I got lost yesterday, and learned several valuable lessons in the process. First, I learned that City Center Mall is nowhere near the "City Center" to which road signs point...the signs will take you to the center of downtown Doha, which is great if you're looking for the souqs (private shops), but terrible if you're looking for the mall. Second, I learned that you shouldn't drive on E-Ring Road at night. Downtown Doha is laid out in somewhat of a semicircular arrangement, with "ring roads" running parallel to each other around the semicircle...the one closest to the bay is A-Ring Road, the next is B-Ring Road, and so on. E-Ring Road is currently the farthest out, and is not yet finished, so I was driving baja-style, at night, across sand and rocks in a Toyota Corolla. Streets that are under construction are not well-marked here in Doha, and the street maps tend to omit inconsequential information such as unfinished roads, roundabouts that are closed, etc.
To make a long story short, I got lost, but eventually found my way back to my villa, where the guys were waiting with the nine boxes of our stuff that we shipped before I left. Customs had gone through a couple of the boxes, but everything looked intact.
Incidentally, you rarely make left-hand turns in Doha. Most of the streets are two-way divided, and there are no left-turn lanes. If you need to get to something on the other side of the road, you drive to the next roundabout, circle around, and come back up the other direction. As soon as you come out of a roundabout, you need to look to the right, because the speed limit for that stretch of road is posted there, and usually only there. Even right-hand turns are limited, with occasional "slips" which take you off of the main road onto a secondary road with access to shops etc. This all results in much faster overall traffic flow, which is generally very nice, and I have come to appreciate roundabouts--I can honestly say that I'll miss them when I get home.
Friday morning, one of the groundskeepers at our complex rang my doorbell and asked if I wanted my car washed. When he finished and I paid him, he asked me not to tell the manager about it. Apparently these guys are supposed to work through the management to provide these sorts of services to the tenants, but if they do it "on the side" they make more money.
After church, we ate lunch at Rick's, which is an American food place downtown. Since it's Ramadan, they're not supposed to be serving food during daylight hours, so the door was locked and the sign said "Closed." We knocked on the door, and a waiter opened up, glanced around outside, then quickly ushered us in and locked the door behind us. The place was packed with hungry folks. We felt like we were entering a speak-easy. I had the "Doha Special" which consisted of two eggs (I had mine over-easy), simulated ham (actually quite good), and Texas toast. I had a side of biscuits and gravy. Good stuff.
Friday evening, we were all invited to a barbecue at the home of Abdul and Hala. Hala works at TAMU-Q and handles most of our immigration and residency paperwork, appointments, etc. Today was her birthday. They have a three-year-old son, Bader (the closest English pronunciation is "bah-del")--we'll have to get him together with my boy. They live in a beautiful home in a new and very high-class gated community in the northern part of the city. The community has tennis courts and other amenities, and is situated close to the West Bay, so the beach is a short walk away. The deed restrictions require that houses conform to traditional Qatari architecture on the exterior, so the appearance of the neighborhood will remain very traditional.
Abu Bader ("Dad of Bader") designed and built the house himself (actually two houses together--Hala's parents live on one side), and also built a fantastic barbecue grill in the back yard. He grilled red snapper, lamb chops, chicken, and kebabs, all of which were outstanding. Hala made several traditional Arab dishes, and I can't remember what any of them were called (hey, I'm a man...I remember what was on the grill) but everything was delicious. We ate in the back yard, which is beautifully landscaped. For dessert, we had a birthday cake, and a traditional Ramadan dessert that was something like a thin fried pancake wrapped pastry-style around mozzarella cheese and dipped in syrup. Their cakes are covered with a whipped frosting that is less sweet than our typical frosting, and topped with thinly-sliced fruit and a clear sugary gelatin glaze that makes the cake look like it's been shellacqued. After dinner, Hala's brother broke out a shisha (with apple-flavored tobacco) and the guys stood around talking and smoking the shisha (I'll confess that I took a few puffs). Zach and I spent a good deal of time playing with Bader and talking with Abu Bader, who lived in Minnesota for sixteen years before returning to the Middle East...he's a very interesting man, and very personable.
Danna spent a lot of time talking with Alia, who is our receptionist. She and her husband are Iraqi (Alia is always hesitant to tell Americans his name, which is Osama), and she assured Danna that virtually every Iraqi is overjoyed that America is in Iraq. The fighting, she says, is being perpetrated by Syrians and other non-Iraqi Arabs who were hired by Saddam and his loyalists to enter Iraq to stir up trouble with the Americans; however, our soldiers can't tell that it's not Iraqis fighting Iraqis out there...they just see a bunch of Arabs fighting, and they assume they're all Iraqis. If the Western media would exercise due diligence, they might uncover this sort of information themselves, but they're obviously more interested in trying to make Bush look bad than in providing accurate coverage of the situation.
Alia also informed Danna that Danna's name in Arabic means "precious one" and is the name of a rare blue jewel. In Iraq, though, "danna" means "the bomb." So she's either a precious jewel, or she's the bomb. Not bad either way.
Finally, a quick note about electrical products. There's no such thing as Underwriters Laboratories over here, so you never really know what you're getting when you buy electrical equipment. You can buy a plug strip at the store, bring it home, plug it in, and make sparks. My laptop shocked me the other day, because of some wacky ground loop in the plug strip. I'm going to have to find some higher-quality electrical gear before I start a fire or zap myself with this stuff.
Posted by jon at October 31, 2003 11:58 PM