I was wrong about Ramadan. It didn't start this morning; it started at sundown today, since the Muslim day starts at sunset. They're on a whole different calendar, those Muslims. What an interesting day! First, Zach, Danna, myself, and a Pakistani fellow named Daoud (the Arab form of "David") were taken to get our medical tests, which are required for residency. Daoud was born and raised in Qatar, but he's not Qatari since he's not of Qatari descent. I told him that if he'd been born on American soil he'd automatically be an American, which he thought was a pretty good deal. Now, about the clinic...picture in your mind a typical construction site shack. You know, the white trailer box on cinder blocks, linoleum floor, knotty pine wood panelling, window A/C unit. Now, picture six or eight of them joined together at right angles, sitting on hot sand, with a bunch of Arabs inside. That's the clinic.
We got to go to the front of the line, since our driver informed them that we were with the Qatar Foundation. Everybody except Danna, of course...she had to go to the women's side of the clinic, and the driver couldn't go over there to get her to the front of the line. In the first room, a guy took our blood pressure. Second office, a guy had us raise our shirts, and he put a stethoscope to our chests to make sure we had heart and lungs. Third room--this one with a handwritten sign that read "SAMPLES LAB"--they drew a vial of blood. The technician asked me, "You like the needle?" When I answered in the negative, he laughed heartily...a little too heartily. Then it was off to the hospital for our chest x-rays. Danna was a few minutes behind us, but the women's side of the clinic had an x-ray machine, so she was all done.
We got to sit in the hospital for 15 minutes or so, during which I quizzed Daoud on Arabic terms and Qatari customs. I almost got us all in trouble by asking the wrong questions. First, I referred to "Sheika Moza" instead of "Her Highness" which is a big no-no in public. Then, I asked about the size of the King's family--another no-no. Daoud kept laughing nervously, looking around, and shushing me. I'm sure he thought it was funny as all get-out, this crazy Texan asking all the wrong questions. Hey, I'm a good sport. I told him that President Bush's family gets their whole life aired out in the daily papers...they can still keep secrets, but it's a lot harder to do in America. We did manage to find several interesting things we could actually talk about in public. The traditional Muslim greeting is "peace and blessings" and it sounds a lot like the Hebrew version, "shalom alechem." In Arabic (as I understand it), it's pronounced "as-salaam o alikum," and the proper response is "wa-alikum o salaam." "Shukran" means "thank you," and "minfadlik" means "please." Got that?
They finally herded about eight of us into the x-ray area, had us all take off our shirts, and one by one we stood in front of the x-ray machine and the old, tall, gray-headed, thoroughly disinterested Arab doctor said (in our respective native tongue), "Take a deep breath, hold it, now don't breathe." No shielding, no radiation badges, nada. There were a couple of nasty-looking lead-lined pads sitting next to a handwritten sign that said, "Gonad shields," but of course none of us were going to touch them, much less use them. I wish I'd worn my lead-lined underwear....
This is socialized medicine, folks. If anybody thinks they want the government to be in charge of health care in any way--and this includes Medicare, prescription drugs, the whole shootin' match--then they need to visit a few places that suffer with socialized medicine. When my wife and I were here several weeks ago, a lady in the local church had just died due to complications from gall bladder surgery. How many people in the U.S. die from gall bladder surgery? I'll take privatized, capitalist, market-driven medical care any day, thanks. The U.S. has the best healthcare system in the world, and as long as we can keep the government in its proper Constitutional role, it will remain the best. After all, where did the Qatar Foundation go to find the best medical school for their Education City project? The European Union? Canada? Anywhere in the Middle East? They came to the United States. Think about this when you tell your representatives how to vote on healthcare-related issues.
Once we got back to work, I found a way to get on top of the Cornell building to have a look around and check the line-of-sight to my house, and took a few pictures while I was up there. This evening, at the beginning of Ramadan, everybody in the country with a mobile phone got a text message saying, "Ramadan Mubarak," ("Blessed Ramadan") in both English and Arabic. It's perfectly OK to evangelize Islam over here, but not Christianity--which is the only thing that sort of torques me about the text message. Q-Tel is the state-sanctioned communications monopoly over here, and they have every right to send whatever they want over their system; even so, just imagine the uproar if AT&T, Sprint, and MCI were to send every mobile wireless customer in the U.S. a "Happy Easter" text message!
Nothing to do but love them and pray for them...and, truth be told, these folks really are quite lovable, and their culture is impressive in many ways. If you want to gain a much better understanding of Arabs and their culture, I highly recommend Understanding Arabs by Margaret Nydell and Foreign to Familiar by Sarah Lanier. Please pray for me as I attempt to build bridges in this place.
Posted by jon at October 26, 2003 12:19 PM