glimpses

sometimes i feel as though my stories and thoughts gather slowly, drifting about aimlessly in my mind or more like in the air around me until i take the time to sit down and reach up to pull them down, collect them, and try to weave some something sensible out of them.... or something nonsensical, as the case may be. i suppose as i sift through the collection before me at the moment, it's a bit of both.... there's been both heaviness and lightness since i last wrote, and these gathered glimpses reflect that.

first, something light.... i have been corrupted. i spent friday night at a club dancing to arabic music all night long. i didn't know experiences like this could happen in doha! the crowd was mostly lebanese, but there were other nationalies as well. no qataris, that much was certain. but it was a haven of dim lighting, strong drinks, laughter, smoke, women giggling in tank-tops and men slapping each other on the back in that manly way.... quite a scene. there was a live singer - lebanese - who would occasionally leave his captain's position at the helm of the dancefloor and wander around with the microphone amid the seas of tables, serenading the waves of patrons. it was liberating and spectacular and so much fun and i felt very scandalous! there is a wild side to doha, you just have to look for it....

as for things wild, friday's merriment was maybe all the more more welcome after a week that was perhaps a bit heavier..... it was raining at night for a few days last week.... it was very strange - i never saw the rain, and whenever i woke up thinking i could hear it and excitedly rushed to my window, i wouldn't see it. but the evidence was there in the morning, and my car was splattered with sand-drops that indicate there was rain in the desert... i couldn't help but feel that it was symbolic or appropriate somehow. of what, i'm not certain, but the stealth of it, the subtlety, the fleetingness, the echo, seemed appropriate. it seemed to reflect so much of what happens in society here, so much that is secret and obscured, yet ubiquitous, subtle but glaring, invisible but bright as day... (and maybe i enjoyed the club so much because everything was open - elbows were revealed, couples touched, women smoked (women are banned from smoking in public in a lot of places, such as the unviersity), people spoke to loudly, and danced, and drank, and it didn't matter.)

or maybe i was just feeling that way about the secret night rain because i was having a bout of being disheartened or frustrated, or whatever the politically correct term is for my politically incorrect frustrations with this place....

i met with a qatari girlfriend for coffee in the middle of that week.... she wanted to tell me that she has a "friend" - not a boyfriend, but a "friend" - someone she talks on the phone with everyday. an egyptian (even though she was quick to remind me that she usually hates egyptians, he was an exception). she wanted to tell me because she is excited and all aflutter about this development in her life, and knew i wouldn't judge... this friend is married with children. and i don't judge. and this is not uncommon. not uncommon at all. she's married to a man 20 years older than she is. they see each other for less than three hours each day, between 5:00/6:00 - 8:00 pm, after he awakes from his nap and before he goes to his club to spend time with his friends and brothers, and is emotionally distant and closed when they are together. he returns home after midnight and has dinner then, when she is already asleep. she is awake and getting the children sorted for school and going to work herself before he is up in the morning. three of the children are step-children from his first marriage, two girls, 16 and 13, and a boy, 11. the youngest is her 4-year-old daughter. the fact that she only has one child, and a girl, is a source of constant trouble. her mother has been putting pressure on her since her daughter's birth to have another child. and there is good reason for her to put such pressure. under the inheritance laws, the son from the first marriage, 11-year-old muhammed, would inherit over her, the 30-year-old current wife and mother of his children. she must have a boy, and she must have at least 3 children to be equal to the first wife. my friend has not felt ready to have another child yet. shortly after her daughter was born she went to the US, a new mother and young wife, with her baby, to get her master's degree. and she wants to continue to develop her skills now that she has returned and is working before having another child. plus, she is just not ready. her mother convinced her husband she needed to have another child, so her husband has stopped providing her with birth control pills (and she can't get them on her own). she was all upset about the fact that she had stopped the pill just the same week when she met this new man..... when we got together later in the week, she was calling him "boyfriend." he is married too, but his wife and children are in egypt. they were planning to meet, which is not an easy thing in this society. she asked me for advice in planning a meeting. (though i explained i was hardly an expert in planning extramarital affairs in a repressive islamist state, i listened and tried to be as useful as i could.) this could ruin her if anyone found out. but she is not alone. she'll tell me how most of her friends are not happy in their marriages and nearly everyone has something on the side (though they don't talk about it to each other out of fear). and she acknowledges that her husband is better than many - he at least sees her each day, and doesn't stay out at the club or the majlis all night long like some, and she doesn't think he has any mistresses... she will also occasionally talk about how qatari women are on the whole also terribly sexually frustrated because in a marriage the wife's role is to please the husband. the wife's pleasure is not considered. and more than sex, she explained, she yearns for love of a sort that is deeper than the diamond watch he gave her for valentine's day. (it was a lota bling) this eyptian, she said, listens to her and talks and makes her feel cared for... they have met for coffee. i'm not sure more will happen than that. perhaps that is enough. and i don't judge. i especially don't judge because, like the rain, this is happening all the time, but we just don't see it. and the men are even worse. in addition to multiple wives, it is very en vogue to have at least two mistresses. or so i am told. and their behaviour suggests as much. i'm oogled and objectified in a different way. for qatari women it seems even stranger to me, maybe worse. i'll never forget being with a different qatari friend (in an amazingly loving and happy marriage) who when out fully covered (abaya, shailya, yashmeek, the works) and walking with her 10-month old son in a stroller was having qatari men pass her pieces of paper with their phone numbers, or yell the numbers at her. and that is not uncommon.

anyway, i don't have any grand conclusions - sensical or not so - but the more i see, the more i think that gender relations and relationships become truly warped under the strain of this society. (this same week, i learned that much as homosexual activity occurs among the young men, lesbianism is wide-spread among the women at qatar university (not unlike at any all women's institution) ... this is nature. but it is denied here.) i can't help but think of the trees in wuthering heights - warped to grow sideways by the strong winds, and the characters were warped like the trees. maybe it's not surprising that in this barren landscape, and with the winds of wahabi islam ceaselessly blowing, the people learn to keep the surfaces empty, but try to find ways to flourish beneath the surface....
(or maybe i'm thinking too much and this happens everywhere.)

tumbling on to something lighter.... two stories - one from school, one from work.

we sometimes have night meetings for work. (because of the split-shift working hours and the afternoon nap time, offices are open in the evenings.) at one recent meeting, i found myself sitting through the cultural ritual which i affectionately think of as the 'who's the most important sheikh?' game. the essence of the game is simple - the later you are, the longer you make other people wait, and the more you talk on your phone, or at least the more that it rings, the more important you are and the more likely you are to be the most important sheikh in the room. we were to meet with a number of important sheikhs who are starting an islamic investment bank together (just pulling together US$500 million from their personal pocket change to start the venture). the meeting was scheduled to begin at 8:00 pm in a meeting room in a hotel. everyone involved was in the building by 8:15. but everyone was downstairs on the phone conducting other important business or otherwise engaged being too important to come to the room and sit down (playing the game) until about 9:25, when the last guy - the most important sheikh! - made it. i couldn't help but smile into my fresh strawberry juice (i wasn't too bothered by waiting because at least there was fresh strawberry juice)..... i wasn't smiling quite as much when the meeting ended up lasting until 11:45, but as ever, it was a learning experience....

and apparently when it comes to learning, i am doing rather well. sort of. in class the other day one of my professors called me over during our break to tell me i was going to receive an 'outstanding student' award for my performance last semester and that i needed to be prepared to go to an awards ceremony on the 30th. we were both looking at the paper that explained all this which had the names of honored students and their scores. dr. ibtisam, the professor, is an honest woman, so even as she was looking at it, she kind of shook her head and said she wasn't sure how i got this, that i didn't deserve to be on the list. i said i agreed, i wasn't an outstanding student. (i'm really not!) i only had an 86% last semester, while the other students on the list all had scores in the 90s, plus many students work much harder than me. i said i didn't understand it either. she said that she thought it was all dr. abdullah's doing, that originally there were only two students selected and then they decided to add a third and he lobbied hard for me. ;-) i saw dr. abdullah a few days later when he gave me my certificate and reminded me that i need to be ready for the ceremony. so i asked him about it, explaining that i really didn't deserve it because i really wasn't an outstanding student and wasn't even formally in the program but was just auditting (which is how i justify my less than stellar performance). he basically agreed that i didn't have a terribly high score, but explained that he gave me the award because i was the nicest. he said i had the nicest spirit. so that was outstanding. very sweet of him.... reminded me of being in the first grade when, so i've been told, i came home and announced to my parents that i was the nicest kid in my class, so they were doing a good job and should keep up the good work..... ;-) being nice is still working for me even today. i just hope i don't have to give a speech at the ceremony because then i may be revealed as less than outstanding.

anyway, we have a holiday from school next week, so i am heading to dubai this weekend and then to morocco for 8 days (!!!), which is most outstanding and sure be an adventure.

that's about the weight of things of late - some heaviness, much light. and much sunlight.