavery was finished a century ago so why all the problems? The student said that she now understood a little better why the racial politics of the US look the way they do. So, some education did happen and that is always gratifying.
After the talk Paul took Michele and me over to the Carnegie-Mellon building next to the Texas A&M building where Northwestern is housed until NUQ's building is finished. The A&M building is huge and the CMU building is even huger. We had a nice sandwich and then took a car over to the Museum of Islamic Art. The Museum itself is quite striking as it sits out in the Gulf all by itself. It was designed by I.M. Pei. Michele put up with me pointing out five or six times that Boulder also has a building designed by I.M. Pei so it was just like being home.
Museum of Islamic Art
The art was really cool (rootin' tootin' art criticism from me there!). Like I'd heard, the human figure is seldom represented in Islamic art, and there is an emphasis on geometric patterns that repeat and become rather hypnotic. The thing that really struck me however was that the art was always an everyday object made into art. The artistic tradition in the West is, to my ignorant mind, to create a portrait or a sculpture and ta da! you have a big ol' hunk of art that you can hang on your wall and stare at. By contrast, almost everything we saw in the museum was something everyday--a carpet, a vase, a tile, a belt buckle, an astrolabe, a compass, a book--that was fully functional but also exquisitely beautiful. Michele was struck by a wall of jug filters that you would use to filter out stuff floating in your water jug when you poured the water out. But rather than a simple screen, each was finely formed geometric patterns that were tiny but like little miniature portraits. How cool is that? So, in this world art is not something that is over and above the things you use, it IS the things you use. I think both Michele's love of fine pens and my love of Middle-Eastern rugs reflect a similar sensibility in us, although I had never realized it before.
We didn't last long at the Museum. We were just out of gas here on day four. By the time we decided we'd had enough,we had about 45 minutes before the driver (!) showed up. So, we went out side and looked at the building, which is really, really gorgeous. Paul told use he thought the building overwhelmed the art and I kind of agree with him, it is spectacular. I'll see if I have a picture of it somewhere to post (our brand-new camera ran out of batteries at the museum--doh!).
When we got back to the hotel, Michele took a nap and I headed up to the Club to, well, write this actually. The water, which is my view, which has been so still and quiet our entire visit here, was suddenly alive with activity. Jet Skis, racing boats, big boats, um... bigger boats.... they all were out there zooming around and being all boaty (sorry, I didn't see an ocean until I was 23 years old and my experience with these things is limited). I finally realized that it is Thursday night and the Sabbath is tomorrow so this is the big weekend night for Qataris. In an expression I prefer not to use, tonight we can let our hair down!. Take the boat out for a spin! Buy a 20,000 riyal duffel bag! Go out and not drink! Ask your husband for permission to leave the house! Sky's the limit tonight! Wooooo!
Our final act of complete and utter indulgence was dinner with some of the NUQ folks in one of the Ritz's restaurants, The Lagoon. It was a buffet style place with six or seven tables, each filled with more food than I thought possible. Paul said that he's been here before when they had one table that had nothing on it but one, entire roast lamb. You know how when you go to a fireworks display and the pyrotechnicians signal the end of the show with a huge display that is completely over the top? That was our final dinner in Doha. Boom!
The Restaurant at the Ritz Carleton
When we lived in St. Paul, I used to bike down Summit Avenue, with its spectacular architecture. It was particularly wonderful in the spring because the street would be lined with block after block of amazing lilac bushes that filled the air with their scent. "Don't ignore this" I used to think, "don't get used to it. Notice it!" I feel the same way about Colorado. I drive in and the mountains are right there, being beautiful every single day. "This is special. Don't start thinking it isn't special." Right now we are on the flight home. I've already watched two movies, had my beef tenderloin, and the attendant just brought me chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven. I've tried not to let myself get used to this kind of treatment. We have another 9 hours or so to go on the flight. "This has all been special," I tell myself, "don't stop paying attention now." To paraphrase John Lennon, don't let life happen when you are busy doing something else.
jpj stories by John Jackson is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
