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Alex's Journal  I have a lot of hobbies: reading of course, and video games, but I also love old cars, classic airplanes, movies, and history. But only two of my hobbies really involve collecting anything; there's my collection of 1:18 scale classic cars, and my CD collection. It's the CD collection that most people respond to with a hearty "huh?" since it's over 300 discs of which 90% are from a single genre: film scores. People sometimes ask why anyone would want to listen to music without words. It's not that I don't like songs with words (I do) it's just that they've always seemed like just another instrument to me. Song lyrics often don't make a lot of sense anyway, and you'd never expect anyone to ask why you listen to songs without piano in them. Given the frequency that people get lyrics wrong ("Wrapped up like a douche, another loner in the night") I can live without them. And, frankly, a lot of film music is loaded with human voices, singing in a classic choral sense wordlessly or with lyrics. It just doesn't sound much like what passes for pop these days. Interestingly, my love for film music developed quite independently of my love for film. The two aren't necessarily linked; some of my favorite films have underplayed or poor music while some of my favorite scores are for films I've never seen. I don't particularly associate the music strongly with the film it came from (though I appreciate it when watching the movie. Instead, I prefer to form my own associations, imagining things that might accompany the music or simply seeing it playing during a part of everyday life, like warm pastoral music on a beautiful sunny afternoon. This ties in with my writing; I assemble a playlist of CD's designed to evoke a certain mood in me, and without any words to color my interpretation, I'm free to form new associations and be inspired. It's the same sort of feeling one might get from listening to classical music, I suppose, but I find a lot of classical stuff to be a wasteland; dull chamber music on the one hand, and unlistenable experimental noise on the other (with plenty of exceptions of course). Since film has taken the place of the opera or the symphony in much of our lives, I'd go so far as to argue that film music is nothing less than modern classical music, moreso than anything by John Cage. Film music can be a cultural touchstone in ways other instrumental music can't even approach. There's also something wonderful about the steady rate at which the works are produced. A band may issue a new 30-minute album of songs every few years, but a working Hollywood composer might write for five or more films in a year, with 50-70+ minutes of music in each. Even an inactive or dead composer may have multiple CD's out in a single year as their scores are issued by collectors' labels. Last year, for example, Danny Elfman wrote four scores with over 200 minutes worth of new music in his distinctive style. In contrast, the repulsive Black Eyed Peas--who have the #1 spot on the charts today--have released five albums in 10 years! And I guess it's just nice to have something to collect--something to look for in piles of CD's at thrift stores and pawn shops or order brand new from Amazon. I sometimes get a little embarrassed talking about it--incredibly nerdy as this kind of music is--but, frankly, I don't care what anyone thinks. For my money, it's the best music out there and the stuff I prefer to collect and listen to. Current mood:  exanimate.Current music: Something Wicked This Way Comes - James Horner. What a difference a year makes! Ole Miss held their commencement ceremony this weekend, and I participated in a graduation as a spectator rather than a participant for the first time in years (and most of those spectator gigs were at good old RCHS, which ain't got nothin' on a college grad). As a faculty member I was expected to attend, to process, and to look and act the part of a dignified seat filler. My druid robes are still in RC, but luckily the library provides money for us to rent them from the bookstore. My robe and hoof were of better quality than the ones I actually graduated in (the UM hood in particular was disgustingly chintzy). The near-constant stream of thunderstorms that have been rumbling through in recent weeks and forcing me to run downstairs to unplug my electronics in the middle of the night meant that the event was moved from the Grove to the Coliseum at the last possible instant—a good move as far as I'm concerned, since the Coliseum has A/C and the Grove does not. The speeches tended to be heavy on the tributes to Dr. Khayat, the chancellor, who retires next month and will almost surely be replaced by someone worse. I think Khayat has all but single-handedly turned the university's reputation around, but the continuous applause and tributes did wax tiresome. Our commencement speaker, an anchor called Bob Schaefer—who is apparently famous despite me never having heard of him—gave a decent speech, if one that was a little gusty at times. He was at his best making gentle jokes about the ceremony then remembering his time at Ole Miss as a cub reporter in 1962. The feeling I get is that 1962 and the Meredith imbroglio are so deeply ingrained in this town's consciousness that everyone is sick of hearing about it. I can't blame them; having the time when the town made an ass of itself on the international stage endlessly brought back up can't be good. I felt remarkably relaxed through the whole thing, and bemused at many of the things I saw—like graduates dressed inappropriately (flip-flops at graduation? Seriously?), and being mistaken for a graduate myself (I was offered deeply felt congratulations more than once, and didn't embarrass anyone by correcting them). How different from the stress and gutchurnery I felt in Ann Arbor! Since my obligation to the university required being at work at 8am on a Saturday, I treated myself to a showing of "Star Trek" afterwards. Excellent movie, one that warmed this recovered Trekkie's heart. Put me in a good mood straight through to Tuesday, it did. Current music: Something Wicked This Way Comes - James Horner. I've been helping a co-worker muck out the children's literature section of late. It seems that a huge number of books were dumped into the collection years ago with no regard to how appropriate they were, and the mad librarian that did it is the stuff of malevolent legend around here. Hired by an outgoing dean to bring diversity to the staff, she was apparently mentally ill and the staff changed the locks when she was fired. Going through the literary-type kids books to see if they should be moved or junked, I've come across some books singularly unsuited to be called "juvenile literature:" -A book by Woody Allen (when asked what Allen was doing in the children's section, one of my coworkers quipped "looking for a new husband."). -A biography of Natalie Barney, "the most notorious lesbian of her age," compete with nude photos and elaborately posed shots of Barney and her often-underage "friends." -"One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Because nothing says "kid-friendly" like a Soviet forced labor camp. -Two copies of "The Great Train Robbery" by Michael Crichton. Remember the scene where one of the characters has sex with a "virgin" prostitute to cure venereal complaints? -"A Nun in the Closet," which is actually a rather tame detective story with a super-suggestive title. -"The Demolished Man," a pioneering cyberpunk book that includes scenes set in 99 Bastion West Side, a "mega-brothel." -"Rosemary's Baby." Enough said. Then again, the section has had some unexpected treasures that were buried there away from prying eyes. I found one today, a copy of the first edition and first printing of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," one of my most cherished favorites. It doesn't have a dust jacket and bears some library defacements, but the book was checked out for the first time on May 2, 1925--less than a month after the book hit shelves on April 10. It didn't sell well; only 17,000 first edition, first printing copies ever existed, and they didn't sell out until the mid 30's. If it had the dust jacket, it might have had a typo that would increase its value to the $50,000+ range, but as is it's probably only worth about $800. Lovingly tracking down the information about the book was really exciting--it's stuff like this that got me into literature, and libraries, in the first place. Current mood:  ecstatic.Current music: Starship Troopers - Basil Poledouris. The Double Decker festival is a fixture of life in Oxford, Mississippi for reasons I don't quite understand. I mean, sure, it's the kind of large scale arts/crafts/music/overpriced event that one sees in many places (the Ann Arbor Art Fair being perhaps a prototypical example). But the organizers have built the entire even around a decrepit pair of double decker buses imported from England--maybe there's a vague connection with Oxford, England there, but the Brits don't even use double deckers anymore (not green enough) and it was alwasy more of a central London thing. Ah well. Any event that attracts 50,000 people and is within walking distance of my house is pretty much a must-attend, so I made room in my weekend for a trip to the one-day-only affair. I actually did more than that, volunteering to sell drinks for the city at a refreshment stand with my neighbors. We were told we'd be working from a concession trailer, so I didn't wear any sunblock (the nasty goo makes me break out so I only wear it when exposure is assured). While people complained that last year's festival was "cold" (i.e. 60 degrees), this year it was 85, sunny, and humid. I can't help but wonder how I'll survive when there's three months of warming between these "mild" April temperatures and the hottest things get in July. At the festival, the trailer situation was a disaster. The trailer was the kind designed to dispense fountain drinks from pressurized canisters, not bottles, and the delivery people had simply dumped two 500lb tubs filled with drinks and ice outside of the trailer. There was no way to bring the tubs inside, and nowhere to keep ice in the trailer. So instead of selling drinks from the shade, we sold them under the full brunt of the blazing sun. I ran the cash box, sitting in the door of the trailer and trying to hide in the shade, while my neighbor dispensed the drinks. It was madness; serving from a tub meant no one formed a line, and the popularity of water and Diet Coke meant that it was impossible to keep them cold--the cold ones were snatched up and their warm replacements took too long to chill. There was also the predictable parade of people trying to pay for $2 drinks with $20's and even $50's or $100's--I scrimped and saved $5's and $10's to meet the demand, but every half hour the money would be taken and I'd be left with nothing again. The stalls offered the usual overpriced food ($3 pizza slices, $4 funnelcakes) and overpriced art that I've come to expect from such events (though the open spaces of the Square and overall ambiance were nicer than the AAF). I've always wondered why artists roll into these college towns offering wares that no student could possibly afford; I simply took pictures of the art I liked in a form of art piracy. The double decker bus rides, which were free, were at least interesting; the bus struggled with Oxford's hilly terrain and at least one of my fellow passengers was mentally ill, but it was a nice change of pace (and the first time I've been on a double decker in nearly a decade). I did see a recently retired colleague in the fair-at-large, though, who seemed in good spirits despite major surgery and the dead of a parent mere months into her retirement. After the festival I attended a reception in honor of one of the library's oldest donors and head of the Friends of the Library organization; the 92-year-old former professor was being honored with a study space named after him. I wasn't in top form, badly sunburned and dressed a level or two below most of the other attendants (there wasn't time to go home and change), and in any event he seemed totally disinterested in meeting me when I was presented by the library dean. The praise from the speakers was hyperbolic, as one might expect, though I did appreciate a quote on how writing should be like a lady's skirt: "long enough to cover the matter but short enough to be interesting." I then darted home trying to move in the shadows as much as possible to avoid further skin damage. The resulting burns and sunsickness has left me incapacitated for the rest of the weekend, and I'll probably need to be slathered with zitty goo before attempting tomorrow's walk. Current mood:  sore.Current music: A Beautiful Mind - James Horner. We live in a miraculous age, especially as regards information. If it is out there, there's a better chance of being able to find and use it than there ever has been before. Google Earth is a good example of this; while it does have a Big-Brother-is-watching-you vibe I'm not entirely comfortable with, it's still incredible to be able to see high resolution satellite photos of a place incredibly far removed from Mississippi. One of my co-workers has been tinkering with the application with an eye toward including it in a subject guide, and showed us a real-time satellite pan from Oxford to his home from the old Peace Corps days in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine. With an eye toward my book, I installed the app and looked up Gaborone, Botswana. The University of Botswana was easy enough to find, much-expanded from its old days with a shiny new stadium. Jawara road was also easy to find, but after that things grew murky. I couldn't see anything that resembled the block of duplexes we'd lived in, nor the unpaved dirt culdesec they had been arranged around. The elegantly sculpted blue pools of The Village were nowhere to be found either, robbing me of a vital landmark. As near as I could tell, the entire area had been bulldozed and replaces with light residential bungalows. Intellectually, of course, I have always known that the area was likely to change, given Botswana's growing economy. I've also known--again, from a detached intellectual perspective--that even if nothing had changed, things would still be different; as they say, you can never go home again. But still, the notion that our old home had been wiped away along with the places I used to frequent...well, it left me thunderstruck, and I sank into a deep depression that not even a pizza pie could cure. It was as if I'd just found out an old friend had died. Naturally, being a librarian, I strove to double check the accuracy of the satellite picture. And, lo and behold, I had read the map wrong. The old complex is still there, somewhat camouflaged by new trees and a now-paved culdesac. The Village is there too, with an expanded multiplex talking up much of the old pool space and only one large rectangular pool instead of several curvaceous ones. My old school still exists as well, revised but recognizable. The world being what it is, people had used Google Earth to pinpoint the locations in their blogs. I was relieved, yes, but also a bit shaken--I'd had no idea how fragile I was on the subject. If I seem a bit obsessed with Africa these days, well, it's because writing my book has immersed me in it by necessity. Mom and Dad are on a Fulbright right now, living in a duplex in the desert halfway around the world. And I suppose at this stage of my life, it's natural to look back with rose-colored glasses at an earlier, simpler time. Working full time, living on my own with all the grown-up trapping like taxes and student loan payments...it makes a time when the only decisions I had to make were what games to play outside or what to scribble out with markers seem all the more dear. Of course it wasn't; I certainly was not perfect living over there, and made quite a pest of myself at times (not to mention doing some things that make me cringe with embarrassment today). I wasn't mature enough to appreciate what I was seeing or participating in, and longed to return to the United States as quickly as possible (little anticipating the two years of hideous awkwardness that would intervene before I really found my footing there). Current mood:  relieved.Current music: Pollock - Jeff Beal. I've gotten cracking on transcribing my parents' interview tapes. By doing a little each day, I've been able to chip away at it, and with any luck I'll be done in a few weeks. I've begun organizing my materials to write a draft of my Africa book, and I feel really good about it. For once, no worrying about whether my characters are believable, or if the events I detail make sense--since it's all true! Here is a small writing sample I put together, which I hope will be indicative of what the book itself will look like. It's a description of giant insects, so the squeamish be warned: In South Africa, they’re known as “Parktown Prawns,” after their habit of falling into swimming pools in Johannesburg’s affluent Parktown district and flailing about in an unappetizing way. In Botswana, though, we always knew them as “corn crickets” despite never seeing them in or near anything like corn. The corn cricket is a truly gargantuan insect, cricket-like in form but prehistoric in stature: two inches long, brown to bluish-black in color, and gifted with numerous spikes on its legs. Despite such a ferocious appearance, the crickets are rather harmless—they neither bite nor sting, and feast on garden pests like slugs and snails. But their bad habits earned them a reputation as a pest: when bothered, corn crickets often jump directly at you, with their barbed legs often tangling in hair or clothes. If they don’t deem you worthy of such a direct assault, the crickets will poop at you instead, releasing a toxic-smelling black liquid to cover their escape. And harmless or not, no one—not even my entomologist father—liked the prospect of a megaton insect crawling all over them. Sopping up cricket poop was equally unappetizing, as was the idea of surfacing in a pool only to come eye-to-mandible with a drowning corn cricket. Despite such traits, the crickets’ most noteworthy feature by far was their survivability. Their exoskeletons were thick and hard, and with their large bulk to back it up, corn crickets were nigh-indestructible. Parktown residents complained about how much pesticide it took to kill a cricket, but that was no surprise when they were quite capable of being run over by a truck. Roadkill crickets were quite common, usually crawling away from the scene with their guts hanging out. The crickets’ armor was concentrated in their front halves, you see, leaving a squishy abdomen dragging behind them that was vulnerable to rupture. The crickets seemed to take this in stride, however, and would earnestly chug along much as they had before—seemingly no worse the wear for the half-inch of bright yellow bug gut trailing behind them. Occasionally, the gut-draggin’ crickets would fall into swimming pools, making for a most unappetizing brew—and explaining why I tried very hard not to swallow any pool water. Word had it that, like the humble cockroaches, corn crickets could survive for a time without their heads. We never saw a headless cricket, luckily, nor did we ever see any evidence to substantiate the rumor that they were genetic experiments or space invaders. People occasionally wondered why the bugs had appeared on the scene so suddenly—they’d been all but unknown in big cities before the 60’s and were just completing their full-scale invasion when we encountered them. Dad had a much more reasonable theory: the crickets’ natural habitat was a lush forest, and by greening up their yards, people were making them irresistible to homesteading insects. Scott once tried to keep a corn cricket as a pet, shortly after we arrived. We’d never seen anything like them, and didn’t even know their names. By way of explanation, I claimed that they were immature forms of the local locusts—big grasshoppers that were longer and winged but nowhere near as thick or spiky. The crickets, I felt, must clearly stretch out, grow wings, and lose their spikes. Scott took me at my word and captured a corn cricket, which he kept in an old preserves jar alongside an “adult” locust. We then patiently waited for the cricket to become a locust. Instead, it died. We threw some grass in with it, assuming that as a grasshopper it must eat grass, but as corn crickets subsist on juicier prey, the captive expired. The locust, as I recall, was paroled to the backyard, and we gave up on keeping any more exotic insects. A pity, too—Scott and I might just have hit on the secret to corn cricket extermination. Current mood:  moody.Current music: Coraline - Bruno Coulais. I didn't do a whole lot today as far as birthdays go. I've never been one for wild parties on any occasion, let alone my birthday; instead I spent a quiet day at home. Birthdays in the past have often found me filled with remorse and self-recrimination--at having wasted a year, I suppose. This year, I resolved to spend the day in quiet relaxation. I cleaned the house a bit, and opened the windows to let the sunlight in--it was a stunningly beautiful spring day, and having the house feel less like a sty put me in a good mood. Dressed in my favorite outfit, I tried to enjoy the day for once, rather than feeling guilty about what I should be doing or should have done. I took the opportunity to make some resolutions--to get cracking on my stagnant writing projects, to keep the house a little cleaner. Nothing big, just enough to make me feel like I was getting something done. Curiously, this led me to feel very content--empowered, even, for the rest of the day. Dinner was at my favorite local restaurant, Old Venice Pizza. My neighbors treated me to a meal as thanks for watching their pets over spring break; I tried the "John Wayne" pizza, which was an absolute revelation and a new favorite. I have a good feeling about 26 already, just as I had an ambivalent feeling about 25 from the get-go. We'll see how things pan out. Now that it's been a while, and I've finished revising and entering the journal entries I wrote overseas, I think I ought to tackle what I really thought of Qatar. Dad mentioned that the country was a first-world veneer over a third-world reality; I was reminded of Orwell's "doublethink." Neither impression is completely accurate, but they both reflect the deep, almost schizophrenic divide I witnessed there. On the one hand, Doha has all the trappings of a western global city--skyscrapers, shopping, museums, universities, a symphony. I never once felt unsafe; the country was clean and modern. The Qataris have treated Mom and Dad very generously, and the few genuine natives that I met face-to-face acted the same way. As westerners, we were allowed to dress, act and worship as we pleased as long as we didn't rock the boat (by, say, committing a crime or trying to proselytize). Qataris shopped in supermarkets for food and cooled their heels at the local Starbucks. On the other, Qatar is very much a conservative, authoritarian, Muslim state (though certainly not to the same excess as Saudi Arabia). There are no elections, no political parties, and no legal routes to citizenship--no matter how long a foreigner has lived there or what they do, they can never become a Qatari. Women, while far more empowered than in places like Saudi Arabia, are still highly repressed: forced by husbands and fathers to wear abayas and segregated by gender in many walks of public life. The most I saw a female Qatari do was act as a security guard/docent at a museum or zoo; those were also pretty much the only women past puberty with completely uncovered faces. Daily calls to prayer are broadcast by loudspeaker even within the malls (which have special prayer rooms). You can get in real trouble photographing people, especially women. They're passionate about supporting the Palestinian "children" with financial contributions and condemn Starbucks based on its Jewish owner, which doesn't stop people from drinking there. Their treatment of foreign workers really gives me pause. Since the average Qatari gets an oil stipend of $40,000 a year in addition to whatever other money they might make working, they're disinclined to manual labor. So all the brute force work (as well as nannying) in the country is done by migrants from India and the Philippines--imported on a few years' contract, deported at the first sign of trouble. I never saw where they lived--certainly not anywhere in central Doha--nor did I catch any shopping in the country's fabulous malls. It seems very callous, and there's no way that the workers can become citizens to enjoy the fruits of their labor. Westerners and other foreign professionals are given much better digs and benefits, but their position is essentially the same--work for cash on a short-term contract, with minimal interaction with Qatari culture. Westerners go to the malls and restaurants and such, but they live with other foreigners in housing compounds, work with other foreigners, and generally have little to do with the natives aside from teaching them, being supervised by them, and cashing their checks. The Qataris we met in the malls seemed highly disinclined to speak to us, and their looks betrayed an ambivalence sometimes bordering on latent hostility. The foreigners I spoke with seemed disconcerted by this by and large--there is no opportunity for them to put down roots. They are hired hands the same as the manual workers, only with higher wages and privileges. One thing everyone agreed on was that the Qataris had more money than they knew what to do with. This was reflected in the general state of development there; the Qataris wanted to leapfrog all the various developmental stages that had led to massive and respected cities like New York or Paris. They were focused on features of these not as pieces in a thriving city but as objects to be acquired. Therefore there was a Sheraton and a Four Seasons and museums and malls and a symphony and skyscrapers galore. There aren't enough people to justify them--I suspect heavy government subsidies--but, rather, they are collected as jewels might be. Qatar can afford to lose an awful lot of money subsidizing things that look impressive. This was the refrain time and again: people more interested in the trappings and accouterments of international culture rather than their substance. The comparison with a rap star was one we made constantly; freshly rich and wild with abandon, the Qataris are decking out their country with massive amounts of bling-bling, with skyscrapers and symphonies rather than spinner rims. It's pretty obvious that I have mixed feelings about the country. I don't doubt that Qatar means well, and is seeking to balance its traditional roots as a Muslim sheikdom with the reality of being a major player in the international oil and finance markets. It's just that the two exist so uneasily, and create so many contradictions in every facet of the country's existence, that it seems almost literally schizophrenic. Still, being there is an experience I'm glad I was able to have; I feel like I have a much keener understanding of the region now--something that's more important than ever these days. Current mood:  contemplative.
Our last full day in the country, bleeding right into another marathon flight. I will say that we seemed to be running out of things to do after only a week, though that may be influenced by the fact that today was a Friday--their equivalent of our Sunday--and not much requiring Qatari input was open. Of course, many things were still fully staffed by migrant workers, and one benefit of hiring so many Indians and Filipinos is that their holy days fall on different days of the week. Mom's continued obsession with camels led us to the camel race track outside Doha today, where we hoped to catch a race or at least see some camels.. The track was deserted when we got there--as I expected--but there were camels aplenty being exercised on and around the track. I was a bit apprehensive traipsing around near the grandstand--those weren't the cheap seats we were mulling around, and heaven knows what the penalty for gawking at a camel is compared to an abaya violation. Still, no one told us to scram, and the camel jockeys seemed bemused by us (bemusement is almost always a positive thing in these situations)). most were talking on cell phones while riding and at least one snapped a picture of us as we did the same of him. Mom had mentioned robotic jockeys used to prevent the abuse of child jockeys imported from other countries, but I assumed she was kidding or repeating rumors. The robotics center across from the track put that speculation to bed, and fast. We saw the robot jox in action; they're essentially small boxes with cameras on top, painted to look like real jockeys but far too small and boxy to ever be mistaken for one, affixed near the camel's butt. They have a small crop sticking out of them and are really just automated whipping machines, with the handler seeing through the camera and controlling the rate at which the crop smacks the camel's butt and therefore the speed of the camel. So Mom finally got her shot of Flat Stanley "standing" on a camel. The little girls next door in Reed City sent a hand-colored cutout of Stanley along, and Mom's been photographing him for them as the process demands. She's often been far less than tactful about it--what the proud culture of the Gulf must think about being posed with a paper cartoon cut-out I'm not sure I want to know. With the camel racetrack in the rearview mirror, we were unsure of our next move. Malls and shopping only go so far, and most things were closed. We eventually decided to hit downtown Doha, where skyscrapers and luxury hotels are sprouting like scrub grass. The idea was to visit some of the swanky hotels in the area as well as the massive city center mall--just to say we'd done so, really. The Doha Sheraton looks like a pyramidal spaceship from Stargate both within and without; the only features that distinguished it from what you might find in Rio were a traditional tent sitting area (for visiting sheiks I suppose) and a giant Arabic latticework ball surrounding a cafe. It was pretty posh to say the least, and I felt like we has somehow missed paying a cover charge somewhere. We weren;t allowed on the Sheraton beach, though, because it was "too crowded." Right. Nearby, the Four Seasons ocupied a massice complex with neoclassical towers topped by lotus flowers of neon and stone. The inside was far less impressive than the Sheraton, with a cramped feel despite the opulent fixtures. We were able to walk right into the guests-only area, but there was little to remark upon--I've stayed at fancier Holiday Inns. Our final stop, the city center mall, was a madhouse, mobbed by families fresh from mosque. The mall was disappointing, featuring far more in the vein of designer clothes to be hidden under abayas than anything else. I did notice a ton of shops selling designer kids' clothes, something that's been a constant feature of the shopping here. I was a bit mystified about this, until I realized that kids don't have to take on the abaya or thobe until puberty--so designer clothes for the little ones is a way for the parents to show off within the bounds of the dress code. The mall did at least sport two astounding food courts, two full size multiplexes, and an ice rink. We ate a quick meal there and were on our way; I was able to get some nice city shots at least. After one final souvenir stop at the Villagio mall, it was all packing and airportage. I was able to fit all my swag into my carryons, as had been my plan all along, but Scott opted for a more daring path. His luggage had been damaged in transit, so he bought a new bag in Qatar to use as a carryon. He checked the damaged bag as a decoy: it only had dirty clothes and his Qatar dagger in it while the sheath and all other souvenirs traveled with him. The idea was that the decoy bag is expendible but there's a good chance that the dagger, or at least the sheath, will make it to the States. Today was in keeping with yesterday in that it revealed a more authentic Qatar, though I'm not sure I liked what we found out. Dad took Scott and I on a tour of his digs at Qatar University, which is quite different from Education City--they are in fact competitors for students, money and foreign talent. As I've learned, the Qatari solution for something that isn't working (or isn't meeting their expectations at least) is to build another at great expense and with great fanfare. This principle explains why the Villagio and Hyatt malls are across the street instead of across town, for instance. Qatar University feels much more cohesive than Education City, like a real university rather than a collection of departments in magnificent buildings that just happen to be next door to each other. It was unified architecturally by a style I can only call "labyrinthine Islamic tech." I was reminded very much of Utah Valley University in the stark 70's brutalism on display, though gentler Islamic touches like intricate geometric screens were omnipresent. The layout of the faculty offices--multiple interlocking identical courtyards and bridges--were impressive to look at but virtually impossible to navigate, like an Alhambra gone mad. Unlike Education City, Qatar University is divided into men's and women's colleges. They are next door and share the same architectural style (indeed, visitors might not even know they'd wandered from one to the other) but Qatari men are banned from the women's campus on penalty of a run-in with a well-built woman in an abaya. Oddly, women are allowed on either campus (though they of course wear their abayas or scarfs at all times) and westerners are exempt. Both campuses feature identical facilities (in principle, anyhow) with separate libraries, classrooms, and student centers. Our sole experience with a women's building was the student center. Dad is exposed to them fairly frequently, as classes are segregated by gender and he teaches a women's class. He had an appointment with one of his students in the women's student center, and left us in the atrium Starbucks while he tended to her. Curiously, business was booming despite graphic posters informing patrons that Starbucks "kills Palestinian children" (its CEO is Jewish). Since the building was nominally women-only, the students in the atrium let down their abayas somewhat, the very first time we had seen more than a flash of a Qatari women beneath her veil. What did we see? Designer jeans, perfectly coiffed hair, high-class nails, cell phones, PSP's. Beneath all that black cloth, the students were dressed for Madison Avenue--but only their female friends and family members would ever know. I later learned that, when out of the country, the women would go abaya-less and meet young Qatari men (similarly divested of their thobes) in inconspicuous places like Harrod's of London.The abaya, it was explained to me, is a cultural rather than religious statement and the men in a women's life--her father or husband--are the ones who insist she wear it and to what degree. The visit was extremely uncomfortable; even though we were well-dressed westerners with a female chaperone (Mom) and empty briefcases as props to make us look more academic, Scott and I were still the only men sitting at that Starbucks. We were in a culture that doesn't allow you to take pictures of women without their husband's permission, seeing these invisible women for the first time and yet not allowed to look. I used my sunglasses as a shield to sneak some longer glances here and there, but dreaded what might happen if I were caught staring. Commentary on the fairness of the situation will have to wait, but I was glad to be out of there. Interestingly, the situation in the men's student center was the opposite, and we were made to feel more welcome than we have been anywhere thus far. People approached us, chatted with us, and the dean's office therein showered Scott and I with promotional Qatar University merchandise. As sons of a valued foreign professional, we were ourselves valued. I can see how a dichotomy like this might reinforce the status quo even in the face of all the western imports that abound in Qatar. This afternoon saw our long-delayed trip to the souq, the traditional marketplace. It's more small shops than stalls, and bargaining--while permitted--bears little fruit. But it's every bit the labyrinth one would expect of an Arabic market and felt far more exotic than it really was. I bought more there than all the other days so far combined despite being nearly overcome by nausea brought on by dehydration and the strong scent of curry. My haul included a Qatari flag, a "traditional weaving" (made in Eqypt, of course), a dagger I'll have to rely on Mom and Dad to ship back, and a thobe, the traditional men's counterpart to the abaya. The thobe's headdress is what everyone is familiar with; it's the thobe itself that may attract some stares. It's like a white formal dress shirt that extends all the way to the ground, and just about every adult male Qatari I saw was sporting one, though I'd wager that there are fancy western clothes beneath many of them. I never saw a westerner in a thobe, though the shops happily sold us some. Mom met the same soldier she'd seen on the beach yesterday, and once again helped her in the abaya department--this time for purchase rather than rental. Our final stop of the day was, oddly enough, the Doha Zoo. Mom has been obsessed with camel rides the entire time we've been here, and had heard they were offered in the local animaltorium. They weren't, but the zoo was quite interesting regardless. Conditions were better than the Saigon Zoo, though nowhere near as nice as San Diego--many of the visitors openly fed and teased the critters though the enclosures themselves were generally nice. We were able to see the Arabian Oryx, which we knew as a gemsbok from our days in Africa. It's the national symbol of Qatar (along with the hawk) despite the fact that the zoo contains the entire Qatari population of the beasts. The focus was definitely on African wildlife, and several of the pens contained multiple species to approximate the real composition of the high veldt--though this broke down at times, as when we saw Australian wallabies listed with African Eland. Caged animals do pale a bit before those seen in the wild, which might explain my seemingly jaded view of the attraction. |
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