Doha: Keep Your Camera Handy

Today I had one of those experiences I have so often in Doha, a “no-one-would-believe-me” moment, but I have learned to keep my camera handy, and fortunately we were stopped in traffic so I could snap this one without endangering any lives, especially my own.

Traffic is steady, busy, but pretty mellow. Yeh, there are the normal “I’m-going-to-make-a-left-turn-from-the-right-lane” guys; I’ve lived here for so long it doesn’t even rate a roll of the eyes. It’s part of the Doha / Kuwait driving culture.

This, however, I only see in Qatar. Mr. I’m-So-Important-I-Can’t-Wait is this guy in the white Land Cruiser.

He is sitting half on top of the street median, trying to get back into traffic going in his direction. To get there, he drove down the wrong way down the street on the other side of the divider. At first, there was no traffic, but when traffic came, he got up on the divider so he was only HALF blocking traffic from the other direction, and he is bullying his way back into the line he was too important to wait in.

I carry my camera now, every day, in my purse, because I know if I just tell you about these things, you won’t believe them.

I have seen this also at major roundabouts. Some yahoo drives up the other side of the road to the roundabout to avoid waiting in the line. Up over the medians, facing oncoming traffic. I know, I know, what are they thinking?

In Kuwait, I was sickened by the number of young men killed on the roads every week, every month. If it were an epidemic killing young men, people would do something about it, but tell these guys to obey the law? Make them pay fines for reckless driving? Make them wear seat belts? Their behavior tells me that no one has ever held them accountable for their arrogant and dangerous driving habits.

While we are told that “no one is above the law” somehow the message hasn’t made it to these guys.

Halloween Post Mortem

Hallowe’en is really more a cultural tradition these days than a religious event. We no longer worry about spirits walking around on Hallowe’en, and wear costumes to try to scare them away from us. In fact, many of the trick-or-treaters who came by our house last night were pretty! There were fairies, and little mermaids, and some very alluring witches.

In fact, there were so many trick-or-treaters that we ran out! How embarrassing! I thought I had a LOT, but there were more trick-or-treaters than we had treats.

It was a great evening, altogether, and next year I will know better.

Here is our not-scary pumpkin. I wish you could see the ears – it is an orange cat pumpkin, in honor of the Qatteri Cat.

All the visitors made the Qatteri Cat jumpy. He was happy to stay inside and hide with all the action in the streets last night.

Back in Traffic; How Do You Alphabetize / File?

So today I became, once again, a legal driver in Qatar, five months to the day from my arrival. Yep, for those of you who never have the joy of trying to maneuver through the complexity of getting a license in a foreign country – you have NO idea. NO idea. There are people who try and try to get a license and never do.

We are really lucky. We have some very good people who help us get things done. Somehow, it’s my turn to be lucky today.

When I showed up at the office, however, one of the HR girls told me “Oh! Flana is not here today! You will have to come back.”

You all know how nice I am. I smiled at her and said “my husband told me to be here today to get my driver’s license. Someone is going to help me.” Smile again, big smile.

Sure enough, someone is going to help me, and it is someone who I like, someone who has helped me before and who is always calm and patient and knows how to persist pleasantly until he gets what he wants from the bureaucrats. In fact, I admire him, because people end up liking to help him. He is low key. He takes me to the driver’s station, where, because of my advanced age (DO NOT ASK) I have to have an eye test. This leads me to wonder. Doesn’t everyone have to have an eye test?

Then I wait, in the special ladies’ majlis:

I had to wait quite a long time, but I was comfortable, and while I was waiting, I read all the driving safety signs they had up along the ceiling. They were all in English and Arabic, and they were great thoughts, but too many words. Like if you are reading that many words: If you are driving too fast you may not get home alive (that is not a real one, but that was the gist of most of them) so I was creating a new driving safety campaign called the equal campaign:

Speed + Texting = (shows a vehicle turned on its side and all smashed

Speed + Weaving = Two or three crunched vehicles

Texting + Driving = QR (enormous fine)

Something simple to read, graphically simple, something you can glance at and get the meaning.

When I got my driver’s license, I was really happy, except for one tiny little thing – it’s kind of my name but not exactly my name. It’s an easy mistake to make, names can be complicated, but . . . it isn’t my name on my license. It’s my face, it’s my information – it isn’t my name. For half a heartbeat, I consider saying something and then Wisdom kicks in and I zip my lip.

So then, driving home in traffic, I got to thinking about names and how we file things, alphabetically, and even Europeans sometimes file us wrong, which has led us to first class seats because airlines can’t find us, etc. It isn’t always such a bad thing.

Then I started wondering about how Arab speaking people file. Like do you have half the files in the “A” drawer, like Al So-and-So and Al Somebody Else, and how do the sun and moon words affect the filing, like Ar Rayyan, or Ath Thalaka, or As Shams, etc. Once you have filed someone, the goal is to be able to retrieve that information? How does alphabetization work in Arabic? How are things filed?

So being stuck in traffic might not be so bad if someone answers my question and I learn something.

Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran

I saw a mention of this book in an Amazon.com referral as a book I might like, and was almost set to order it when something said “go check the stack of books Little Diamond left for you” and sure enough, I already had the book.

I use books as an incentive to get me through life’s inevitable tasks I don’t like – like “if I finish this project on time, I get to read this book as a reward.” It works for me.

When I first started reading Marsha Mehran’s book about three Persian sisters starting up a cafe in a small Irish town after fleeing Iran, I found it sour. The author has a critical point of view, and generally speaking, I don’t like hanging around with people who criticize others and judge them harshly. At the beginning of the book, Mehran introduces a lot of people, many of whom we are not meant to like.

Even the sisters are not all that sympathetic – at the beginning. But also, near the beginning, she discusses Persian cooking, the idea of balance in a meal, hot and cold, spicy and bland, so you kind of get the idea that if there is sour, then there will also be sweet. In addition, at the end of each chapter there is a wonderful recipe, a wonderful, fairly easy-to-follow recipe, and she included one, Fesanjan, that is my all-time favorite Iranian dish and now, I know how to make it, Wooo HOOOO!

Three sisters, orphaned by fate, held together by love and duty, start a cafe, which, against all odds, becomes a raging success. Raging success does not heal all the old wounds, however, nor the hearts that bear them, and we learn through the book what the sisters have borne and overcome.

It turns out to be a sweet book, one well worth reading. And oh! the recipes! In each chapter, there are also hints that make them even better, so you can’t just copy out the recipes and use them, you really have to read the book.

It’s a pity that two of the most wonderful countries in the world – Syria and Iran – are off limits. We’ve been back to Syria, and it was everything we remembered (see the Walking Old Damascus blog entries) but oh, how we would love to explore Iran. Sigh. The world turns, and we can only hope to be able to get there in our lifetime. Stranger things have happened.

NO PARKING!

On my way home, driving along the wall of our compound where they recently installed bright shiny new NO PARKING signs – not one or two, but like twenty; one every thirty feet – there are a whole brigade of big huge trucks, you know, the kind that accompany beginning construction? I am not even sure I can get through, there are so many, like six or seven or eight (it is a small street).

But one of the trucks is orange, and I am hoping hoping hoping, so I grab my camera out of my bag as I inch by, and yes! yes! he has parked right next to one of the signs. I take my shot and keep inching by, and just beyond the last truck on the left is a gaggle of truck drivers, I guess they are trying to figure out what to do about something.

When I get to our gate, I tell them, “there are many trucks parked by the compound wall” (here I point in the direction) “can’t you see them on the security cameras??” and the gate guy says there is a man fixing the camera input right now, but did I get the truck number?

(Did I get the truck number I am thinking??? GO DO YOUR JOB! YOUR JOB IS SECURITY! GO TELL THEM NOT TO PARK THERE!)

I smiled and said “you need to tell them to move their trucks, and not to park right by the compound wall, it is a security risk.” I am a nice lady, yes I am, and so I say this nicely, with a smile, but there is a hint of steel in my voice.

He says “we have people working out there! They will tell them!”

The people out there working are the gardening crew.

I said “No. Your people are about 400 feet away from the trucks, and they are gardeners. They are not going to tell Pakistani truck drivers to move their big trucks.” (The smile is still there, but there is a hardness in my eyes.)

He doesn’t want to go. “Did you get his number?” he asks again. “I say no,” but then I pull out my camera and show him the photo. His eyes widen. The security man comes, and the gate guard shows him and his eyes widen. He assures me they will call the Bolice immediately.

Did they? I don’t know. Honestly, you do what you can. Sometimes it is like knocking your head against a wall, it just feels so good when you stop.

Too Much Food

AdventureMan and I have lived more years outside our own country than inside it. We have lived on-and-off in the Middle East for more than 30 years. You’d think we would know everything by now, but we are still delighted to discover new things and to learn from the culture in which we are living.

Our Kuwaiti friends were good about letting us peek inside the culture, telling us stories of family life “before oil” and Kuwait traditions. Like women aren’t supposed to eat too much when they to to someone’s house for dinner or the people will say “do you think she has never seen food before?”

On the other hand, it is shameful not to provide enough food, so you always prepare way more than the group invited can possibly eat, like in ten years.

Sometimes a lot of the food goes to waste, but I have also discovered these wonderful plastic bags and tin trays found in every supermarket in the Middle East. What doesn’t get eaten now – gets eaten. I admit it, I am a lazy wife. I don’t like cooking big meals when it is just the two of us, so I love being able to pull something out of the freezer and have it all heated up and fresh for dinner.

It also makes me feel very ecological to have food in the freezer, ready to fix, and to know that not a lot went to waste. We are learning from our son and his sweet wife, and all the young adults in our family, who are WAY more ecologically aware than we ever were, and we thought we were pretty good, the generation who invented recycling.

AdventureMan used to bring home people for dinner, mostly guys from out of town in town for a short time who needed a home-cooked meal. We always had food in the freezer, something I could pull out on short notice.

One time, I made beef burgundy. When I went to serve it, I looked for the cheesecloth bundle of spices and couldn’t find it. I looked and looked, and then I figured I must have taken it out earlier and forgot I’d done it. Then, during dinner, one of the men had a very puzzled look on his face – he was chewing on the spices ball! I was SO embarrassed, but they all just laughed, thank God.

Fruit Crisps – Desserts (English: Crumbles)

There are two reasons to make fruit crisps. One, there is no better way to let ripe fruit star, take center stage, just when it hits its peak. Second – oh, it is SO easy.

Here is the original recipe I use:

Apple Crisp

From Mary Cullen’s Northwest Cook Book, 1946

Crisps are wonderful when made with fresh fruit, and not so much trouble as a pie requiring crusts. Here, the topping is delicious, and easy.

5 cups apples
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
3/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon cinnamon or nutmeg

Peel, core and slice apples and place in a greased baking dish or cassarole. Using a pastry blender, work together the butter, sugar, salt, flour and spices. Pack closely around apples. Bake in 425 degree oven for 45 – 50 minutes. Serve with whipped cream.

Berry Crisp

Substitute berries for apples. If berries are very tart, sprinkle with 1/2 cup sugar mixed with 1/2 cup flour before covering with crumb mixture.

Rhubarb Crisp

Use diced rhubarb in place of apples. Mix 1/2 to 1 cup sugar and 1/2 cup flour with rhubarb before placing in baking dish.

This time I made peach crisp:

You put the fruit in a buttered pie / tart plate:

You sprinkle the topping on, pat it down, and bake. Yes, it is that easy.

No, no end photo, sorry. It disappeared too quickly!

(In the Pacific Northwest, these are called Crisps. My English friend tells me that in England, they are called Crumbles.) So Easy.

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The Help by Kathryn Stockett

In my book club last year, one of the themes that continued to arise as we read books from many cultures was how we are perceived by the people we hire to help us in our homes. In The White Tiger, a Man Booker Award Winner, the main character lucks into a job working for a family as a driver. We see the people for whom he works from the inside, their sweet acts and all their flaws. We see how callous they can be, and, ultimately, how the driver takes his revenge and becomes his own boss. (Not one of my favorite books, but then again, I’m still thinking about it a year later, so there is something to be said for it.)

In Half of a Yellow Sun we saw an entirely different relationship (in a book I totally loved, BTW) between employer and employee, but it shared with White Tiger the aspect of employer as seen from the eyes of an employee inside the house who sees the family and all its interactions intimately.

The Help, a surprise best seller, does the same to 1960’s era Mississippi. A recent graduate from Ole Miss (University of Mississippi) starts interviewing the maids from local households, any maid that will talk to her. At first, no one will talk with her, but after traumatizing racial clashes, one by one, they share their stories. Just interviewing the maids, just the maids sharing their stories, is enough to bring on serious consequences.

First, the book is riveting. I have a million things I really REALLY need to be doing, and I can’t stop reading. There is something about peeking into your neighbors house, seeing how they behave when they think no one is looking, that appeals to the voyeur in each of us.

Second, these women are taking serious risks. I am on the edge of my chair with each reading, hoping nothing bad happens to them.

Third, there is something that makes you squirm, it is the old “wee giftie” that shows us the worst in ourselves as others might see us; our own hypocrisies, our condescensions, our patronizing acts, how cruel our charitable acts can appear through the eyes of others, and how callous we are in the end towards those who take care of us every day.

It has rocketed onto the best seller list, now the #6 best selling book on Amazon.

If your book club is looking for a book to read that will get you talking and keep you talking for a long time, this is one of the best.

If you have hired help in the house, I double-dog-dare-you to read this book. (OOps, sometimes the little Alaska girl in me pops back out!) Fair warning, though, once you start, you won’t want to put it down.

Girls of Riyadh by Rajaa AlSanea

“Have you read Girls of Riyadh?” my friend asked me on the phone, and when I said I had not, she said she would bring it to me.

“It’s an easy read” she said, “it will take you an afternoon.”

Sometimes life intruded. It took me a little longer. I had expected this to be lightweight, along the lines of the shopaholic books, read ‘em and forget ‘em. Airport reading, stuff you save to read when you know you will have time to kill.

I was surprised. I guess I had gotten the impression it was lightweight because I had seen it discussed on some of the blogs, and there are some light-hearted moments in the book. The four young women are well drawn, and their experiences are handled with sensitivity. She never reveals which character from the book she is, but I have my suspicions.

Each girl has her own unique experiences as she reaches young womanhood, and mating. Although the experiences are treated deftly, there is a serious undercurrent that belies the light tone. The underlying circumstances surrounding the mating rituals in a country so tradition-bound as Saudi Arabia turn mating into a dark ritual, full of unseen pits and minefields.

The very worst fear during these years is the wagging tongues of others. I have heard this theme over and over in my own dealings with young women in this part of the world.

“You know, khalto, a woman’s reputation is like glass, it is easily shattered,” explained my young-woman Qatteri friend, solemnly.

(for my Western readers, Khalto means ‘aunt’ literally, and is a term used respectfully for family friends, meaning ’sister of my mother’)

“I don’t want to get married,” she continued, “They come for you as a bride and they are so nice and they make you feel so in love with them, but then, when you are married, they change. Men are . . . men are . . “

“Dogs?” I asked.

“Yes! Yes!,” she exclaimed, “Dogs!” (pause)

“How did you know, Khalto?”

LLLLOOOOLLLLLLLLLL! It’s one of those moments when you know we are all more alike than we are different.

Girls of Riyadh is a worthy read. It is thought-provoking, and compassion-provoking. You grow to love these girls, and you hope a happy ending for them.