What a day! First thing this morning, we had a bomb threat on several buildings in the Education City complex--someone found a typewritten note claiming that there were three bombs each in the senior school, junior school, Cornell, and Texas A&M, and they would all explode before 9 AM. The police evacuated all of the buildings and brought in the bomb squad to conduct a full sweep. We ended up getting the day off, so Khaled, Kendall and I drove out to Abdullah's camel camp. On my previous (first) visit, when Abdullah had helped us find the camel bones, I had promised to come back with my instruments and provide a bit of entertainment for him. It took a bomb threat to get me out there, but hey. I remember having a bomb threat back in high school, but for some reason (maybe the fact that the former president of Chechnya was blown up by a car bomb here in Doha a few weeks ago?) a bomb threat over here in the middle east seems to carry a bit more gravitas.
Before we headed out of town to Abdullah's, though, I had to keep a meeting with our Microsoft support reps (it's easy to forget about meetings after a bomb threat, dontcha know). Since we couldn't meet in the office, they agreed to follow us to Landmark Mall for coffee. As we were leaving Education City, the police were in the process of shutting down the roadway because His Highness the Emir was about to drive through. They block all side roads, exits from parking lots, roundabouts, etcetera, and armed guards are posted at strategic points down the street. It's rather impressive and/or disconcerting, depending on how you look at it. A policeman waved us onto the street just before he blocked our exit--which left us as the only two vehicles on the street, right in front of the gauntlet, apparently travelling the exact route that His Highness was about to cover. We were hurried through the next two roundabouts while traffic from all other directions was blocked, got waved through two red lights, and ended up at Landmark in record time. I wish I had a picture of the looks on the support reps' faces as they emerged from their vehicle. "Wow! What was that all about?" they asked. I replied, "Oh, they do that for me all the time."
Getting to Abdullah's camp takes about an hour...45 minutes on the highway, and about 15 minutes across rolling desert hills, with terrain varying between rock and deep sand. There are some beautiful geologic features, rock and sandstone outcroppings, and one very impressive mesa that's probably one of the highest points in the country. Our GPS unit was in my office, inaccessible due to the bomb threat, so we had to rely on Divine Providence to lead us back to Abdullah's camp. We made it, but unfortunately Abdullah was off visiting in Saudi Arabia--the border is just a few km from his camp--so we spent some time with three of his hired hands: Corban-Ali ("offering of Ali"), a Bengali, Idris ("Enoch"), a Sudanese, and Shams Iddin ("sun of faith"), a Nepalese. I met Corban-Ali last time, and in fact he still had the stuffed camel calf's head that he was working on last time. He started off by giving us a glass of fresh camel milk. Interesting taste. We talked awhile, he gave us some hot sweet tea, we talked awhile longer, and he gave us some karak tea--tea, milk, and sugar, boiled together...one of my favorite Arabic drinks. I had been told by someone else that my first glass of camel's milk would probably make me hurl, but I haven't suffered any such effects. So far, anyway.
The wind was blowing pretty hard when we got out there, and the sand was thick enough in the air that visibility was probably between a quarter and a half mile. Corban-Ali and Idris share an 8x8' tent made of chain-link fence sections covered with tarps and heavy blankets, with a south-facing doorway. The floor is an old piece of carpeting, and each man has a small cot for sleeping and/or sitting. The wind and sand were pretty formidable, but inside the tent it was pretty snug...especially with six of us crammed in there.
Corban-Ali has been in Qatar for ten years, Idris for 18. Shams Iddin seemed to be the youngest of the three, maybe in his late teens or early 20s, and he's been in Qatar for three years. He was a latecomer to our meeting--we saw him appear at a distance, walking toward us out of the sandstorm. He was looking for three lost camels, but he took a break to sit with us. Khaled and Kendall both speak Arabic and English, so I managed to keep up with the conversation, for the most part.
Once I got back to the house (with sand in all my exposed crevices, mind you), the dog was gone. Yes, the dog...some of our friends' kids found a stray dog, a medium-sized retriever mix puppy about 8 months old, in the complex. He was pretty scrawny, covered with fleas, and probably as wormy as the day is long, so of course we took him in. Quarantined in the side patio (we have no yard, it's all brick), we fed him and sprayed him for fleas. He woke me up howling every hour, on the hour, from 4 AM on, two nights in a row. It was annoying, but he was a pretty sweet dog.
I really wanted to keep him, but the fact that we have no yard, coupled with the time constraints that a puppy would entail, convinced me that it would be better to turn him over to the local rescue operation--an American lady who set up a grooming business over here as a "front" for the express purpose of placing homeless dogs. They think he'll be easy to place in a good home, but if for some reason they can't, I may ignore my clearer head and allow my heart to prevail.
The breaking news is that the bomb threat came from a 14-year-old American kid. It must be like Khaled said...they don't get snow over here, which means they don't have "snow days" that close the schools...so they make up for it with "bomb threat days." Stupid kid probably just didn't want to have to take his spelling test. I hope they lock him up for awhile, and maybe give him a stiff lashing for good measure. Heck, give me ten minutes with him and I'll do it myself.
Posted by jon at March 16, 2004 03:45 AM