Friday night was quite a shindig. QF put on a program and a buffet dinner for a crowd of about 1000 people involved with the Foundation in some way--employees, faculty, staff, students, and special guests. The program opened with greetings from the student leaders of the various QF institutions--Qatar University, Qatar Academy, Cornell, VCU, and Texas A&M. Each student began his or her remarks with a traditional Ramadan greeting (in Arabic), and continued in English to explain briefly what their educational experience meant to them. When the Aggie was called to the podium, he was greeted with whoops from the Aggies in the audience, and after he gave the traditional Ramadan greeting, he gave the traditional Aggie "Howdy!" and of course was answered by the Aggies in the audience...much to the amusement of the other guests.
The event was held at the Al-Shaqb Stud and Riding Academy...they raise and train world-champion Arabian horses. The facility looks like castle walls around a huge arena/courtyard area. Horse stalls are located in the perimeter walls. For this event, they had carpeted the arena grounds with large rugs. Multicolored pattern lights lit up the stone walls. As we walked through the gate, we passed through a gauntlet of women bearing various perfumes and oils...they put a dose of perfume into your right palm, so you can spread it on your hands and face, and then they put dabs of scented oil on the back of your left hand. They were burning fragrant incense as well.
At the far end of the arena were several stalls in which women had prepared various Ramadan foods for us to sample. One dish was sort of a chicken puree, one was basically pancakes, another was like crispy donut holes. In a couple of the stalls, women were painting with henna on ladies' hands and feet. The patterns were incredible, and varied depending on whether the woman was married or not. As I understand it, the henna "tattoos" wear off after two or three weeks.
After the students' remarks, Sheikh Hamad bin Ali Al-Thani took the stage to show off some of their award-winning horses. He speaks fairly good English, and is obviously a dedicated horseman. Arabians are very beautiful, graceful horses. We were then shown a short video on the traditions of Ramadan, including the Suhur meal, which is the last meal eaten before sunup, when the daily fast begins. Traditionally, a man would walk through the streets of town beating a drum and singing a Ramadan song to awaken everyone so they could eat Suhur prior to sunup, and they had a couple of guys and several children who walked around the arena doing what I dubbed the "Suhur Shuffle" to mark the beginning of the meal. During dinner, a group of musicians played traditional Arabic music.
I had chosen to sit with some locals, one of whom I knew as one of the QF immigration assistants. He's one of the guys who shows up whenever we're doing immigration-related processing and makes sure we get taken care of quickly and efficiently. His uncle was there, and we struck up a lengthy conversation on everything from Qatari educational issues to the weather in Las Vegas. He took me by the arm and showed me around the Ramadan food stalls, and made sure I tried a little of everything...we shared a plate full of the crispy donut holes, and then we had some Arabic coffee. I committed a faux pas by taking the coffee cup with my left hand, since I was holding the plate in my right. They cut me some slack since I was obviously not from around here. He instructed me that, when I handed the cup back, I should hand it straight to the woman if I wanted another cup of coffee, or shake the cup back and forth as I handed it to her if I was finished.
When the meal started, Abu Yusef steered me away from the main buffet table, to a table in between them that contained lamb--either boiled or roasted, I couldn't quite tell. As we dished rice onto our plates, the servers dished meat onto the rice. Abu Yusef said something to one of the servers in Arabic, and the server plopped a big chunk of meat onto his plate, about the size of a softball. "Whoa," I thought, "He must be hungry." When we got back to the table, he looked at me, said, "Look what I got," and turned the chunk of meat over. It was a cooked lamb's head, staring at me, grinning. He proceeded to tear the jaw apart and eat the tongue. I commented that there must be a certain technique for eating a lamb's head. "Yes, it's like eating crab legs," he said.
You can probably guess what happened next: he broke open the skull cavity, popped about half of the brain into this mouth, and offered the other half to me. I declined, he insisted, and so I dug in with my fork and retrieved a bite of gray matter. For a brief moment, I thought about the fact that mad cow disease is spread by infected brain matter, but since this was a sheep and not a cow, I figured I was relatively safe. Let me just say that it didn't taste like chicken. It was somewhere along the lines of liver, but not really...it tasted...well, like brain. It was the consistency of sticky peanut butter, or maybe floor adhesive. I can't say that it tasted particularly good, but neither was it particularly ba-a-a-a-d.
Suhur was followed by an outstanding fireworks display, coordinated with music. It was one of the best displays I've ever seen. Let me tell you, these folks sure do know how to fast. :)
Saturday was work-on-the-house day, cleaning up the back patio and installing the slick retractable clothesline--two units with four lines each--in the servant's quarters. Saturday afternoon, Mark and Greg called and asked if I wanted to go over to the Ayers' with them. I'd never met the Ayerses, but they were hosting some soldiers on R&R from Afghanistan, and grilling some food for supper. It sounded good to me, so I went. They have three kids--Nathaniel, 16, Morgan, 14, and Kyle, 7--and the whole family is learning to play the guitar. They'd found an instrument soukh where they could get Yamaha guitars for about $150 US...I played two of their guitars, and they play very well. I plan on paying a visit to that shop sometime soon.
The soldiers--three men and one woman--gave us an update on the state of affairs in Afghanistan. We had told them that the media seemed to be focusing on Iraq, so we hadn't heard much about Afghanistan in some time. They said that most of the bad guys had been rooted out, but there were still pockets of resistance up in the mountains. The two top priorities at this point are to kill the rest of the bad guys, and to train and equip the Afghan military and police so they'll be able to fend for themselves. Our soldiers are quite impressed with the mettle of the Afghani men.
David grilled lamb and chicken kebabs, huge shrimp, rock lobster, and steak, had fresh salsa and guacamole, mashed potatoes, beans (complete with contraband chunks of you-know-what, smuggled in from Dubai), and ice cream. It was a huge feast, and we sat down to play the guitars and sing afterward. We sang a few folk songs, I taught them the C-h-i-c-k-e-n song, and I finished up by singing "Gallant Men" for the soldiers to express our gratitude for their sacrifices. I was informed that I am now on the "permanent invitee" list for their cookouts. Which is nice, because those folks can cook.
When I got home, I figured I'd go for a walk and then hit the sack, but I got a call from Kendall to see if I wanted to go have coffee with him and BJ, who was in town on his way to Dubai for a conference. He took us to a side-alley hole-in-the-wall place comprised of several large concrete-floor rooms. One room had built-in couches all around the walls where several groups of men were talking and smoking, another room had a table in the center around which several men were playing dominoes and smoking a shisha, and a third room (the one we chose) had a couple of built-in couches with tables. Kendall speaks Arabic, and he ordered milk tea for us. Milk tea is just that--tea made with milk, but the tea is loose in the bottom of the cup (sort of like Turkish coffee, but much better tasting) so you don't want to drink it all the way down. I'll have to remember that place, because it was the real McCoy--none of that commercialized Starbucks nonsense--and it was only six Riyals (less than two dollars) total for our three teas and three waters. We had a good visit, and then I went home, walked a lap around the block, and went to bed. These days of rest can sure be tiring!
Posted by jon at November 8, 2003 10:41 PMI'm with your mom on this one! Couldn't you just fake some kind of sheep brain allergy to save face?
Gwen
Posted by: at November 13, 2003 08:54 AMDo not eat brains of anything. I think you can get Mad Cow from sheep, too, but maybe I made that up.
Posted by: Mom at November 10, 2003 02:34 PM