My Trip from Doha to Cairo

After almost a year of living in a country where local women are usually covered – they occasionally take it to the next level and drape a sheer black scarf over their head completely covering their face, which is already covered by their Niqab. A Niqab is a thick piece of cotton that covers their hair attached to a thin piece to cover their lower face leaving only the eyes showing. They are able to see through this sheer scarf when it is draped over their head but they are invisible. It is still a shock to see a woman driving with a scarf covering their head! Especially when the odds are they have a Niqab AND sunglasses on beneath it. The Qatari women seem to be treated gently and respectfully by everyone even when they are unbearably rude (doesn’t happen often). Many women living here are not Muslim and so do not cover but are usually very respectful in what they wear – the general rule is to not show shoulders or knees. The largest group here is women who cover their hair with a scarf. These seem to be mostly non-Qatari Arab Muslims. I have read quite frequently that Qatari women are aware of security issues and social norms elsewhere and so usually remove their Niqab to travel – NOT on the day I left for Cairo.

Checking in for my flight to Cairo I was not given a boarding card until the last minute and was told to hurry “yala yala” to the gate. I rushed to Passport Control and thanks to my resident permit was allowed to go right through. When I got to immigration I saw a short line with a sign that said “Ladies Verification” and being a lady and a lady who has learned that the ladies lines in the Middle East are wonderful things, I stepped into that line behind several couples in national Qatari dress – white thobes, red & white Ghutras with black rope Ogaals and the women only identifiable by their oversized designer bags. The woman who was working the desk immediately waved me out of the line. I moved one line over just to watch. A couple would approach the customs agent and the man would hand over two passports and when the woman behind the desk indicated she was really paying attention – the veiled wife would lower her Niqab and show her face. The agent would look at the passport and look at her and look at the passport again and eventually process the paperwork and wave them through. This was interesting also because every other line required that each person hold their own passport and approach one at a time.

The last couple in line was the most interesting – the woman was fully veiled (sheer black over lower face covering and head scarf) and tiny. The man was slight with a long meticulously manicured wiry beard (I have heard that these indicate a serious commitment to Islam and are very time consuming and expensive to maintain). He nudged her none to gently forward although it is very unusual here to see the woman go first. As they approached the desk, he caught her arm and stepped in front of her and handed over their passports. When I realized what he was wearing – I had to think that if this was an arranged marriage and the odds are it was – her father had no clue what he was doing. The man, in addition to appearing mean had on the first “high water” thobe I have ever seen along with black nylon socks and black shoes. Thobes are the full-length white frock that men wear here and are usually elegant, exactly tailored and just graze the heel of the shoe (even when it is a sandal) like a pair of well-tailored slacks. This one was hilariously short. When the woman showed her face, I realized that she was stunning. Now, in the US, we might make the assumption upon seeing a couple like this that the marriage was all about money and the man could be a nerdy but wealthy young man but that doesn’t seem to happen here. The wealthy Qataris are very conscious of appearances. There has to be a story here!

I ran through duty free to pick up the requested four bottles for the birthday party to be held in Cairo. No time to look for tequila – but snagged the others and raced for the gate. As I was trying to jog (didn’t happen) up the steps and the public address system was calling flight to Beirut, Jeddah, Istanbul and several cities that I didn’t recognize - just for a moment I felt like I was in a movie!

The lady at the checkout counter in duty free had put plastic sleeves on the bottles but that was no help whatsoever as I boarded a first class cabin full of Qatari men in full national dress sipping Arab coffee and munching on dates (Qatar Airways fabulous predeparture service) with my duty free bag clanking - obviously full of liquor. As I put the bag in the overhead bin and it slid loudly to the back when I closed it – there was complete silence.

Something else new to me – the flight attendants in first class collected the red and white checked Ghutras (headscarves) and black Ogaals (rope coils that are placed on top of the Ghutras) and hung them in the first class closet along with the suit coats of the few westerners on board. They carefully folded them and draped them over the hangers and hung the black Ogaals over the hook with a seat tag! After a beautiful service – the flight attendants returned them - gently shaking them out so they could be properly arranged when they were put back on. Arranging and rearranging Ghutras and Niqabs here in Qatar is a national pastime!

The women in Cairo are also covered in varying degrees. The difference I felt was that in Qatar a woman in an abaya has help with the every day issues of getting things done while dressed in a full length ‘coatdress’. There is usually a maid tagging along and a driver waiting. At the shopping centers, there is always a row of Land Cruisers with young men napping with cell phones in hand waiting for Madams call. In Cairo the fabrics seemed heavier and the women seemed to trudge along – weighed down by what they have to wear while completing everyday tasks. In Qatar it is obvious that beneath the abaya the women wear beautiful stylish clothes – I did not get that feeling in Egypt. Doha has enough expats that the restrictiveness of the religion isn’t quite as in your face as it was in Cairo where two conservative cab drivers refused to pick us up the ONE time we left home with one of us in a t-shirt. The men look economically stressed and the women on the street just seem defeated.

We did not go into any malls – we hit as many tourist spots as possible and we did go to the huge inner city market – there were very few women on the streets in Zemalek (the island in the Nile where my daughter lives) so my conclusion could be way off track. I just had the feeling that women in Egypt (even women of means) have a much harder life than the women here. Regardless of the economic conditions in Egypt – it has such a dramatic history and I saw some amazing things! The Pyramids and the Alexandria catacombs are like nothing I have ever seen!

Cairo, Egypt #1

My quick trip to Cairo may require three blogs. It was pretty spectacular. Cairo is unbelievably loud, so dusty the sun is blurred, very friendly and the people seem easier than some other countries in this part of the world. AND even though seven lanes of cars routinely squeeze into five lanes – the drivers are not nearly as meanly aggressive as they are here in Doha. They are still very aggressive and twice I was in a cab that was driving so close to another cab that the drivers carried on a conversation in Arabic as we were driving along in traffic – the first time this happened was in the city and bearable – the second time was on the interstate going 80 kilometers an hour and was pretty scary especially as my cab driver was straddling the center white line and there was another car on the other side of us! There are a million old cars that have been turned into taxis – many of which look like my old Fiat – they all seem have been brush painted with oil paint. The fenders are white and the rest of the car is black. Each of them has a number hand painted somewhere – none have the same number and some don’t have enough numbers to be phone numbers but I suppose this is to give the impression that they could be reported to someone somewhere. They have meters that usually they do not use – the price is negotiated before getting into the cab and the meter never comes on. I was amazed to hear my daughter arguing in Arabic about how much a driver would charge to take us. Sometimes, the drivers just said psshw and sped off like we were requesting to go somewhere not worth their time.

We did a lot of walking in the city and I almost got used to people driving up behind us and honking – after I nearly killed myself a few times diving out of the way, I was told that was their way of asking if we wanted a cab!

My daughter is living in Cairo while finishing the research part of her Masters thesis. She happened to have a friend from university who was moving from Chicago and they have ended up in an apartment on a quiet (?) side street with a great balcony in Zemalek – an island in the Nile that is often referred to as the “Georgetown” of Cairo. They have a Boab who lives downstairs in the building and takes care of anything they need for $20 per month. He lives in a small room apparently with his entire family. He speaks some English, is of indeterminate age with a red and white headscarf wound around his head, scruffy beard and full-length dark brown dishdash. But he keeps an eye on who is allowed in and out of the building and seems to have a soft spot for the two young Americans living there.

The lobby of this building was magnificent in its day. Beautiful marble pillars with ornate wrought iron railings and elegant front doors. I was so hot and tired after the first day of sightseeing – I counted the stairs to their apartment as I struggled up them with a bag of groceries – FORTY marble deep steps! It doesn’t seem to faze them at all. They have a man clean their apartment weekly for 50 Egyptian pounds - $10 US – he is very well spoken and was an attorney in Sudan. There seems to be a million underemployed people here and the economy seems to be struggling.

The Egyptian Museum was built in the early 1900’s and appears huge. A beautiful building – almost pink in the sunlight – surrounded by a lot of security – I think there were two metal detectors before we bought tickets. There was so much to see that I drove our guide nuts asking questions and drove myself nuts doing the subtraction to figure out how old some of the artifacts were. I finally understand the significance of the Rosetta stone, I got to see King Tut who I missed when he came to New Orleans in the 80’s, I toured the mummy room, the jewelry room and fell in love with a lot of the small statues that were buried in the various tombs. The contents of King Tuts tomb were beautiful. Exhibits were packed into every room – lots with the descriptions typed on a manual typewriter with black and white photos obviously arranged in the 1950s. I bought postcards of the “overseer” statue that is made entirely of one piece of sycamore (except for his arms) and the marble stones that they used for his eyes have survived till this day. It is one of the eeriest and most interesting items there.

There were so many things to see that I could have spent two full days there and still miss things. Egypt is building a new state of the art museum near the Pyramids that should open in 2012 – maybe. The basement contains over 130,000 artifacts waiting to be moved and be put on display in the new building. Our guide who is getting her PhD in Egyptology told us that they think they have only found 10% of their history. New finds are made all of the time. An interesting tidbit of info - there is a satellite that when it passed over Egypt somehow spotted another buried city that is now being surveyed.

The exhibit that taught me the most was a small statue of a Pharaoh – maybe 20” long with a picture of it when it was found. It was in over 1000 pieces and someone had patiently put it back together. The only evidence of the repair was a crack along the bottom. Archeologists must be truly gifted patient people. The entire museum experience was incredible – the Germans and the British are apparently holding on to some things that they took from Egypt in the early 1900’s and although I am sure they truly belong to Egypt I hope they are not returned until they have a secure space in the new museum. There are ancient artifacts sitting on pedestals in crowded hallways with people touching, bumping and photographing them that are priceless.

In the middle of this fabulous museum I saw something that reminded me of why a lot of people think we are the “Ugly American Tourists”. There was a tour group of couples in their sixties/seventies and I watched a white man in a baseball cap put a plastic water bottle in the lap of a statue of the only female Pharaoh – Hatshepsut- and have someone take a picture – not sure if it was to mock the lack of penis or was just inexcusably disrespectful – the statue is 5000 years old. Then he had his picture taken holding the bottle up as if he was giving her a drink of water. In my home country no one would be allowed near an artifact like this one.

The food is amazing although the hygiene in the food stalls might put off some people. We ate lunch at a little shisha café on a side street that without Ali’dan (Egyptian friend) I would never have even ventured near. The fresh Arab bread is lighter than the bread here in Qatar – it is also trekked through the streets in an open pick up truck. The falafel is so fresh, spicy and stuffed into warm pita bread with chopped salad vegetables and a dash of tahini and costs $1 US. The Egyptian mezza meal could be my new favorite!

Qatar Masters

We spent the weekend at the beautiful Doha Golf Course watching the final two days of the Qatar Masters. The weather was like San Diego in May – extraordinarily beautiful – there was a breeze and the green grounds are perfectly manicured amid stone hills and rocky water hazards dyed a TV-appealing blue. I have never appreciated desert landscaping until this weekend. The development here has been designed by the best of the best and this was no exception. There is grass on the course but heaven help the wayward golfer whose shot strays outside of the fairways.

Cacti that I have only seen before in 2” pots are the size of trees here. I had never understood the fascination with the desert orchid that seems to grow randomly. Now I do. I want one. They are gorgeous. Huge Aloe Vera plants flowed along the walkways in lieu of azaleas, Mother-in-Law tongue plants followed (huge Mother-in-Law tongue plants) next to pencil cacti that are ten feet tall. The colorful bougainvilleas are the perfect desert backdrop. There is a cactus here indigenous to Arizona that was imported just for the golf course and it seems to be thriving. At the Doha Garden Club, we heard a few stories about one of the Sheiks who owns five football field size greenhouses and flies around the world in his personal 747 collecting new varieties of plants. He has a family 747 that follows him to bring his new acquisitions home. He has an on-site horticulturist, plumber and I think they said 20 workers per building live there. I cannot imagine the labor force that tends to the Doha Golf Club. At our club in Bintan, Indonesia the workers used to weed the fairways by hand and I have to think it is even more intensive here.

We settled into seats in the grandstand at the 16^th/17^th holes and watched some great golf for the last few hours. The people watching was extraordinary!

Saturday morning, somewhere in Doha a woman of Japanese descent got dressed. To attend a golf tournament in the desert, she put on gray tights, brown knit pants, white sox and black tennis shoes topped with a white mock turtle neck, a long sleeve black sweater WITH a knee length gold and black sparkly tunic (it would have made any Saints fan proud). Her visor was oversized – black in the front and gold on the sides and she was carrying a black jacket with just enough of the Burberry lining peeking out with her Gucci gray and black tote. Her husband joined her sporting a bushy mustache, Elvis sideburns and a black Harley Davidson cowboy hat.

There was actually a woman in local dress working the tournament and watching someone in full Qatari National dress scream around in a golf cart was startling to say the least. I doubt it is very common as we only saw one man and one woman; since we couldn’t see her face – I couldn’t tell if it was a family thing or not. I have to think it was a true experience for the US golfers who were teeing off as the call to prayer echoed across the desert.

The restrooms are designed to look like castle shaped desert outposts. There is very little water pressure and I would imagine the sewage/water system is not connected to anything except a tank. The gift venue was all in temporary collapsible buildings and the snack bar was called the “Golf Restaurant”. The food was truly international. The American contribution was French fries! There were only three US players competing (one from Germantown, TN) so the food selection was mostly British. Beer was only sold in one area and served in bright blue cups, which could not be taken out of the beer tent.

The entire experience was wonderfully fun – very international – and free. Our Swedish neighbors hosted a Swedish caddy and all of them were celebrating the win by a Swede when we got home and all of the whispering before a shot was done with either a British or an Australian accent. We did meet a couple from Houston (oil company employees), a VMI alum whose daughter teaches at the Qatar branch of Texas A & M and a woman who has lived in twelve countries following her husbands career around the world. The crowd was small enough that we saw several people we knew as they passed by the 16^th hole.

Doha really is an international small town.