Ramadan Glow 3 by Benjamin Sperandio

I was having lunch with a friend the other day and as our nearly one year old boys toddled around her house, we got to chewing the salads and also the fat of life as close friends (and it must be said, women) do. Everything from business ideas to family drama was on the table alongside the fried chicken and coleslaw. Then we got to what everyone’s talking about in the Muslim world these days: Ramadan.

I mentioned the person in the UAE who was recently fined for insulting the season on Facebook.

“Why are people so surprised things close in a Muslim country?” my friend asked.

We went a couple of rounds on this one, but more on this in a bit.

The seasons of fasting is around the corner of the weekend. In order to be home — and avoid breaking fast at 10pm when the sun goes down in Europe some say — Qatari families are coming home earlier from their sun soaked days in Nice, Barcelona, or the far ends of the earth. Because the start of school and universities are delayed until after Eid al Fitr, expats are heading to the airport (or indeed airport hopping) during what they consider a “dead” month.

This split on Ramadan is emblematic of the many cities that inhabit this capital we all share — at times like this– uncomfortably.

Let’s look at some of the reasons we differ on Ramadan.

A Plural Islamic Society

The losing of restaurants, shortened working hours, and synchronized schedule that affects the malls, government, and other key services is new to most expats who are generally from environments where religion is not only practiced in private but mostly on the weekends. To bring religion into everyday life can not only be new, it seems at odds with the “your life can go on exactly as it did before — see the McDonald’s?” strategy that many organizations use when recruiting new people to Qatar. This is blatant (well meaning) false advertising.

Strangely the Victoria Secret, Volvo, or Versace may have a calming effect on the person worried about settling in away from home. But access to the familiar whether in Mumbai, Miami, or Madrid doesn’t guarantee that life in a new  city or country is going to be blip free. At the most basic, the locations of your favorite anything will be in new places, therefore not the same.

Ramadan moves back ten days each year and as long it’s near the start of the school year, it will be a dizzying first encounter for many new arrivals. Not eating in public, avoiding drinking in your car; these are confusing signals juxtaposed with wanting to host the World Cup or the Tour de France. The constant juggle between modernity and tradition, between culturally appropriate and individual freedom is something everyone in Qatar is experiencing and there are no easy answers.

For the now, luxury brands and not eating in the workplace are not mutually exclusive.

A Believer’s Community

When you move to a country for a job, what you end up doing is working. Even those Muslims who are not from the Gulf or here without their families find Ramadan a lonely time because it is a season where the community supports itself in gathering closer to God. The gatherings within people’s homes, akin to looking in while people are circled around an Easter brunch, are closed off to those who don’t know anyone, don’t have invitations, or in general, are lonely. This is the opposite of the season, as many groups have iftars, or group dinners, sponsored for charity as much as entertainment, to gather together.

You can still fall through the cracks, however, and this means rather than drawing closer to God through those around you, you feel more alone than ever. This is no different than any other holiday season: Christmas or Diwali, when the overall effect is isolation rather than inclusion, it may feel more compounded because public life is truncated during the day and most people who are fasting will generally not be as available as they might otherwise be.

But back to the main subject during my lunch, which circulated around a central question: Why do visitors, guests, non-citizens feel so comfortable about criticizing their host country? Whether Ramadan, or Qatari National Day (which infamously sparked a firestorm online), my friend was curious exactly why people felt and expressed themselves vociferously.

“Would you hear an Arab talking about the 4th of July?” she asked me. “No, we’d say, okay, this is their country, let them do it their way.”

She had a point, and a crystallizing one — even if someone thought Christmas was excessive, Diwali pagan, and the Solstice unnecessary, these views would eventually disappear into white noise in most contexts because they do not have the entrenched charge that cultural critique takes on in Qatar.

A Minefield

There’s the us/against them factor, which we’ve discussed in the past; but also, if you are new and you are experiencing Ramadan for the first time, your grumble is the first to you and perhaps natural, no harm intended, more processing. But you’ll forget or be completely unaware that it’s the tenth or twentieth for the person, often Qatari, sometimes Arab or Muslim from somewhere else, to hear this by now, unoriginal reaction.

Child rearing, fashion, movies, culture — they are all blank canvases for us to express our opinions. If you live in Doha, however, the stakes seem very high and generally come down along racial or religious lines. When we are talking about Ramadan, or traffic, or friendships, we aren’t merely talking about the issue at hand but the psychic force of all the other ones as well come to bear. It’s like being in a distinguishing relationship, where arguments escalate, and you both care, or remember caring, or want to care — and you need a new way out of an old, destructive pattern.

This Ramadan, why not reach out to someone and do the thing the season was designed to do: spend thoughtful, intentional time at a meal, or in prayer, or some other activity that will make you feel more connected rather than alienated? Let’s bring out the best in each other, expat and Qatar, South Asian and western, rather than the worst that is circling around us in the all the too present stereotypes.

After all — you know you’ll have some time — what else are you going to do while waiting for everything to open?

We’ve been discussing the relationships between Qataris and expats for a few weeks and I’ve tried to pose some new angles to lamentation: “I’ve never been inside a Qatari house.”

The reasons for this are many, but in the last two weeks, we’ve touched on a few key areas.

First: Expats in general do not have a long enough shelf life in Qatar to allow for relationships to develop.

Second: there is a mutual distrust in both circles of “the other” which include a bit of myth and fact that are compounded by isolation.

Lest you were thinking I was only going to cover more of the same ground , now we come to solutions of how to bridge this divide in the city that many of us call home – if only temporarily for some.  Yes, if you hang around long enough you may end up invited to a majlis or dinner; but even there you are unlikely to get past the courtesy hellos because the other attendees will still have the aforementioned reservations in mind. You, as the foreigner, will be there on the good graces of the host and for that reason tolerated.

The best way that I’ve found to make Qatari friends, or indeed friends from any other community in Doha besides my own, is to undertake something of substance together. In short: a project of mutual interest and benefit to everyone who is associated with it.

But if you’d like to be embraced, considered a friend, and share triumphs and tribulations —-find something meaningful to do together. This is the only way to break down stereotypes in any society, culture, country. You stand up and defend a race, a religion, a gender because you know someone who doesn’t deserve to be belittled.

It may be the most time consuming but it is the most tested form and has the most consistent results. You can sit around sheesha and karak places all night long, but until there is something you care about together, a shared goal, vision, mission, plan, that you sweat over and celebrate together; you’ll still not have the measure of who each other are. What’s of relatively low importance here is what the “thing” is that brings you together.

It could be supporting creative writers; it could be developing a concept for children in Doha; it could be establishing a local magazine, it could be creating a business idea – these are a few examples of projects I’m currently working on with the input of Arabs, expats, and Qataris. In essence: anything and everything you are passionate about get out there and start talking to people about it. Social media, real time conferences, or to your friends, figure out what you have in common with those around you and how to broaden that circle to include others.

For me the first hint that working together makes meaning possible came entirely by accident: I was bored to death during my second year in Qatar and I started to write more seriously. During this time someone suggested exploring my personal interest in writing through at grant for Qatar University to do an essay collection. There were so many uncertain elements: would we find writers? And then what about readers? Did a project like this stand a chance? The only way to know is not to decide beforehand, but to try it out.

Fear of failure had killed more good ideas and trapped more people in unhappiness than any other cause.

We tried it and 23 female writers stepped forward. The book launched at the opening of the Waqif Art Center– the first collection of its kind in Qatar – and people (including male writers) began asking: when will the next book be out? The Qatar Narratives Series, now in our 5^th title, was created.

I crunched down all of this in answering one of the questions during the discussion held by the Doha Film Institute a week or so ago to check the pulse of the community regarding TEDxDoha and all things TED. The question: what are incorrect assumptions (or mistakes) westerners make about Qatar?

One of the main concerns is what we’ve been talking about already, the idea that the well-known Arab hospitality is little experienced by the vast majority of expats.

Brian Wesolowski, from ictQatar, and Creative Commons evangelist, began answering this seemingly sensitive subject. And what he said echoes much of what we’ve been saying: He found that he developed relationships with people in the local community as he started talking about Creative Commons. Through coffees, teas, and dinners, he let artists, photographers, designers; know that there was a platform ready for them to display their creativity. Brian was passionate about CC and through CC he gained an entire multi-national community.

It’s not easy, you’re thinking, what about my job, or my family, or my hobby? Well, if it were easy, everyone would do it. And that hobby? Well, it may just be your ticket to a more meaningful experience.

If you aren’t familiar with TED, the NGO that’s believes in “Ideas worth Spreading” then instead of crawling YouTube, spend a few (thousand) hours with experts in Technology, Environment, and Design.  In 15 minute segments, TED gives you access to the world famous including Bill Gates and Madeline Albright, as well as everyday practitioners perfecting their techniques all over the world. Offshoots of the official TED are TEDx, or independently organized events and in 2010 Doha hosted its very first TEDxDoha event, put together by the Doha Film Institute. Contact them if you’re interested in learning more about how you can get involved (and meet others interested in doing so).

In Part One, we talked about the transient nature of expat life as one of the barriers to establishing ties between communities.

The revolving door makes not only relationships difficult but institutional knowledge or momentum to develop.

Marjorie wrote her own response to Part One which explains that making friends with locals in any country can be challenging. All of this let’s me know that is in fact a topic a lot of people have thought about themselves (and are interested in discussing).

Most of my childhood, adolescence and twenties, I lived in the no-man’s land as an island buffeted by two cultures – American and South Asian. Those years developed the bi-cultural traits shared by all third culture kids: I hear both sides, I understand both sides, I feel the emotion of both sides. I defended dating, a non-medical career path, prom, all things American, to my parents.

Meanwhile I tearfully declined invitations to the movies, football games, or sleepovers via my Indian father’s rules. Us, Indians. Them, Americans at home. Us, kids (Americans). Them, parents (Indians) at school.  I was never fully in one group or the other. Turns out this was perfect training for living in Qatar where I’ve seen and heard the “us” and “them” labels function unchallenged in most cases. That is, except for when I’m present.

Never the Two Shall Meet

Qataries and Expats: Two groups of people living in the same country and yet finding few places to meet, literally or figuratively.  In the vast, intervening space rolls harmful myths with grains of truth, that grows unchecked in each community without the response from the other side. Occurring for years between the two groups, this mistrust is now the inheritance of anyone living in Doha in either community.

I posed the questions from the teleclass via Twitter because I wanted to test the temperature and see if things had changed.

• What do expats think of Qataries?
• What’s it like to be a professional woman in Qatar?

28 DM (direct messages) later with someone I don’t know in real life (only virtually) and who was passionate about the answers to question one, I heard echoes of conversations I’ve had over the years with many close friends, expat and Qatari.

The irony of the prevailing us/them struck me as we tapped out 140 character responses back and forth. A Friday morning and if her Twitter handle hadn’t had “Qatari” in it, I could have been listening to an expat complaining from the sticking points we were exchanging.

The Sticking Point

Let’s be clear: this is not a post about the pros or cons of Qatarization. Rather, it is a discussion about myths on both sides. And you can’t talk about misunderstanding between us without talking about the elephant in the room. Money.

BOTH expats and Qataries think the other is overcompensated. There are two sides to this coin but they share the same theme: a perceived sense of injustice at what the other receives.

• The expat is semi-qualified and overpaid.
• The Qatari is under qualified and overpaid.

“What we think about expats, well they get paid more than us, triple, even though we studied abroad and we are in the same level.”

Many expats regard Qatar or other overseas posts as a kind of second chance pasture before retirement, or a place to send problem employees. This is the minority, others of us came for the adventure; but if the few are in prominent positions (as is often the case) then the damage they do is enormous.

I also countered with the truth from my experience at 3 different institutions in Qatar: “Most of the Qataries I know get paid much more than expats or equal.”

My correspondent seemed surprised by this, since her sister wasn’t in this category and had difficulty getting a job after graduating from an overseas university.

In addition to high pay, expat packages are much more than what they’d have at home.

“I have lived in the UK for 20 years they don’t get the luxury they are getting here be real right.”

She had a point: How many times have visitors come, exclaiming you’d never get that much space London, DC, elsewhere?

On the flip side, the tea-drinking, newspaper reading, Bluetooth talking local seems to be whom expats think is the representative of Qatarization. And if you haven’t worked with someone who doesn’t put in a full day, this idea of the “lazy native” goes unchallenged. What many don’t know is that this specter annoys, embarrasses, angers the hard working, high achieving nationals. This generation, their compatriots staging the Arab spring around the Middle East, are launching their own counter culture for their society.

BOTH Qataries and Expats think the other is well off. Depending on the person this may or may not be the case. What many people may not know, and many in the local community don’t discuss, is that not all Qataries are spendthrifts who adore luxury brands.

“You don’t know the Qataries what they go through, people think we are rich, but we are not. We live in two rooms in our mother-in-law’s house and that’s torture by itself.”

In a status conscious culture, to not have the latest and greatest is not an option. In the expat community, the next exotic travel experience is the equivalent of a Porche.

There are so many other things to talk about in this vein. But we will reserve those for Part Three. In the meantime, I welcome thoughts that will take this discussion in a new vein rather than more of the same. What surprising things have you learned about “the other”?

On Thursday afternoon, I co-hosted a teleclass to go with the course I wrote for the Global Academy on living and working in Qatar. Both writing the course and preparing for the teleclass were cause for rumination on  6 years of living in Doha. The most interesting part of the teleclass was when participants asked questions. There was one person on the call who had been living in Qatar since February 2011; she dialed in from Doha like I did because she wanted to know more about the place she had made her home. The questions were fairly standard: clothing for women, women in the workforce, and then the equivalent of “why do Qataries keep to themselves?”

In other fora I’ve talked about the tensions between expats and Qataries. But in this instance, I don’t think the caller had a bone to pick, she was genuinely curious about how to develop friendships with people in her new home base. I suffered from this earnest desire when I moved here in 2005. I came to the Middle East to experience life in an Islamic society since my scholarly work was focused on gender and Islam. Soon I found myself living and working in an expat enclave, far away from the Arabs and Arabic I had hoped to learn more about. I experienced first hand what I relayed to everyone on the teleclass; the numbers don’t work in anyone’s favor.

The numbers in Qatar create a unique situation where the nationals are actually minorities in their own country. I can think of few other places in the world where this is the case. Even in the U.S., my home since childhood, people may grumble about “real Americans” (those born there or white) versus “Americans” (those like my family who have naturalized) but the fact is citizenship can be gained. In Qatar, you are only Qatari if your father is Qatar (mothers are starting to get more rights if they marry non-nationals) and there is an intricate ranking system amongst the various tribes, family names, and points of origin.

During this time, I told every Qatari woman that I met that I was trying to make local friends. She would smile politely and I generally never saw her again; this happened on a regular basis and one night, at a very high profile public event, I thought I might have finally struck gold. A prominent official introduced me to his daughter who was also attending. She was my age, she seemed really interested in what I was doing (yes this sounds like dating and is largely how it felt). He told me that his daughter would call me. He would repeat this smile and phrase for the next three years. Needless to say: she never called.

I did an even risker thing than moving to this tiny country situated on top of Saudi Arabia: I left the bastion of Americanism and went to work for the national university. There was the game changer: I was the only non-Arab, non-Muslim, non-Arabic speaking employee in the entire building. Even the kitchen staff knew enough Arabic to take drink orders and conduct basic business. The numbers were finally in my favor – I was in the minority so I had no choice but to make connections, acquaintances, colleagues, who developed – over the course of three years – into friends.

The second thing I relayed to the teleclass, I also learned around my third year living here. When you have one population that is static (nationals) and one population that is a revolving door (expats), establishing new relationships becomes a dance with the law of diminishing returns. I used to offer lots of help, advice, rides, and listening ears to new arrivals. Quickly though I realized what  a draining proposition this is as I could predict in exactly what order, and what time of year, the topics they would want to discuss.

A summary of the first six months of the expat: The heat, the traffic, lack of bookshelves, the medical test, grocery shopping, how to find the spouse a job, inconveniences of Ramadan, the construction, getting an RP, and buying a car.

This isn’t to say that these aren’t all valid and important concerns; it’s just listening to them, helping people through them, and then two years later, having to do it all over again for an entirely new group of people, makes you realize how transient expat life is. Add to this the fact that by year four, nearly everyone I knew when I moved here had returned home, and you begin to see why making friends with expats might be an energy draining proposition.

I told the teleclass that nowadays when I see new people, I run in the other direction.

“You’ve gone local,” someone said and we laughed.

And honestly, it is a survival strategy that makes sense. If you have over 3 siblings, between them, your cousins, the larger circle of friends of these relatives, you have a ready made play set no newcomers needed. There are other cities that work like this and Pittsburgh was one of them; insular communities where everyone who went to high school together, now works and plays together.

I did eventually make Qatari friends – even now having dinner with the young woman who was supposed to be my friend in 2006  – but it was the outer edge of three years of living here. At that point, I guess most people realized I was likely to stick around and worth the investment. Or perhaps it took this long for the stereotypes about expats to wear off.

More on this soon.

It happened again at a dinner party last night. Someone invariably was talking about a trip they went on where the local people were normal. And the city was normal. And the economy was normal. The latest land to be praised was Oman. Now granted, I’ve been to Oman and it beautiful, lush and green; Omanis are truly friendly people. But the comparison to Qatar is what put me on the defensive. From within our expat enclaves to talk about the other as abnormal is more than my postcolonial heart can stand. Especially since I know that the wall we feel between us and the local community is a mutual construction.

In Doha, I find myself in an awkward position, not unfamiliar as the child of immigrants. Being a third culture child: living in one, raised in another, fashioning your way, perhaps was the best experience for this life of in between apologist. Invariably this word normal has always gotten my back up. Growing up as a South Asian in north central Florida, I was anything but normal. I was the fly in the ointment as they say and very much felt it in the way my parents dressed, spoke, behaved and the resulting impact on what I brought to school to eat, the social rules I had to live by: in short my American teenage years were nothing like what we see on prime time U.S. television.

Now I am constantly defending Qataries to expats and expats to Qataries. Rarely do these two communities ever actually meet in a meaningful way. And whey they do, it’s more like crashing into one another. I’m often like an eavesdropper, hearing what each side has to say about the other, wishing I could call for a meeting of the minds. The complaints are so constant and familiar as to be unoriginal and borderline boring. If only they weren’t so serious in their examination of the other group. We dwell on the worst in each other.

The impatient Qatari man or woman is indignant at being made to wait in their own country in a line, for example, and pushes ahead of everyone else.

Or the skimpily clad expat woman, for another, is walking around the souq dressed as though she were at home, for another, because of the scorching heat, not realizing it’s Ramadan.

We live in the same city but never really on the same plain. And I can’t figure out what it is. But perhaps like the cause of war, there is no one specific reason, just a mishmash of facts and emotions. Some of it is the transient nature of the Doha labor market intersecting with the need to maintain the boundaries of these various nationalities. People come on short term contracts, to make money, never expecting to stay and also not really encouraged to think of Qatar as home.

Dress is a distinct way to make sure no one ever forgets where the other person is really “from” and to where they will return. While we are together, even eating, shopping, or visiting each others homes, there are visual reminders we are different.

In an environment where one group is here today and gone tomorrow – a phenomena I’m growing increasingly sick of as one of the ones left behind – I see now why the group that’s staying doesn’t really bother with the new group. After all, now I’m the one running in the other direction in early August as the new arrivals are trooping out of the airport and onto the immigration buses for their medical screenings. I know exactly what they’ll want to talk about for the first six months they are here: Ramadan, driving, the heat, dust, censored movies, and migrant workers. No one wants to learn Arabic because they don’t need to use it. No one knows any Qataries either because they don’t work with any or those that they do with rarely come to office. And the Qataries that are working outside of the government or ministries often feel outnumbered at the office the same way they would have been at City Center or Villaggio. It’s not that these events and feelings aren’t important to discuss – after all what else can you talk about when you first arrive but what you know? The sad fact is that many never develop their conversation or their relationships beyond these initial impressions.

But it’s many of their companies that are the ones promising expats that their lifestyles – implied: their mindsets – don’t have to change in order to move to Doha. Being a moderate state has its draw backs: alcohol being sold in hotels, burgeoning night life, the pace of change constantly on your front doorstep and price the seemingly endless tide of people coming and going, while you keep living your life.

In the past, before the financial crisis, and pre-2022 host city status, most people wouldn’t come to the desert without great motivation. Hence the now well known financial and lifestyle incentives pile up for the adventurous expats. But you’re not necessarily getting what you pay for, as most career expats can tell you: those who are abroad are either there for the adventure, or there because nowhere else will have them. These poor specimens are often the ones Qataries single out when explaining they feel that they are being passed by for blue eyed, blond haired non-expert, living in a fancy house and driving a nice car on their money.

Meanwhile, the same foreigners, or indeed even credential non-white expats, see the in day to day effects of Qatarization – people not coming to work, young men skipping industry altogether to drink coffee at Starbucks, colleagues that are not motivated – as proof that a merit based society will never thrive.

And we reach another impasse as stereotypes are circulated, confirmed, and recirculated.

As one of the people who has hung on, now in my sixth year, I’ve grown almost deaf to these complaints. People always want to know how I did it, how did I make Qatari friends? The answers are so easy as to blatantly obvious but they demand the one ingredient not many have the luxury of: time. I was around, I engaged in meaningful work (in my case writing projects), I had multiple opportunities to show that I cared. Though in an interesting side bar, I have to admit that no one over the age of 40 is a good friend, though I have many older colleagues I feel great mutual respect for.

Maybe there is something modern about the notion of having an expat friend come over on a Friday to the family house, be invited to the ladies majlis, or go to visit in the hospital after she has given birth. Most of my male and female Qatari friends are under the age of 30, hovering closer to 25.

These relationships, like any friendships, are not easy to build and often harder to maintain given the various demands that everyone is juggling. But that is the thing that’s normal. Take it from someone who has seen several cycles of expats come and go; the mistrust on both sides is about the only thing normal about life here. Nearly everyone that I went to my medical screening with in 2005 has left Doha.

So as a survival mechanism I started making friends with Qataries. If I was staying and they were staying, I figured I couldn’t go wrong. But then a strange thing happened: even my Qatari friends started going abroad to purse further studies, or temporary assignments, leaving me once again bereft, the only answer being to make more friends.

“Where is the famous Qatari hospitality?” a lot of people ask at dinner parties. I hear stories of their travels elsewhere in the Middle East where complete strangers invite them in for meals, or give them directions and walk the entire walk, etc. etc.

The United States cannot really claim to be a bastion of civility to foreigners and as recent headlines show, neither will Europe win any words for raids on xenophobia. The numbers do not make it easy for the average Qatari, vastly outnumbered in their own country, rushed into speaking, studying, living in a foreign tongue, to open their hearts or homes to just any of the tens of thousands of people passing by. Add to this the context of gender segregated socialization and you’ve just halved the opportunities for interaction again.

It is not easy for either side to see the other across this wall of indifference. And there are people who benefit from this consistently wide gulf between us. For the sake of Qatar, and my friends on both sides, I hope more people keep reaching across. It is the only hope any of us have at living an abnormal life and creating connections between these historically different communities.

I love the count downs that occur during the last week of December. There are the top music videos and most embarrassing moments; celebrity shockers and sports highlights. It’s the one week every year that my inner pop culture junkie can get her fill of the year that was. Even grander are those moments which observe the passing of a decade which we find ourselves in as 2010 draws to a close.

Before New Year’s Eve comes to Doha, however, is another event of equal resonance, if only locally in Qatar: National Day. Observed on December 18, a year ago this week, a blog post about National Day ignited a firestorm of controversy. A woman blogging on Qatar Living.com posted a piece about the antics of youth on the cornice, ending with the conclusion that the boys (for they were mostly) were symptomatic of the country and both needed to grow up. Spray painted cars, wheelies, people hanging out of windows – all of this, plus someone accosting her with a facemask on, led the blogger to call out her host country and also its people.

The response – over 600 replies to her posting – covered the range of emotions: defending, decrying, and debasing her claims. Whatever people were saying, the outpouring was something few people could have predicted. Hate pages for the blogger and the website sprang up on Facebook and gathered several hundred members. The post and the responses exposed feelings not just about a group of boys out on the town to have fun, but on a range of topics, some as innocuous as driving, to differences in compensation, polices such as Qatarization, and lack of respect for culture.  Whatever the topic and rebuttal, people were arguing ferociously for “their” side.

A year later, what I’m ruminating about is not the incident itself, but what it revealed about those of us who share this tiny peninsula on the larger land of Arabia. The post and the subsequent reaction revealed the deep rooted tensions between ex-pats and locals in our small city state.

As someone who often has to code switch and defend expats to locals and locals to expats, I was saddened by how large the rift still seemed last year and can’t say that things are really drastically changing. The gulf in Qatar (pun intended) is not merely between the haves and the have-nots though that is evident when I sit in traffic next to the buses full of laborers. It’s also between us as people. The expats are not a homogenous group as they seem. There are distinctions between where people come from – Europe, America, and South Asia – as well as their occupations; oil, educational, sports. And locals have an intricate ranking system based on tribal ancestry, how long their families have been on the Arabian Peninsula, and who they are connected to by marriage or otherwise.

When one population is constant – the Qataries, and one population lasts only 1-3 years – the expats, there is no real window to confront these myths and stereotypes. A year later, coming upon National Day, I’m reminded that while we may all live next to each other, stand in line together, driving the same roads, we don’t actually see each other or engage.

New Year’s resolutions are known for triteness and being doomed to failure. Instead of waiting until January 1, I’ve started implementing “life changes” earlier so that by the time the New Year comes; it will find me already practicing my desired habit.

December 2010 is about daily exercise and the practice of being present with people. No messaging, or mobile, or internet. Just being present and really hearing what they have to say.

It is only by really hearing someone that we can stop seeing them as the “other.” And we know that the boundary between us and them is not as firm as we once thought.

Hotels, DJs, clothing manufacturers, want me to buy into the buildup of that other dread holiday – New Year’s Eve. I’ve had the rare opportunity to spend the most talked about night of the year in a different country over the past five years. This isn’t as glamorous as it sounds since often my companions for the evening go to bed before the witching hour, leaving me watching fireworks around the world via satellite.

Despite the hype and commerciality, the end of the year is good to evaluation and introspection, both of what’s happened and what’s to come.

For the sake of all the people living in Qatar, I hope 2011 finds us turning a new page together.

I’ve lived in the Middle East for five years now and like to think I know what is needed in terms of cultural appropriateness.  Having regular visitors for work who are entirely unprepared for life in the Arabian Gulf helps further confirm that I am an ‘expert’ of a certain kind in dress, speech, behavior.

Every once in a while though, I get a prick, like that of the needle at the doctor’s office that withdraws blood, which seeps at my confidence and reminds me I’m not a Muslim nor an Arab and I still have some things to learn. This happened most recently yesterday when I discovered I had been responsible for the very religious people in my office consuming alcohol. Now this is slightly hilarious because when people who feel strongly about not being around alcohol come around to our house, I put away the bar and my husband’s generally plentiful stock.

This isn’t because we have anything to hide but in my mind a sign of respect. Because while people may watch any kind of movie, listen to all musicians, and tolerate any kind of speech, when it comes to alcohol there is a big, black line which should not be crossed.The opinions on this area as varied as that of Christians and the interpretation of the Apostle Paul ‘not to be drunk with wine’ but when I know where someone stands, I respect it – as a large non drinker myself, I love the fact that in the Middle East no one has to explain why he/she doesn’t drink. (I’ve written about this before elsewhere on the blog).

Imagine my surprise when my innocent  act of generously sharing my abundance of chocolate – a tradition that many Arab offices have chocolates or nibbles on hand  for visitors – with the office exposed my ignorance of the chocolate industry.  Being pregnant, people keep bringing me truffles, boxes of sweets, cookies, etc. which my husband and I were trying not to eat ourselves.

“More!” I said waving a box of truffles from Switerzland in the doorway to one of the larger rooms where at least four people have their work stations.

“Did we tell you about the last box?”

One of my co-workers, who wears hijab – the woman’s head scarf – and doesn’t shake hands with non-relative men asked me.

“No,” I said, thinking back to the last layer in the box of treats given to me by a Swedish friend. I had brought the box in on a Saturday while we were working on a personal project, thinking to lighten the fact of having a mid-day meeting on the weekend.

The challenge with getting chocolates around in a country like Qatar is that the heat of the day instantly renders them into mush. It’s not just any day I can take them in but a day in which I go straight in to the office without prior meetings or errands which can be rare depending on the week.  The foresight I put into taking in my special deliveries never once included thinking about the ingredients.

The Arab staff in my office are very holy people and they are a good influence on me and unborn baby in my increasing stages of discontent, irritation, and overall inability to shake things off that are otherwise than they should be. Their “don’t worry about it” or ready laughter really helps me rein in unbridled emotions. They pray regularly and two fast twice a week. Around this climate of spiritual discipline and reverence we manage to laugh and have a good time. It’s a great balance. And this is where I was taking boxes of Swedish and Swiss chocolates – that had tiny, inestimably small amounts of champagne and other alcoholic drinks.

“Well, maybe not this one,” I said, recovering from my shock and preparing to read the ingredients out loud.

“Sugar, flour, fructose, sucrose, Dom Perignon Champagne…”

Yup, even the truffles from the W hotel, had a trace.

Thankfully we laughed at my unholy influence on the rest of them and thought this would be a good idea for an episode on the sitcom we’d like to write: “The Office: Middle East edition.”

Your new year glow – like mine – may have worn off a bit by now. I did miss my resolution the second weekend of the month with visitors in town and overwhelmed by work  but made it up last Friday. I was never gladder to be in church than this last week as the worship was heartfelt as the person delivering the message. The palpable hope in the air, coupled with the fact of sitting with friends (and not by myself in the overflow room as often happens) saw me out the door with a spring in my step.

Part of going back to church this year was reclaiming my schedule: mostly my mind’s time dwelling on work and my body’s stationary presence in front of a computer.  I missed being in a community: more importantly I realized that with our first (and maybe only) pregnancy underway, I wanted to be living a more balanced life when this child came into the world.

Changing my weekly habits has been mirrored by the changes my body is going through: I am sleepy so early that I hardly seem like an adult anymore. But going to bed at eight p.m. has it’s advantages: getting up early. Even on Fridays, which were the days I couldn’t pry myself loose from the sheets. Now I find it hard to stay tuck in past nine in the morning.

Eating well: I have consumed more fruit in the last three weeks than I have in my entire life. Bananas, grapes, mandarin oranges, strawberries — there doesn’t seem to be anything I won’t eat.

And change of dress. I went with two students to have two abayas made. I have been known to say repeatedly "If I’m here while pregnant, I will wear an abaya the whole time."

Well, as my ‘bump’ started to grow and professional clothing became harder and harder to find, much less being one of a few women in an office with mostly men, I retreated into the abaya. In the period up until our news became public, those three months when everyone waits to make sure that the fetus is viable and won’t decide that now is not its time, the changes in your body are visible and yet hard to explain in modern society. Imagine living this in a country where most of the women are covered up and you have my predicament. Your brain and body are so taxed with hosting another life, the last thing you want to worry about is what to wear or what people think about what you look like. You want to get up, do your job, and get home.

I loved the folds; how it hide my leggings and tank top; how it smoothed over the growing lumps of my bust; how it jazzed up my overall look on days I could barely get out of bed.

It’s true that men behave differently towards me now than they have before I escaped into the voluminous folds. They give me a much wider berth; shopkeepers are often more polite. The abject stares are somewhat mitigated as the abaya demands privacy — respect.

Four years ago when I was starting my first few weeks at the national university, I tried a headscarf with little success. (Read about that here: ). Now I wonder why it never occurred to me to try an abaya. Maybe I wasn’t ready then. But I am so glad that I am now.

It brings home to me the fact that developing world feminists have touted about the veil and other forms of dress. When a woman chooses it for herself, it can be very, very empowering.

There has been a fierce debate in Qatar recently over the lack of decorations for the Eid al Adha holiday – one of the holiest periods in the Islamic calender as everyone reflects on the lesson of Ibrahim and Ishmael – but there seem to be wall to wall decorations for Christmas in all the hotels and malls. Along the corniche there are triangle shaped lights waiting to be lit up for national day on Friday, December 18th. Unfortunately these triangles resemble Christmas trees.

An angry editorial to the newspaper explains that while Switzerland has banned minarets as outward structures, Qatar promotes Christmas.

I was neutral on this debate since growing up as a non-Christian in the U.S. I often felt forgotten by Santa, the world wide jolly giver who somehow always missed our apartment.

Then I walked into one of the five star hotels and saw for myself what must be shocking to some Qataris or other Arabs: a nine foot (maybe even taller) Christmas tree extending to the ceiling with presents wrapped underneath in wrappers that said “Happy Christmas” (what the British or Europeans say).

For me, even now as an adult convert to Christianity, the tree was slightly gratuitous. Right in front, right when you walk in the door. Lovely, yes. Gorgeous, even, sure. The hotel’s parent company is Canadian. But could it have been placed ten feet inside the entrance instead of four? Could it be to one side instead of in the center?

Is this a symbol of Qatar’s tolerance or example of how Muslims are being crowded out of the public sphere?

It has been raining here for two days straight and a continued deluge may dampen the excitement of the annual parade on the day of nationality, solidarity, and honor.

I just hope that when they light those triangles they aren’t red and green.

Elsewhere on this blog I’ve talked about race, social class, and the various nationalities in the country where I live – like any country – where people gravitate towards their own. There are always many versions of the cities we live in. If you visit Washington, D.C. and never go beyond the capital area or Georgetown, you’ve missed most of the city. Same of New York, or Doha.

This is perhaps best seen in Qatar during Ramadan. The Muslim community rejoices at this time of discipline because it isthe holiest month of their year (hence the tagline Holy month of Ramadan). They don’t eat or drink during they day but the evenings are full of socializing, visiting, and feasting. Many speak critically of the lavishness of the modern day meals post the breaking of fast iftar, or footor, as it’s know in the Gulf. After the dates and laban to ease the empty palate, there is a spread of food that seems far from the poverty and poor that Ramadan calls people to reflect upon.

In the non-Muslim community the reaction is usually an awareness of lack because all the restaurants, eateries, and entertainment outlets such as movies and bowling alleys are closed in solidarity with the community. No alcohol is served in the country, even at the hotels which normally function as evening waterholes. The line at the QDC, the national liquor vendor, snakes through the parking lot to the main road as drinkers prepare for a month of closure as though hibernating. Expats grumble about the traffic, about the lack of a secular culture which keeps conveniences closed to them

All of these sundry complaints I contemplated during my first Ramadan in a Muslim country (Ramadan, Alchol, and life in a Muslim country"): http://mohanalakshmi.livejournal.com/2097.html)

This year what strikes me are the different attitudes to the shortened workday – six hours as published by the state – are also telling. Many of the Western professionals do not take advantage of the fact their companies have to abide by the six hour work day.

"I have too much work to do," is usually the reason.

"Meetings would get scheduled at 4pm and then what?" is another.

The facts don’t faze people in these instances. Two less hours in a work day can not grind down the forward motion of civilization, can it? Isn’t this time we normally spend on Facebook or gasp, reading blogs, buying books on Amazon.com or eating lunch?

Those who are hardened by what I can only surmise as the Protestant work ethic are chained to their desks despite the fact this is only for a month, not a life style. Such trained contributors, they can’t pry themselves way.

More the pity them.

Because of me, those two hours are spent catching up with friends who are otherwise too busy in the course of the year to stop and chat, or writing, exercising, or any number of things I put off because I’m too busy.

This year during Ramadan as the entire country pauses in a matrix of cultural, social, and religious reflection, a friend and I challenged each other to write that one genre that we admittedly find beneath us but generates big bucks for other authors without such standards.

For me, I’m delving into romance. For her, chick lit.

You now know how I will be spending my extra two hours.