His Highness Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al Thani, Heir Apparent, Crown Prince of Qatar, is getting married tomorrow, and today is a national celebration like you wouldn't believe. A friend of mine has been in the Arabian Gulf area for eight years, and he said he's never seen anything like this.
All of the major families of Qatar have erected huge majilis tents and lighted, carpeted outdoor courtyards along the main thoroughfare that leads to the main palace. This road also runs past Education City, so I have been watching the preparations for the past few days as I came to and from work. Thursday evening as I left work, I saw a group of Qataris gathered around a huge fire, out in front of one of the elaborate setups, so I stopped to see what was going on. They were drinking tea and visiting, and they welcomed me and told me that the big party would happen on Friday--in honor of Sheikh Tamim's wedding. They were part of the Al Hababi family, and hoped that His Highness the Emir would visit them at some point on Friday; apparently he tries to make the rounds and make an appearance at each family's majilis.
Today at lunch, I mentioned to my good friend Clint that I wanted to check out the shindig this evening, and he and a visiting brother, Jason, agreed to go with me. We put on our nice threads and headed over there after dark. We drove down the main road, gawking at the elaborate festivities, all the way to the palace. We wanted to get into the huge event happening there, but that was an invitation-only event, and we were turned away at the gate. Even my TAMUQ ID wasn't any help. So, we headed back up the road, looking for a likely party to crash.
Picture a large square plot of ground, roughly 50 yards on a side, with a huge open-front tent running across the back side. The tent, and the courtyard in front of it, are carpeted with hundreds of large Persian rugs. The courtyard is surrounded by lights strung up on poles and up to the tops of the tent poles, and bordered by a row of plush couches all the way around. Couches line the back wall of the tent, chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and in the very center of the back wall is the seat of honor, a fancy couch with a red carpet leading to it all the way from the front edge of the courtyard. In one front corner of the courtyard, a huge fire is burning, and several men sit around it making huge pots of Arabic coffee and tea, which are distributed to the hundreds of family members and guests milling about in the tent and courtyard.
At some point, about a dozen drummers in traditional garb strike up a beat and start singing a traditional song, and more than a hundred Arabs, of all ages, draw their swords and start dancing in a large circle counter-clockwise around the drummers, singing along. The dance lasts maybe fifteen minutes.
Clint, Jason, and I spotted a group that looked like they were just starting the sword dance, so we stopped there. We walked past the fire in the corner, three westerners drawing stares from the gathered Arabs, and had just taken up a good position to view the dance, when Clint, who is an English teacher at Qatar University, recognized two of his students standing nearby. We all greeted each other, and the students put a sword in Clint's hand and dragged him into the crowd of sword-wielding dancing Arabs. Once Clint had made a few rounds, the students did the same for Jason and me. The dance is something like a hop-step, in time to the drums, and you hold the sword straight up over your head. Some guys would swing their swords around, something resembling a mock swordfight, so I had to watch out for those swinging blades. The edges weren't sharp, but the tips were plenty pointy.
After we did the sword dance, another acquaintance of Clint's appeared with several other men, and they welcomed us warmly. They took us by the hands and led us toward the seat of honor. We were wondering just who the VIP was whom we were going to get to meet, but to our amazement, they sat us down in the seat--an extremely rare experience for a non-Arab--and one of the most influential members of this particular family, Al Yafia, sat down beside us. We were then greeted by many men, both young and old, as honored guests.
The traditional Arab greeting involves two or three kisses on the right cheek (not usually kissing the cheek, just brushing cheek-to-cheek and making slight kissing sounds) or nose-to-nose. When a young man greets an elderly man, he shows honor by kissing the old man's forehead or nose. Most westerners don't participate in this type of greeting because they are put off by it for one reason or another, but all three of us joined right in, and these Arabs were delighted and honored by our attempts to participate in their customs--as I have found to be the case in almost all of my dealings in this region.
We sat in the seat of honor for probably fifteen minutes, during which a cameraman filmed us and put Clint's face on a huge TV screen at one end of the tent. That was funny enough, but it so happened that it was prayer time, and a bunch of the men were going through the Muslim prayer rituals near the TV, such that it looked as if they were prostrating themselves to Clint's image.
Finally, they took a few still pictures of us, and brought over a large incense burner, about 18 inches tall, filled with glowing, smoking coals that had a very fragrant aroma. This was held in front of each of us in turn, and we each wafted the smoke onto ourselves, into our jackets and clothing (see this article for more thorough coverage of this custom). We were then escorted, with considerable fanfare, all the way down the red carpet to the edge of the courtyard. We had honored them with our visit, and they had honored us in return.
We went to grab something to eat, and all we could do was shake our heads and laugh about the blessing that God had bestowed. Clint said that it was the most amazing experience he'd ever had at a wedding party, and Jason and I had to agree. It's definitely a memory to last a lifetime.