6. Camels, cars and tomatoes

Simone and newly acquired Ant...

June 2007

Hi everyone. Sorry I haven’t written for so long. What happens normally is that I wait for a tiny dose of sunlit sanity to fall upon my life through which I can see how utterly ridiculous it is and I am and then I can write to you about it in a calm collected manner.

But it so happens that for the last couple of months that I have no more resilience to bring any kind of perspective to this utterly dysfunctional, incompetent, contemptible police state which treats me and every other foreign worker like shit and I am FUCKING FED UP.

I feel better having said that, you will all be pleasd to know.

Try this for size: I take my car to Kia for the fifth time to try and get extra keys cut. They come back. The old keys don’t work, because they have inadvertently reprogrammed my car – for the second time. I email Kia head office. I text Kia in Qatar. “Madam, bring your car in. The service manager is waiting for you. We will fix it”.

A mate of mine who runs a rental car business and who therefore knows something about cars sends my car in with his brother. He is told that no-one is allowed to have more than two keys. He believes it because this kind of nonsensical regulation is typical of Qatar (you have to show your passport to get any kind of keys cut, for example, and they record the passport number). So my mate drives out. “Why do you want four keys anyway” the Service Manager asks. “I’ve got 10 kids and I want to give them all keys” Mohamed shoots back. “Well you can’t. The rule for this car is two keys only”. “Show me the catalogue for this car” says Mohamed. “If it says I can only have two keys, fine.”

Guy realises he has lost. Guy apologises. “Mohamed Abbas” I say to my mate, “thank god it was you there. Had it been me, I would have slugged him.”

And so it goes in Qatar. I think the bullshit excuses you are forced to listen to are even harder to deal with than the incompetence and laziness. And in case you’re wondering, that was one of THREE incidents in ONE day, all involving the most ridiculous of excuses. And while it was a bad day, this happens over and over and over. Hours trying to book and rebook a fucking classroom. Hours trying to find a working photocopier. More hours trying to find A4 paper. Hours queuing up in the post-office which has a ticket system until 12.30 but the tickets run out at 10 but they can’t serve people without tickets until 12.30. The local huge supermarket has run out of full-cream milk. They only key-cutter in the city has run out of keys to cut. And on

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrggghhhh!!!!!!!!!

Happier news.

I am now the proud owner of a cat. I found her lying in a pool of blood and unable to use three of her legs, face swollen up with pus, both eyes closed and neck slit where her mother had tried to kill her, presumably because she was the runt of the litter. She was about 3 weeks old, and the size of my palm, and had been born under my treadmill which finally arrived from Sharjah 7 months late and smashed beyond repair. She survived the night and after a couple of days washing her with salt water and syringing milk and tuna into her, I took her to the vet, a laconic Kiwi who said she might be brain damaged but that he would “try her on antibiotics and hope for the best”.

She’s now 9 weeks old, 6 times the size, and has established her feline normalcy by deciding early on that the best place to sleep is always on top of freshly clean, ironed clothes. Despite this, and her propensity to climb my living room curtains, it is really a great joy to come home to her. She shoots out of my bedroom to the front door, full of news of her small cat doings (successful completion of personal search and destroy missions around living room). Photos are attached. Her name is Ant.

Other news: I closed my Japanese Club and withdrew from all additional work about a month ago after getting back my performance appraisal in which my boss (not Dr Fawzi of my previous letter, another one – I have 8 bosses) gave me “average.” (Pissed off didn’t even begin to cover it, especially when he raised his own part of the mark from 3 to 3.8 out of 5 when he knew I was going to make a stink about it – either he can justify a 3 or he can’t the unethical turd). Unfortunately, the Ambassador’s wife had already invited us back to the Embassy, and then when I was there, for that event and a separate lunch, the Ambassador took me aside and told me he would be visiting my Club at the university the following week with the Head (Director-General) of the Japanese Department of Foreign Affairs!!!!! Aargh! Aargh! Aargh!

Things simply don’t happen in a week in Qatar. They take months, even to get the permission for someone of that status to enter the campus – and this had to come from the University President herself, who is of the royal family here (she eventually came to the event, and caused a bigger stir than the other guests amongst the girls and Arab staff).

Fortunately, I proposed marriage to one of the most powerful men at the university when I first arrived (not realising how powerful he was, of course, and as a joke, which created much mirth around the higher levels of university administration). Sensibly, he declined (but blushing, which moment he will not live down in a hurry), but thank god I did, because when I went in with this problem to end all problems, Mohamed Hussain (photo below of Mohamed H. in one of his more stressed moments – observe the gettra beginning to pile on top of his head), said “Don’t worry about the money. Don’t worry about the permission letters [I told you he was powerful – nothing happens without personally delivered permission letters here]. Just tell me what you need.”

So the flowers, plants, a light buffet, tables and gifts were all delivered on time. I managed to get the advertising and press releases out, and we ran a sushi-making competition, a chopstick bean-eating competition, and numerous races/competitions with various traditional Japanese toys. The Ambassador swung a mean pokuri leg (running with bamboo clogs), and the D-G was wondering around saying in Japanese, “This is so much fun. I’ve never had such a welcome.”

And I lived to see my 42nd birthday, a few days ago. A truly hideous age which is now showing all over my face – thank god for Mac make-up. I woke up too depressed at the thought of another year here to finish preparing for the party that night, and remained that way until I got a call from a couple of students asking me to come into the university. They met me with gifts – a white gold watch and a pendant which, they claimed, “I deserved.” (An admirable attitude in a student, I always feel.) This got me through the rest of the day and evening – and it was lovely celebrating with friends from my rooftop…

In between these two events, I went on a 3 day road trip around the Emirates with a good friend, Helen Chan, who is going home (escaping, the bugger). We stayed on the water, ate copious amounts of food, dropped in on a Melbourne friend (Annie - see photo with champagne below) who has an apartment overlooking the water in Abu Dhabi, and managed to avoid hitting any camels (check out the road signs in the photos) which is good, because if you into a kangaroo, your door may be dinted, but if you run into a camel, its hooves are likely to remove your lungs on the way puncturing through the car, and $AUD 3,000 is deducted from your estate (okay, so I don’t have one) to compensate the camel owner. Valuable bloody things apparently, although you can buy a baby one for $AUD800 - 1,000 or less at the Al Ain camel market. I checked, but couldn’t see how I could fit one in my apartment. And anyone I have Ant now.

A final word about the Kia incident. It had a benefit. I discovered the Ultimate Arab Insult. After my I-would’ve-punched-him comment, Mohamed Abbas told me he didn’t buy Kia cars for his fleet because some years ago he and a mate went out to collect a car from Kia which they refused to release.

After some argument (!!!), a brawl erupted, a crowd gathered, and the police were called, but the police and the head of Kia decided that Khalid (M.A.’s mate) had been in the right trying to destroy the Kia’s Service Guy because of what had been said to Khalid, which was:

“You’re no good at this job. You should try selling tomatoes by the side of the road, instead.”

So I say to you all, just so that it’s clear, that I have every faith in your ability to do your job. But should you wish to change careers and sell tomatoes by the side of the road, you will not go down in my estimation.

Much love,

Simone