The plan is to be taken by one of the (Qatari) embassy drivers out to a beach, have a swim and maybe some lunch.
We arrive and two of the Arabs want to go to the rather tacky beach resort shopping centre. Parking the car is tricky as there is a gang of dodgy-looking men in sharp suits, with suspicious bulges under their jackets, directing us away from the car park. We then discover that the Angolan president is visiting with his bodyguards. Our driver points out our diplomatic plates and suddenly we are all best friends.
We find the beach but there is nowhere to change. The Scot and I are unfazed, having spent our childhoods changing on cold windy beaches, under skimpy towels. However for an Arab this concept is too much to contemplate so we head off for lunch instead. The venue is a beautiful hotel overlooking a marina, and the tables are outside next to the water. Idyllic except that the hotel is full of western tourists and is not open to passing trade.
Our Arab colleagues simply have no understanding that we are being sent away. “But we have eaten here before and now we need lunch,” they cry. Phone calls are made and suddenly we are made welcome.
The whole day has been a fascinating insight into the psyche of these rich Arabs who expect everything to happen as they wish it. The heartening thing was that our Cuban driver from the embassy escorted us to the lunch table then retreated, but was persuaded to stay and eat with us. We treated him: again, a good example of Arab generosity and hospitality.
Back in Qatar, Lionel and I take the opportunity of travelling more locally. However, travelling around the Gulf region is not always straightforward so, with an impending trip to the Sultanate of Oman, we scrutinise the website. This clearly advises obtaining our visas in advance, especially since we are British passport holders. The embassy website also helpfully includes a Google map, so we set off on a visa mission.
We have been here long enough to know that most maps are a waste of paper and sure enough, there is no embassy corresponding to the dot on the map. However, the sat nav indicates that we are in the Diplomatic District so, ever hopeful, we cruise around and find a different embassy, where we think we might get directions.
Lionel stops the car, walks through the embassy gate and disappears from view. It is only then that I ponder whether wandering into the Palestinian embassy is a good idea, especially when a guard appears from his hut and surveys me in the car, parked rather badly, with an expression of deep suspicion. I act very cool but breathe a sigh of relief when he ambles back into his guard house.
My equanimity is short-lived: he reappears with an AK 47 under his arm, pointed vaguely in my direction, presumably wondering whether a car bomb is about to explode from my position. Fortunately Lionel emerges from the gate, waves nonchalantly in the direction of the armed soldier and we go on our way.
“Did they tell you how to find the Omani embassy?” I ask.
“Hadn’t got a clue,” says Lionel.
Eventually we find it, in a completely different location of course. We ask for visas whereupon the official looks at our passports.
“But you are British,” he says proudly.
“Well, yes, exactly,” we reply, whereupon we are told to obtain the visas on arrival at the airport in Muscat. He clearly has no knowledge of the website instructions. We give up.
We are fortunate to have been granted multi-exit visas. Others are not so lucky. A Muslim colleague from the Philippines asked permission to travel to Mecca on pilgrimage, as she has done for the last five years. Her flight was at midnight, all paid for in advance, yet her visa was not granted until six hours before she flew and then she had to return to our organisation’s immigration department in order to obtain permission to travel. This last-minute granting of privileges is not uncommon.
We fly to Dubai for a long weekend: what a contrast to our adopted home! We live in an Arab world where the rhythm of the day is set by the call to prayer, where the hot desert wind blows and the ghutra and shayla protecting the wearers’ faces offers an obvious solution to the onslaught of the elements (even if it seems a little extreme in the shopping malls). Dubai, on the other hand, is a futuristic cosmopolitan city, with six-lane motorways, a monorail coursing through the city and skyscrapers so tall that as the plane flies up away from the city we remain looking up at the buildings for a long time. The Renaissance towers of St Gimignano come to mind as we look at the bright lights of these modern-day towers. I cannot but smile at the mischievous thought that men’s willy-waving spans the centuries.
Staying in the same hotel as we had done ten years ago, we are again enchanted by the manicured lawns, exotic fountains and exquisitely lit inner courtyards serving cocktails and shisha pipes. Admittedly the palm trees encrusted with fairy lights owe more to local taste than ours but still, it is very beautiful. Last time, we were on the edge of town and looked out onto the Gulf and the darkness beyond. Not so now.
We are surrounded by tall towers and in the ocean we see the reclaimed islands known as the Palm, where the buildings unfortunately resemble something out of the communist Eastern Bloc. Our hotel is built along the lines of a desert fort, albeit a very luxurious one, and as we are out of season (the temperature is hitting fifty degrees centigrade with high humidity) we take a suite (cheap at this time of year) which is probably bigger than Lionel’s old flat in London.
Most people come to Dubai to shop and we are no different, but it is the gold souq rather than the shopping mall that lures us. I don’t really intend to buy anything but the Syrian jeweller’s persuasive deals involving convoluted discounts mean that we come away with a tidy cache of jewels for me.
The bustle outside the souq is typically Middle Eastern and we hail several taxis (empty with their for-hire lights on) only to be waved away. Meanwhile a dodgy character in a beaten-up car offers us a lift which, after negotiating the price, Lionel accepts. The car is smelly, noisy and we snuggle into the back with one frayed seat belt between us. The sound of the head gasket about to blow is accompanied by insistent beeps, which we realise indicate lack of petrol when our driver rolls into a garage and asks for twenty dirhams worth of fuel.
Meanwhile he clearly hasn’t a clue where he is going and is assiduously avoiding the motorway and the toll charges. Somehow we manage to find our hotel, whereupon we are stopped at the gate by the guard who looks at our car and driver very snootily, then sniffs as the window is wound down and he is treated to the ghastly smell emanating from within.
He waves us through after Lionel intercedes, but our driver has a sudden wobbly and insists on dropping us off just shy of the grand entrance. Frankly the hotel probably wouldn’t welcome such a car near their portals and we just want to escape, so we pay the man - plus the price of his petrol - and scurry away.
The incongruity of our lavish hotel room, jewellery purchases and our ride home in a scruffy smelly car running out of petrol will be a subject of Lionel being teased forevermore.
Altogether it is a good break, although there is a stark difference between our adopted home and Dubai. On Fridays in Doha we are treated to the whole service from the nearby mosque whereas here it is the gin palaces and jet skis that destroy the peace with their incessant buzzing and blaring music. I am also intrigued when our Syrian jeweller tells me that, “Your sheikh is prolonging the war by supporting the terrorists and trying to make us all Muslim.”
Like the rest of the western world I am convinced that Assad and his cronies are the bad guys, but this reminds me that there are normal people caught in the middle of this horrible civil war, who fear for their lives and culture. Presumably our jeweller is one of the Alawite or Christian minorities, but we didn’t prolong the conversation.
It never ceases to amaze or shock me how some people here have to endure daily tribulations. I have a Palestinian colleague whose family live on the Gaza strip. He studied in Tel Aviv but was not allowed proper graduation documents because he is
an Arab. Not for the first time, I realise what a tolerant, diverse society we come from.
15. A medieval fiefdom
Agnes, our maid, is a diminutive four foot six inches tall and weighs less than seven stone. Her skin is poor with frequent eruptions of acne, but she has a lovely open smile and lustrous long black hair. She works hard, cleaning thoroughly, pulling out sofas, chairs and even the cooker, so that the whole house is spotless. Her iPhone is plugged into her ears and she sings as she works. Her voice is beautiful and she belts out pop songs with a gusto that belies her size.
At Christmas, she and her fellow maids went out carolling and Agnes sang the solos. She confessed that Christmas is a sad time for her as her two children are in the Philippines and she only travels home once every two years. All her money goes back to her family there. She occasionally asks for medical advice and the latest was how to stop snoring. Apparently one of her room-mates snores loudly and on further enquiry, we discover that she shares a room with five other women.
We know little about this accommodation except that they are expected to be back by 10pm and there was trouble at Christmas when some of the girls stayed out late partying. Memos were delivered to the miscreants. We don’t know exactly what this means but to Agnes, it is a serious threat. The ultimate sanction for all ex-pat workers is to be sent home, but we think they all survived.
She would love to live and work solely for us. Our plans are different and when we converted the servants’ quarters into a gym, she was convinced that the new furniture was a bed for a new maid. Her delight when she discovered that it was a treadmill being delivered was palpable.
We ask her to stay late one evening in order to help with a supper party and we insist that she eats before we do. I cook a piece of fillet steak for her, which I serve with chips and salad and take to her while she perches on a stool watching television in the gym. When I then serve her some pudding she is quite overwhelmed that anyone would personally serve her and with such delicious food. We leave her happily watching musicals on the TV while we eat with our guests and when I go to ask for her help in between courses, I find her curled up on a couple of cushions, fast asleep. I haven’t the heart to wake her.
She is fiercely loyal and refers to “my madame and my sir”. Lionel threw out some of his hand-made Italian shirts because the cuffs were frayed and she retrieved them from the waste bin in the bedroom and proudly gave them to the driver who ferries all the maids to and from work. He was delighted, although we are not sure whether he has the cufflinks to go with the double cuffs.
The disparity in incomes is huge and she earns a pittance compared to us, yet still we pay significantly more to her company than many maids earn. Lionel slips her tips every so often and she seems very happy. She is certainly scrupulously honest and if we want her to work overtime she tries to insist that we don’t pay extra.
Along with her sunny nature she is extremely scatty. When we were away for a week we asked her to clean and to water the plants. Two days into our holiday, we had a phone call one evening, while settling down to a quiet dinner, to be told that there was water flooding out of our front gate. Because the property is surrounded by twelve-foot-high walls, no one could tell whether the water was emanating from the house or from the garden tap.
We phoned Agnes who went round in a taxi to find everything was fine. We subsequently discovered that one of next door’s staff had shimmied over the wall and switched off the tap which Agnes had left open causing the hose to burst and flood the garden ... except most of the plants are in pots and she had failed to water the two newest specimens. Luckily with some judicious drenching on our return, they survived. So Agnes managed to cause a flood while simultaneously dehydrating the plants, but it is difficult to stay cross with her for long. She just giggles while apologising.
She is resourceful too. When, in typical scatty fashion, she took the rubbish out and the door slammed behind her leaving her stranded outside in the road, she borrowed a ladder from next door, climbed onto the wall, straddled it, pulled the ladder over and climbed down our side.
One day she will go home to stay but like so many ex-pat workers, the money here is better and she has to support her family. We berate ourselves in the west for losing our family values, yet in many parts of the world, children are brought up by grandparents and the extended family so that parents earn the money to support them while living thousands of miles away from their young children.
The medical administrator, Dr Mahmod, is an Iraqi who left his home country after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Like many of his compatriots, he welcomed the fall of the dictator, but life in Baghdad became untenable in the aftermath. Bombings and kidnappings became commonplace. He has been here nearly ten years and runs the medical staffing office, which means that he knows everyone, knows how much they are paid, whether they have had complaints against them and of course he converses in Arabic. But as I later discover, all is not quite as it seems.
There is a constant stream of people popping into his office, sharing a pot of Arabic coffee or strong black sweet tea and enjoying a good gossip. He may not be a local but he certainly seems to have wasta. He is a large man with an expansive waistline, a droopy moustache and a lugubrious affect. Everything is gloomy in his world until he gets chatting, then he laughs. He is teased by one of the surgeons, who says that there are always bombs in Baghdad when Mahmod has been there to see his father and he must be a secret terrorist. This outrageous comment is treated with a smile and a shrug. It is a bit of black humour and no offence is taken.
Meanwhile he tells me that Qatar has been good to him. He was welcomed, given a job and has been able to educate his girls who are both now at university in Canada. He and his wife have a good life and he can travel freely back to Iraq to visit his aging father.
There are Palestinians here who have no passports, Libyans who are now contemplating going home after many years, Syrians who can no longer go home ... and all these ex-pats, unlike us, are endlessly peripatetic. The ex-pat doctors are well paid but have no pensions and for them there is no stability.
An episode that occurred after about eighteen months into the job brought this into sharp relief. A senior Lebanese consultant, Dr Hanadi, highly respected in the organisation with roles in research and management besides her clinical duties, was summarily suspended. There were allegations that her training in France was bogus and that she did not have the post-graduate qualifications that she claimed. There was a move to simply sack her and put her on a plane, but Dr Mahmod and the team insisted on an investigation. He made phone calls to various institutions in Paris, following which she was completely exonerated and returned to work.
She popped into my office, considerably shaken and wondering how this had happened. The Arabic speakers knew: there had been a whispering campaign instigated by a malicious member of her team. The gossip on Twitter was rife but we Brits heard nothing of this. We think that we are doing well, getting into the culture, but there are always undercurrents of which we have no notion.
Much later she dropped by again.
“I will miss you, Dr Penelope,” she said.
“Why? I’m not going anywhere.”
“But I am,” she responded. “My husband has work here and the lifestyle is good, but I’ve had enough. The children and I are going back to Paris.”
With her western dress and haircut, yet also perfect Arabic, she was a good link between East and West. I was sad to see her go.
On this same note of unexpected outcomes Lionel recently met with the local head of forensic medicine to discuss the lack of post mortem examinations. As one does in this society, initial discussion took them to their past medical lives and it transpired that the forensic physician had been a two-star general in the Iraqi Armed Forces heading their medical services while Lionel was the equivalent two-star in the British military heading medical operations for the
opposing side. They are now good friends with many similar values. However, the Iraqi general cannot return home, having been a member of Saddam’s army; the British Admiral retains so much more inherent freedom - such meetings teach us so much about the privileges that our society enjoys.
Among these privileges are job security and fair treatment if allegations are made. Not so for poor Mahmod. He appears to have enormous wasta, knowing everyone, sharing a joke in Arabic and with fingers in many pies, yet what happens? He is sacked.
His title is Assistant Medical Director, which sounds very grand although his post is middle grade, far junior to me and junior to the consultants, though many hold him in awe. He runs the Medical Staff Office, which - it transpires - is responsible for just about everything including recruitment, annual appraisal, privileges for doctors undertaking operations, compensation, and reward. My role is to look after the professional development of medical staff, so that tallies nicely with the Medical Staff Office and I agree that I will take on Dr Mahmod and his team as part of my responsibilities. Mahmod declares himself very happy with this proposal.
Unfortunately nothing happens. Indecision rules and people are worried that a diminutive female westerner might not be able to manage him. In the event it becomes apparent that no one is managing him (so I couldn’t have done worse). Because there are no checks and balances, he does more than he should, making mistakes and ultimately condemning himself by a gross error of judgement. It is a salutary tale of a man promoted beyond his talents and allowed free rein to do things beyond the limits of his competence.
So what happened? I was away in Singapore on an official mission and return to work on a Sunday to be told that Dr Mahmod has been sacked. He received the letter on the Saturday and is never seen again. His office is a shambles and there are personal papers scattered over his desk. There seems to be no process for looking after this man who is now potentially a refugee with no home, no job and no income.
800 Days in Doha Page 12
