nightmare on istiqlal street

no, i'm not talking about michael jackson. though the fact that he is hanging out in neighboring bahrain, wearing an abaya & walking around with veiled children is mildly disturbing and confirms once again that no good can come from pushing a child into pop-stardom at age 5, the nightmare of which i speak is a little closer to home.....

by the way, happy new year! i hope 2006 is treating you very well thus far. 2005 closed out wonderfully for me - my sister sadie's wedding was beautiful and fabulously fun, my trip back to the US was wonderful, even if whirlwinded, and I started off 2006 with a trip to cairo - which is truly an amazing & alive city..... if back in 2005 you had asked me what would make returning to doha unbearable for me, i probably would have said if somehow it turned into saudi, if the traffic got any worse, or if they cut off even more foreign-based lifelines, like foreign music on the radio.... strangely enough, i have come back to qatar to find that all of the above have eerily come to pass...

doha is over-run by saudis and other halijis (people from the gulf) at the moment. estimates have ranged from 100,000 - 300,000 re: the number of saudis currently in doha. and when i say over-run i mean it. this is not a big city. the influx started with a trickle and has become a deluge, and it is anticipated to get even worse now that the weekend is here.... i knew something was up my first day back in doha when i walked into the mall to find a veritable riot outside the qatar national bank branch in city centre (the biggest mall). masses of robed men, pushing, shoving, shouting. security guards trying to maintain some sort of line. animated debates and wild gestures and flinging of headdresses.... i slinked by and made it to the grocery store, quite pleased with myself for realizing that there must be some new stock being offered on the doha securities market. (whenever there is a new IPO, scenes like this happen at every registration site.) but i knew that it would only be for a few days, then the qatari bidding period would end and the market would be opened up to us mere mortals not blessed enough to be born qatari and the storm would die down.... what i didn't know was that this wasn't an IPO for just any stock, and that it wasn't just going to be offered to qataris at a special rate. it turns out that a powerful new islamic bank is in the midst of the grandest IPO since google here in doha. it's a purely islamic bank, which is huge, will operate across the region, and has structured the offering such that after qataris, all GCC nationals get an early shot specially priced shares. [GCC = gulf cooperation council, the regional organization of the gulf states] however, everyone needs to register for their shares in person. so doha has become the hottest spot in the region as halijis from everywhere flock to get their piece of this historic action... the saudis are by far the largest group - many just driving over the border. as i said, i've heard estimates from 100,000 - 300,000 (which was apparently the gulf times figure), so i'll be safe and say there are 200,000 saudis in sweet little doha at the moment. plus people from the rest of the gulf. the city is absolutely swamped.

traffic is abysmal. there are more SUVs with terrible drivers everywhere. and of course there are all sorts of bizarre new construction projects going on making matters worse. i swear i will never understand why the roads here are always under construction for no apparent reason. what happens is one day there's a road, the next it's simply closed off. or part of it is. or there's a diversion..... the roundabout closest to my house is under construction at the moment. a large sign was a erected that says "deep excavation" and the workers appear to be digging a pit where the sidewalk and one corner of the roundabout once were. those signs always baffle me. deep excavation for what? oil? no, that's not in this region. artifacts? no. dinosaurs? no. traffic is so bad at the moment that my commute to work this morning, a simple trip of approximately 3 miles which usually takes no more than 5 minutes, took me 1 hour and 45 minutes.... i'm not kidding. it was during this commute that i realized i was living in nightmare on istqilal street. [istiglal = independence btw] after reaching the rainbow roundabout [site of ambiguous "deep excavation" project # 23] and seeing it was totally bottlenecked, i cleverly turned off to take a little shortcut i know.... only to discover that the next roundabout - the qatar sports club roundabout - was a war zone. the qatar sports club was one of the registration sites for the IPO, so there were cars parked everywhere - on the street, sidewalk, grass, hanging in the trees, and about 10,000 saudi men milling around, and about 10,000 more impatiently trying to get to the roundabout and driving poorly. this was on istqilal street. where, to make matters worse, i saw a dead puppy. (i'm not even kidding. looked like a yellow lab. (the exxon mobile compound is there & a lot of other foreigners live in that area so it was probably from one of those homes. the locals don't keep dogs.)) after sitting in traffic for some time, mourning the puppy, i reached the roundabout only to have it be closed by the police because there had been an accident. no surprise there. i forlornly watched the two would-be shareholders rant at each other as i turned the only way i could - the wrong way - and kept going. at the next roundabout, i decided to give up on this whole area of town and go the long way round via t.v. roundabout (so named because the al-jeezera tower is there). however, this was a terrible mistake because i sat in traffic for about 45 minutes just trying to reach the roundabout. this is when the third part of this perfect storm of misery got to me - the radio.

when i first came back to doha, all the radio stations were only playing prayers all the time, 24 / 7. this was because an important sheikh in the UAE had just died. he was vice premier of the UAE & president of dubai or something along those lines. apparently, the whole region went into mourning, including the radio.. however, when the mourning ended and regular radio resumed, the one radio station i liked, a dance and R&B station from dubai (where else?), didn't resurface. apparently it has been blocked.... this is a big tragedy. i found it extremely gratifying and a source of quiet joy to be able to drive around doha listening to gwen stefani or madonna or whatever other scandalous and cheesy songs they played. now, i am forced to listen to local radio, which aside from the occasional gem of a call-in show (when i can understand it), is basically terrible. all broadcasts must be interrupted at prayer times for the call to prayer. this is very often followed with a hypnotic chorus of two voices, a man and a woman, repeating after each other melodiously, extolling listeners to "read the quran, read the quran, read the quran, read the quran, read the quran" for some time. that was what i was listening to when stuck in my car in a sea of saudis stuck in their cars, saddened by a dead puppy and late for work. after the 'read the quran' bit, some stations also do what i think of as the 'paradise rhapsody.' it starts with the sounds of a bunch of tweeting birds and rushing water. then the water (presumably a river or a stream) just quiets down, and your just left with tweeting. the whole segment lasts a good 3 - 5 minutes (which is a lot of tweeting). i'm not really sure what that is about. my theory is that maybe it's the sounds of paradise... ? anyway, the "tweet, tweet, tweet" just added to the nightmarishness.... i've since decided that the birds in my paradise will not have high-pitched tweets, and will in fact be a jazz band. ;-)

but enough on that. being back has not been all bad. (though i am laying low until this IPO insanity is over) i have become closer with one remarkable qatari woman and have learned more about qatari married life and qatari society through her. it all continues to intrigue me, perhaps because it is so hard to know and understand. it is, quite literally, so covered. her friendship is definitely a growing joy in the new year.... otherwise, life is quiet. classes don't start again until february, so i have a lot more time to stare at the sand and ponder the sky. [there was crazy weather earlier this week actually - apparently caused by violent sandstorms in the north - the whole city was basically just covered in sand. even the air looked sand-coloured. truly bizarre.]

and that's about the shape of things with me... i hope this finds you well, whatever sky you're pondering.