Home, after the most difficult year of my three years in Qatar.
When I woke up and looked out the window on the first morning back in California, and saw the blue sky I cried.
Who cries over blue sky? I’ve never heard of a such thing.
After 11 months of dust colored sky, dust colored ground, dust colored buildings and the worst dust storms in Qatar in the past 12 years, I am astounded to see color all around me and to see growing things. To see orange and lemon trees and lavender and rosemary and vegetables growing in the garden, to have pets around me and bare feet on the earth.
I keep thinking it will all be taken away from me. I keep thinking I’m about to be surrounded by harsh wind full of toxic particles and swirling dust and debris and maniacal drivers and grueling heat.
For the past three weeks there was the added desperation to drink water while dealing with traffic and heat and bureaucracy, but not being able to because it’s Ramadan.
I would check that there were no cops around and duck below the dashboard of my Pajero in order to sneak a gulp of water.
Then the inevitable swearing at the idiots storming through the roundabouts without looking, and arriving at my tower, past the African security, and the Filippino cleaners, to my apartment where there’s no garden, no pets and a view of dusty construction sites.
It was not a war zone, but still, for me, it was something to survive.
I suppose those of us born into a landscape as rich as California’s suffer more in a place so barren, so vanquished.
Qatar may, on paper, be the richest country in the world but with landscapes it’s the poorest place I’ve ever been. Its land and its air are like a corpse choking on dust.
Today I woke up thinking the orange and lemon trees out the window were not real, but rather, were fake ones created by the Emir.
I have yet to believe again in my own landscape.
Another good example of your writing ability. Great description of Doha! And I spent only a month there!
So I take it Qatar Tourism isn’t hiring you to increase World Cup sales? Holy hell, I’ve written critical things about places but my hat’s off to your description. I didn’t know about the sky. I thought the desert always had blue sky. Welcome home, babe. By the way, the skies in Italy are still very blue.
John!!! LOL! This year was particularly bad with the dust storms. For sure the vast majority of the time the sky there is dust colored, but this year was just over the top with the dust storms and the lack of fresh air. Trying to handle it took a lot out of me.
Welcome home, Chandi! Maybe it will take a while for you to adjust to the altered vista, but I’m so happy for you right now!!!
California is indeed colorful, even in a drought; hope the dust storms didn’t follow you home from Doha!
Lovely photos. I think it probably was a sort of handicap that your home in California is in one of the most favored places on Earth for climate and lush vegetation (although I imagine the drought is affecting all the plants). I enjoy your writing very much, keep it up. BTW, does this cri de coeur mean you’re not going back to Qatar? Kinda sounds like it, although you didn’t say so explicitly.
Yes Marcia, all the British expats I met in Qatar (and I mean ALL that I met without fail) were SO HAPPY to be in Qatar because of the weather. But when I said where I was from, they replied in an astounded voice, “If you’re from California, What are you doing in Qatar?