Saudi Arabia? Seriously?

We have just walked in the door from our ‘Inland Sea’ tour. We knew it included ‘dune-bashing’ (flying over the sand dunes in a Land Cruiser), dinner on the beach and a tour of the area around the sea. We tried to do a little more homework but didn’t come up with too much more information so we signed up to meet the driver at 2:00PM at Cicely’s house. Nazir was there right on time – tall, dark-haired taciturn young man who really did know how to drive a car.

Things started off okay and we drove for an hour to reach the edge of the desert where the tour really began. First we passed lots of ATV rental places – I counted at least 250 ATV’s lined up for rental along the side of the road. We passed one location and watched in amazement as a woman fully covered in black except for her eyes hopped on a large ATV and took off over the sands – Abaya billowing behind her. From where I sat it looked like she even wore black gloves. Then we passed a young man in a small dune buggy driving on two wheels – he stayed that way until he was completely out of sight!

Then the fun actually began. We stopped and waited and watched a group of French tourists ride camels while our driver had someone let most of the air out of our tires (they let enough out that anywhere else it would have been declared a flat tire). We passed on the camel rides and headed out over the dunes – we flew low and climbed fast – we literally drove so close to the edge that Cicely and I grabbed each other in the back seat and made loud scared noises and tried to laugh. My daughter pointed out that my poor husband who got stuck with the front seat because he has the longest legs was almost in a fetal position against the window holding on the handle with two hands. We climbed up dunes that if you had asked any sane person – it would have been impossible – like driving up a wall and then came down the other side full speed. Nazir drove very casually with one hand and sporadically would shift gears and steer when it seemed like we were headed over the edge. We flew over the top of one sand mountain and there were several parked cars lined up with the same group of French tourists. One car at a time was driving up the side of a huge dune, spinning out, sliding and careening around while we watched in awe. We were standing around waiting for our turn and then in unison the four adults said, “No, we are not doing that!”

One of the other drivers laughed at us and said, “See that woman. She is 88 years old! She sat in the back seat and yelled, Go! Go!” Now picture a small perfectly coiffed French woman with a beautiful silk scarf tied exquisitely around her neck and tiny black patent leather loafers. For just a minute I felt like an idiot and then Patrick said, “Yes, she is 88 and probably SENILE!”

So we ended up skipping that part of the trip and moved on to drive around what I think was the inland sea – a ‘little’ inland sea – where we found some beautiful sea shells, a piece of driftwood and looked across at Saudi Arabia! Somehow we came to the conclusion that this was not really the inland sea but some sort of tidal pool and will have to check on a map to see where we really went! The advertisement for the tour shows slip-covered chairs around a table on a pristine beach with beautiful dishes of Mediterranean food. The reality was a Bedouin tent on a beach overlooking oilrigs with plastic plates and cutlery with bottles of desalinated water! The food was good, the wind was brisk and with country music playing in the background – everything was fine until they started talking about “nighttime sand duning” on the way home – I didn’t quite get the details but I do know sitting with my eyes closed in the back seat, after taking a muscle relaxer for my back and clutching Cicely’s hand – it somehow involved launching from the top of a dune with the headlights turned OFF! I am not sure because I don’t think I opened my eyes until we were pulling into the station to have our tires inflated.

The driver really was very experienced and in hindsight – both my husband and daughter regretted not doing the driving up and down the side of the largest sand dune I have ever seen in my life. I don’t.

The desert at night is clear and dark and amazing. There was crescent moon that looked like a cutout, as it was so yellow in contrast to the blue-black sky. The stars feel very near and there seem to be millions of them.

Hunting and Gathering

I have been making a few notes about interesting things in the grocery stores.

My first all time favorite was the tea, which I thought would be just like the sleepy time tea in the U.S. which I love to have a cup of when I had trouble going to sleep. I used to carry some with me on my trips. I bought a box of the Sleep Nerve Tea and was a bit puzzled when I read the side of the box. “An effective herbal tea to relief nervousness and sleep disorders. It is recommended to be taken three times daily.”

The first night I tried it – I literally fell asleep in front of the television and snored. The next morning I read the ingredients and it not only contains chamomile flowers but VALERIAN Root! It is a natural aid product from Riyadh and I had to chuckle when thinking about all of the supposedly housebound Saudi women who drink three cups of this a day to stay calm.

Under directions for Iced Tea – “Put five bags in hot water and brew for five minutes. Remove the tea bags and add cold water (500 ml). Refrigerate. Enjoy it with your family members!” For all of those mothers who used a dose of Benadryl occasionally when the children were very small – serve this as “sweet tea” at meals and they will never know what happened!!

Do you remember Monosodium Glutamate - MSG? Remember when most of the Chinese restaurants stopped using it, when it was no longer used as a normal ingredient unless loudly noted on the package, when everyone would say they could tell when there was msg in something they ate as their hearts would race and the government spokesman said it was really really bad for us all. I hadn’t even thought about it again – assuming that everyone in the world agreed with the US government that msg was really bad for us - until last year in Singapore, I was learning to make sushi from my favorite Japanese friend and she made reference to a ‘special salt’. She said that she would bring me some the next time we got together as it was inexpensive, very nice and added a lot of flavor. She showed up with a 300-gram plastic bag of monosodium glutamate! Very inexpensive - yes and added a lot of flavor – yes but healthy – not so much.

Some of the large corporations that no longer market products with msg in the states sell soups, etc. here that are loaded with it. Name brands that I felt I could buy without reading the label operate under an entirely different set of rules here – no pork ingredients trumps no msg. No alcohol trumps trans fats. The only vanilla available is an artificial type with no alcohol and the only bacon bits are the plastic baco’s. Those are usually on the bottom shelf in the supermarket turned backwards so the word Baco’s is not facing the consumer who might very well be offended.

The international sections are incredible in every single store. They cater to a wide variety of people and aim to please as many as possible. In Singapore I developed a serious taste for Korean seaweed with Japanese rice and both are easy to find here – even in the snack sizes that were sometimes not on the shelves in Asia. Tex-Mex is huge, the Indian spice section takes up both sides of an entire aisle and the Asian foods are not lumped together – every region is represented – Philippine, Thai, and Malay but there is not nearly the number of Chinese foods that I am used to seeing! The British ‘biscuit’ section is always stocking – Walker’s digestives must have huge fans here as every flavor is here one day and gone the next!

The dairy section is vast. The crèmes that people use every day in France fly off of the shelves. There are at least ten different brands of yogurt and then one moves into the labneh, crème fraiche and even Philadelphia cream cheese occasionally. Kraft cheeses are usually easy to find and the sliced singles that we know are processed but still love in a grilled cheese sandwich occasionally are randomly here – there are probably four other types of sliced singles and of the ones with ingredients in English – there are not too many I would even try. They look scary and I have been told this is because Americans love ‘colorful’ cheese and so it is always dyed yellow and maybe this is true but there is something off putting about white single wrapped slices that I haven’t been able to get past.

Yogurt in the Middle East is extraordinary. The yogurt here is so rich and so creamy – I now understand a bit better why my friend Gowri always made her own yogurt instead of buying it in the grocery store – amazing difference in taste and texture. Kroger’s plain yogurt doesn’t look very appetizing when compared to Almaria’s delicious full cream yogurt but then the Almaria probably ranks right up there with the full flavored msg.

Americans may be the last holdouts for iceberg lettuce. In Singapore and here in Doha, it is referred to as ‘American’ lettuce. In Paris last summer, the salads that used it listed it as American lettuce salads! It is also very expensive here – QAR12.75 looks like a lot when I remember it being $1.00! It is the same price as all of the other lettuce choices.

The food here is amazing and I have picked up a few new recipes that I will be using forever! Eating local is easy – and delicious!

Dinner Dress

The people that know me well know that I am a very conservative, and perhaps, some would say ‘dull’ dresser. Last night I decided I would rather be the ‘dull’ dresser than the ‘middle-aged-woman-from-somewhere-in-the-southwestern-part-of-the-US’ who forgot to look in the mirror on the way to dinner.

There were roughly twenty couples at the small French restaurant where we met our Canadian friends for a dinner hosted by an American organization. We had a set menu that included a choice between sea bass and a chicken dish, berries or soufflé for dessert and included two demitasse-sized soups that were extraordinary. My friend brought a bottle of wine as the ticket had said that corkage was 10QAR. It turns out that was 10QAR per person who had even a sip of wine. Since the president of the hosting organization doesn’t drink and never has, she may not have understood the concept of a corkage fee being charged to open the bottle.

We sat down quickly as we arrived a few minutes late and the invitation said things would start promptly at 6:30 but that is not quite the way it played out. So while we waited for our food and sipped our wine – I watched the people - the entertainment was free.

The best outfit was by far a tight, very short polyester black dress with short cap sleeves that were sheer with an embroidered design. When she was facing away from me, I thought she was fairly young as the dress was short, she had long blonde hair and a nice figure. Then she turned around and I realized that she was way older than I had thought, had spent many years in the sun and a lot of money on her hair. On top of that when I heard a metallic noise as she walked by us – I glanced down just as my husband leaned over and whispered –“bondage boots” - black, shiny, knee-high with metal rings. AND a Christmas bell on a green silk string around her neck chiming in step with the sounds of the boots.

I loved Christmas sweaters when my kids were in school. Tonight may have forever ruined them for me. A woman wore red slacks, a black turtleneck and a Christmas sweater vest. The front was traditional colorful designs – a large stocking, a tree with little bells, but the coup d’ etat was the white fur around the sleeves – long fluffy white Persian cat hair. Add to that a large (really large) red flower in the short ponytail, big bright earrings and oversized glasses and it all made for a caricature of someone in a Tim Burton movie.

The standout for the younger table was interesting and maybe I am hopelessly out of date but a black suit with a peek-a-boo hot pink lace top and pants so tight I was embarrassed for her. Her husband had on a jacket with a tie that matched the lace so I think there was a plan.

On the flip side – a few women were beautifully dressed – one woman from Egypt who reminds me of an always impeccably dressed friend in Memphis – and who will be the new president of this organization after the current one returns to Texas in March. It makes an interesting side note - having a president of Egyptian descent who wears an abaya when she leaves the Hyatt after meetings.

Middle-aged dressing anywhere in the world is difficult but in this part of the world it is even a bigger challenge. I am not sure what the issue is for some of the younger members. I have to think that some of these women are very nice people who accepted the challenge of moving to a galaxy far away when their husbands were offered great jobs. Doha, Qatar had to have been so far outside of their comfort zone that being here and making it an adventure for their family makes them special regardless of what they wear.

Santa in Sand-land

We set out this morning to drive into the city and visit the Gold Souk to pick up a few Christmas gifts. We knew exactly where it was located and anticipated some traffic but it took us over an hour to get there and then we drove around for 35 minutes before my husband was comfortable parking his new car in an available space! Then I could not remember exactly which building a particular store was in so I called to ask for directions. Our conversation was so language challenged that when I finally figured out that he was amazed that I couldn’t remember his shop and was telling me to go in any store and ask where “Magic Diamond” was and they would direct me. That of course was absurd – they chased us down the alley with handfuls of pearls to buy! Once we figured out how to get inside the huge building – it was a piece of cake – we found exactly what we wanted at a really fair price. For the next two hours we spent looking for a shop to buy linen. We had three souk names and a GPS and we still couldn’t find one! During the ride, I made some notes about some of the interesting and hilarious things we saw on a simple drive into town.

Driving down one of the back roads we passed a great street sign – instead of the drawing that tells us to be careful - children crossing street – there was one for women crossing – an outline of women dressed in abayas and hijabs holding hands and walking (I am sure it is difficult to check both ways when veiled).

We saw a Land Cruiser (the national automobile) with colorful prayer beads for every day of the week hanging from the mirror along with a set of – I swear – FUZZY DICE!! We passed the new medical clinic – a building the size of a small hospital in the states – it has a huge sign across the front – FUTURE MEDICAL CENTER and for six months we have waited for it to open – we found out that it has been open for years and since the influx of expats living in this area there now is a canvas sign hanging beneath it that says in red letters – NOW OPEN (apparently we weren’t the only ones waiting).

We followed an Arab ‘Fred Sanford’ for miles. We never could pass, as there was a line of cars behind us that would speed up to our back bumper and then fly around both of our cars. He was driving his dented dark green Gallant Explorer circa 1960s; wearing his haj hat and with a grizzled gray beard driving maybe 20 miles an hour in rush hour traffic. Gripping the steering wheel for dear life he navigated the roundabout on the inside lane and basically edged along – stopping quite often (usually straddling two lanes) before making a right hand turn. The horns and squealing brakes were unbelievable until final everything pretty much came to standstill as everyone watched him carefully cross three lanes of traffic and putter down the middle of the two-lane side road. He never made eye contact with anyone – he never took his eyes off of the road in front of him. It was the only time we have seen anyone stop the buses of workers and the hordes of Land Cruisers in their tracks.

The best had to be when all the traffic was bogged down at a construction merge “give way” area and we couldn’t figure out what the problem was until we got closer and I swear that a small white car (a Sunni- smaller than a KIA) had run into a Land Cruiser and their bumpers were locked together. We think that the Land Cruiser was pulling the smaller car along to get out of the traffic before they stopped but here in Qatar – it is quite possible that the driver of the Land Cruiser was on his phone and never noticed the little car attached to his bumper.

There are school buses that have obviously been shipped here to use in the construction sites. It is a little disconcerting to pass an old yellow school bus with everything written in English full of small dark-faced workers dressed in french blue jumpsuits with colorful scarves tied every which way on their heads. If they are on their way home, they are all obviously exhausted but if they are on their way to work – they all (a quote from my beautiful Italian neighbor) “stare quite strongly”.

I read on a blog here that the only drivers scarier than the local Qataris are the expat women who have to drive everyday. There is probably a lot of truth in that statement – shades of carpool lines. Aggressive inattention is the name of the driving game – no eye contact – cell phone to ear – going as fast as possible between the speed cameras is all in a days driving!

Our Neighborhood

Since there is a lot of construction going on around us, loud pounding outside is not unusual so yesterday when I first heard lots of noise I didn’t ’t realize that it was actually the guys here to plant our neighborhood trees. Our little compound not only has no address yet, there is not one green thing inside the compound that hasn’t been added by the new tenants. Since everyone has become friends and we all talk a lot – there are some improvements in the works. The key phrase here is “improvements” which of course they are or we wouldn’t be making them.

Several people have already moved their washer/dryers into the ground floor bathroom which is large as it originally was supposed to have a toilet and a bidet but ended up with just a toilet, bidet plumbing and the hand held hose that is in every bathroom in the Middle East. The washer/dryer combination is a wonderful American style apartment set as opposed to most units here, which are washer/dryer combinations that steam dry. They are enough to make a sane housewife with no maid crazy. Nothing ever completely dries, everything is wrinkled, they do not hold an entire load and everyone I know here (outside of our little compound) has large collapsible drying racks that always seem to be full of clothes. When we first looked at this little no name villa – that was one of the big attractions after a month in the flat with one of the above-mentioned nightmares.

Apparently moving them into the bathroom is not very difficult although drilling the vent hole through a concrete wall seems rather challenging. One of the families does have it set up where they have to turn off the vent fan when they want to dry a load of clothes and push the hose through the fan so it dangles outside. They may have been worried that drilling a hole in the wall might not actually be an improvement. Ours will have a hole – if it is that easy to drill a hole – I am sure it will be like Singapore where we learned the day we were moving how easy it was to fill those holes that we were ever so hesitant to make I the walls. If not for Kat Fitzpatrick’s artwork, we may never have even bought a drill!

The next step is building shelves to hold the microwave, extra water bottles, cookbooks, etc. in the kitchen where it used to be. The search for wood is on. The carpenter was easy – he has already built several things for our neighbors. I understand that there is a souk near here – four roundabouts away - that sells wood but we need a picture of what we want to build so I have canvassing the area to see if anyone can draw a stick/line drawing to show the carpenter and the wood souk. I have actually resorted to looking through old magazines and perusing the Home Depot and Lowe’s website for ideas.

The occupant of Villa #4 found someone to come and remove the bricks in front of our townhouses in a one meter square, replace the sand with peat moss, true dried organic manure (from the animal souk), sand and plant a tree. These bricks are in offset lines so this will not only involve chipping through the concrete and lifting out the bricks, but cutting the sixteen odd bricks that stick out in half with HAND TOOLS. The entire crew was here yesterday morning at 8 o’clock and almost finished the last hole at 8:30 last night. I think they gave up because they ended up at our end and there were twelve children trying to play in the new sandboxes move and build things with the bricks and drive their trucks around the poor guys kneeling and chipping away at the bricks. They charged 200QAR to dig each hole, replace the sand, and plant our choice of tree – that is $55.00.

The neighbor directly across the road is Iranian and rarely here. I wanted us both to have Frangipani trees as opposed to the wispier tree that looks like a mimosa but isn’t so I had to agree to help with the watering next summer – we will end up with about thirty trees and in five years, this compound will be beautiful – maybe by then it will have an address and a name as “18 Villas” really doesn’t work. One of the wives who is from South Africa thinks our next project should be planting trees around the outside of the compound walls. I am already having “water hose dragging in the summertime” nightmares.

Almost every unit in the compound has flowers in the window (mine are pink petunias and are actually blooming beautifully), a tree or two and most have a few chairs and a table out front. This is a great way to meet and get to know everyone but it leads to lots of cocktail sharing. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was glad my friend Carol didn’t move into this compound!

Something else that is interesting are what different nationalities think looks great on the front door around Christmas time. Some is a little kitschy and unexpected. I am surprised at how many decorated trees have sprung up and I may have to break down and dig out the apartment-sized tree that was shipped here in error. I was afraid shipping a clearly marked Christmas tree would slow our container down in customs but it apparently isn’t an issue as they sell ten-foot trees in Carrefour. Having a child (even a grown one) here and a husband who was really distressed at my Christmas palm tree a few years ago may force me to do a little decorating.

Tuesday Morning Coffee

Today (it being Tuesday) was coffee morning at the Tuesday International Ladies Group and since my daughter arrived on Friday morning – I dragged her along today. The fact that we both have an evil side to our sense of humor made that a dangerous decision. There is always a table of donated books (5QAR - $1.37) and magazines (3QAR $.82) that are sold to raise money. As we poked through the stacks, we both saw “Men Are From Mars and Women are From Venus” at the same time and cracked up – loudly. As she so succinctly put it – who would buy that book and move to the Middle East? This afternoon, we were at the local Virgin bookstore and I actually saw that they sell it here – so maybe someone didn’t bring it – they bought it here, realized they had moved to a place that no one cared if they thought differently from their spouse and so donated it to the ITG so that someone else struggling with a relationship here might for a minute think there was a glimmer of hope. Mars rules in the desert!

We proceeded with our sweets and coffee to the ballroom to see a program, I thought, about Murano glass and a local glass artist. Before we got to meet the artist, we watched a thirty minute video about her life, her family, her husband, her work with glass, her work with wood, her work with three very famous glass blowers who helped turn her jewelry designs into much larger pieces, her fascination with the feminine figure in all of its forms, and the talent that lay buried in her soul that was released by her leap into creativity. My first thought while watching the video was how in the world did this pass the ministry that censors and regulates art objects brought into Qatar? There were paintings of actual bare female figures and since Islamic art doesn’t usually even show faces, I was quite surprised that these were allowed here – and will be shown at her exhibit in the Souk Woqif Art Center. Most are torsos but some are very explicit torsos.

The verbiage in the film was priceless – There was a reference to the figurines being based on the ancient theory that man is the key and woman is …………. the lock. Then after showing a “Betty Boop” statue that seemed to have breasts, the issue of losing a breast was addressed – but the word breast was never used – only the word ‘tit’ - the concept that one can lose one tit and still have one tit and still be beautiful with one tit almost had me on the floor. I don’t think I have ever heard tit used five times in a row in a room of middle-aged women. Apparently it is not a colorful word in Australia and maybe not in the UK but it still had a bit of humor value for the Americans!

When the narrator made the statement, “Well…….. it is even deeper when one is discussing art”; I thought people were going to have to leave the room, the snorting while trying to not laugh was so bad. I hoped the artist was really not there and we were only going to see the video but afterwards, she got up and made a quick joke about the young videographer who helped make the film and talked a little bit about her art and then explained she was branching out AGAIN with her feminine shapes into the world of chocolate – nudes made of semi sweet chocolate – by the end of the presentation I decided that she must have had a huge inheritance.

I also learned today – a million miles from Mississippi and in the middle of my genealogy project that there is actually a periodical published about the United States Civil War – can’t yet tell which side they are on – there were two on the donation table and I had to buy them! I am not sure how often it comes out but it is still current as I bought the November 2008 and the September 2009 issues and am hoping to find some mention of one cousin or another.

Even after all my sunsets on the beach, our balcony in Singapore, various layovers and back porches, I had never heard of a “Sundowner” which is a gin and tonic that celebrates the setting of the sun. I sat with a woman who has lived here for thirty years, written and published a beautiful book about the history of Qatar through the narrative lens of medicinal treatments, and ‘condo-sits’ these days, as she can’t afford the current rents. We discussed how much this city has changed, where to buy black linen (I have found an Afghani tailor who copies stitch by stitch), how her skin has stayed so perfect after all of this time in the desert (hormones and hats) and how nice a Sundowner is at the end of the day.

The weather is perfect here right now – we may have to have a ‘Sundowner’ on our roof this afternoon as the sun sets – although it sets so early here I will have to work under the assumption that it really is five o’clock somewhere in the world!