Saturday, August 31, 2013

Day 213 - Protocol

Diplomatic reception
a diplomatic reception
The session during my orientation to the Foreign Service that was most troubling was the session on protocol. Protocol has been defined somewhat flippantly as behaving impolitely on purpose. But that only works because it requires rigid following of the rules. Some of those rules seemed arbitrary themselves. But mostly what struck us all was how important it was to sit at the right end of the sofa, to get into and out of a car in the right order, and to arrange for guests to be seated appropriately at conferences and dinners. Breaking the rules was the fastest way to insult someone. If the someone was the boss, there were career consequences. If the someone was from another mission, there could be political consequences.

Fortunately, most of the rules I had to worry about only had career consequences.

Diplomatic reception
another diplomatic reception
One of the rules required that staff members stand whenever the ambassador entered the room. Since I had not worked at an embassy before, I hadn't observed the rule anywhere, but everyone around me in Doha made sure I knew about it because the ambassador took this gesture of respect very seriously. I knew the ambassador - any ambassador for that matter - would be the last person to enter a room for a meeting. Those who were invited to the meeting were expected to be there on time. No one could ever enter a meeting late if the ambassador was present. So I knew that when the ambassador stepped into the conference room for our weekly country team meetings, we were all expected to stand until he sat down and told us we could take our seat.

But I hadn't realized the ambassador expected us to stand up when he came into our offices to talk with us. When one of my colleagues told me he did expect it, I asked his secretary, Marge, if he expected her to stand up every time he walked into her office, something he did several times a day. She responded that of course he didn't. But she didn't realize he was making an exception for her.

another diplomatic reception
another diplomatic reception
At a larger embassy, it would be a very rare thing for an ambassador to come into the office of a staff member. It would be much more likely that staff members would be called and told to come to the ambassador's office for a conversation. So it is likely people would have stood up if the ambassador entered someone's office at a larger embassy. One of our local consular section employees, Randa, had previously worked at the U.S. embassy in Damascus and she confirmed this was the case there. But our embassy in Doha was about the smallest in the world - the ambassador and six other Americans. The small size meant that the ambassador couldn't avoid entering some of our offices.

When he came into my office one day and I didn't stand up, he stated his reason for dropping in and then pointed out that I perhaps didn't realize all the protocol rules because I should have stood up when he entered my office. I told him he was right, I hadn't realized that, and that I would stand up when he entered the room in the future.

We grumbled about this a bit because we all suspected that at most embassies the ambassador would likely only expect the staff to stand when he entered the conference room for meetings or when there were others from outside the embassy present. Most ambassadors, we thought, would have told the staff to dispense with the formalities when we were alone. But our ambassador was not like most ambassadors.

another diplomatic reception
another diplomatic reception
It was not only our staff that was small; our building was also small. It was so small that the lobby of the embassy had been cut up with partitions to carve office spaces within the room. And since the ambassador walked through the lobby to get to his office and then through it again whenever he left the building, he expected the two employees whose offices were within that lobby space to stand up when he walked through it. As he had frequent appointments, he walked through the lobby several times a day, expecting those two employees to stand up each time.

Another aspect of protocol that the ambassador reminded us of often was that when we were invited to his home for a representational event, we were expected to be there before any of the other guests arrived and we were expected to remain until the guests had left. This was not an exceptional expectation since this protocol was well understood and observed everywhere. The difference in Doha was that the ambassador held so many representational events at his home and he invited all of us to each of them. He thought it was good for morale. We weren't in a strong enough position to point out to him that it had the opposite effect. I didn't find it very morale boosting to be the only embassy staff member to be seated at the table with all the teenaged children of the guests at one sit-down dinner event.

But maybe I missed the protocol point being aimed at me that day.



Friday, August 30, 2013

Day 212 - The Souq

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Image of entrance to Tehran bazaar
by basheem, via Flickr.com
Doha had more than one area referred to as the souq. The old souq was a wooden covered structure that reminded me of the Tehran bazaar, except for its size. While I was in Tehran, Iran Air undertook a public relations campaign to let the world - or at least the West - know how progressive Iran was. That 1976 ad campaign posed lots of questions, such as "It's predicted that in 1990 the USA, Russia, Japan and West Germany will be the world's four leading industrial nations. Who's tipped to be No. 5?" The answer to all the questions was Iran. One of those questions was "What country has the largest covered shopping mall?" No matter how much I enjoyed shopping in the bazaar, I never thought of it as a covered mall. It was something else.

The old souq was like the bazaar in many ways, but it was so much better. It was cozy. It invited customers to get to know the shop keepers, to establish relationships which made bargaining so much fun in contrast to the bargaining in Iran which seemed to be a matter of figuring out just how much insulting one another the two parties involved were willing to endure. But the old souq was made of wood and during the time I was in Doha, it burned.

There was a second traditional souq, not quite so old, but with lots of winding alley ways lined with shops organized so that all the shops that sold a particular set of items were together, a great convenience for the shoppers and incentive for the shop keepers to establish relationships with their customers. After all, if the shop next door sold the same items, staying in business didn't necessarily mean undercutting the competitors' prices. Customer loyalty was important in the souq.

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Image of souq waif in Doha, a modern souq made
to resemble the old souq, by jemasmith, via Flickr.com
On one trip into this outdoor souq with friends, I purchased something at a shop very near where we parked the car. I hadn't realized that while I was taking out money to pay for my purchase, my Qatari drivers license fell out of my wallet and into a box that was behind the counter, just out of my sight. We continued shopping, and on our way back to the car a couple of hours later, we passed the same shop again. The shop keeper stopped us before we passed his shop in order to give me back my license. Using only gestures, he showed me where it had fallen. I thanked him and we were on our way.

Three weeks later, when I was filling out a mail order catalog order form, I looked for my credit cards in my wallet, but the holder I kept them in was missing. I tried to think of when I last used one of my credit cards - they weren't accepted anywhere in Doha - or where I had been where I might have removed the holder and forgotten to put it back. I retraced my steps over the previous three weeks, stopping in all the shops I could think of that I had been in and asked if I had dropped my credit card holder there. Eventually I remembered that my license had fallen out of my wallet in the souq, so I headed back to the same shop. Before I even got close enough to the shop to ask a question, the shop keeper reached down into the same box he had shown me when he gave me back my license and he handed me the folder with my credit cards. He gestured some more to let me know that the holder had fallen onto the floor of the shop, not into the box, so he hadn't noticed it until later. I was astonished first, that he had found them, second, that he had kept them, and third, that he recognized me after three weeks without my having to say anything. The cards did not have my photograph on them or any other way for someone to recognize that they were mine. But shop keepers in the souq develop relationships with their customers, even if the customers don't realize it. He wouldn't take any money from me for returning the cards so the next day I brought him a very large tray of baked treats that he could share with his other customers.

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Image of dresses from the 1930s
by vintage stitches, via Flickr.com
There were also buildings referred to as souqs although I always thought of both souq and bazaar referring to open air markets - just one more reason that I could never think of the Tehran bazaar as a mall, even though it was largely covered. One of those souqs was a fabric souq we referred to as the 5 riyal souq because nearly all the merchants there sold their fabric at 5 riyals (about $1.35) a meter. This souq was one of my favorites. Gloria and I had found a seamstress who could take our purchases and turn them into fabulous items based on little more than a picture or a description. We would head into the five riyal souk to pick up several 5-meter lengths of fabric in one shop and just as we gave our first indication that we were ready to leave, the shop keeper would offer us something to drink - tea or a soft drink. They were developing relationships with us. The hospitality benefited everyone. Someone would pull out chairs from a back room for us to sit on, we would feel refreshed, and we would inevitably see just one more bolt up on a shelf that needed to be added to our bags.

The most practical reason for having clothes made in Doha was that the styles available in the west didn't always meet the modest standards of the middle east. Before leaving for Doha, I went in search of a dress that didn't leave too much of my legs, arms, back, or front exposed so that I could wear it to receptions in the evening. So long as I had only retail outlets to shop in, I couldn't find anything modest enough except for dresses with tags hanging from them which read as seen in Modern Bride. They were clearly not bridal gowns or bridesmaid's dresses. That left only mother-of-the-bride dresses which I wasn't about to accept since I still hadn't acknowledged I was closing in on the age where I could have had a child of marriageable age. The only shop I could find a suitable dress was one that sold vintage clothing. And that opened up the idea of having clothing made in Doha based on styles from the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s.

Sandra with our Doha seamstress
Sandra with our Doha seamstress
But the real reason I had clothes made was that it was fun to see piles of fabric turned into dresses, suits, blouses and pants that couldn't be purchased from any store or mail order catalog. The price for most items was about 100 riyals ($35), a very acceptable price for tailored, one-of-a-kind items. Gloria and I would bring in bags of clothing with pictures or descriptions of what we wanted. Two or three weeks later we would return to see if anything was ready for the first fitting. On those occasions, we usually had more fabric to turn over, making sure our seamstress always had more to do for us.

One day our seamstress called us to let us know that she had finished everything we had brought in for her. What she didn't tell us is that the reason she had finished everything was that she was leaving Doha to return to the Philippines. So we brought in even more fabric for her to make up for us. She waited until we had explained all that we wanted before she told us that she was leaving so that someone else would have to make up the items for us. We didn't worry, however, because there was another woman in the shop we called Mom who always checked over everything our seamstress did for us.  Mom didn't do the sewing, but she was in charge.

Unfortunately, Mom's oversight wasn't enough to make up for the difference in the talents of the other seamstresses and tailors. It was fun while it lasted.

Thursday, August 29, 2013

Day 211 - Gloria

Sandra and Gloria
Sandra and Gloria
In the spring, Gloria, the ambassador's new secretary, arrived. The Department had some challenges finding someone willing to replace Marge because word had gotten out that the ambassador was difficult to work for. The process for assigning a secretary to an ambassador is unlike the assignment process for other Foreign Service staff. An ambassador's secretary's tour length depends on the length of time the ambassador is in country. The expectation is that the two will remain in the country for the same length of time. It is very unusual for an ambassador's secretary to leave ahead of the ambassador. Marge's request for her tour to be broken early was therefore unexpected.

An ambassador gets to select his or her own secretary, but a political appointee ambassador doesn't have the advantage of knowing much about possible candidates. The pool of candidates is small and word gets around quickly. When an ambassador's secretary leaves early, people ask why. When no Foreign Service secretary could be convinced to consider the position, exceptional steps were needed. Gloria was a Civil Service secretary with a reputation for getting along with everyone, including some senior staff who were considered difficult. Gloria agreed to come as the ambassador's secrertary and the ambassador accepted her assignment.

Gloria shopping, one of our favorite activities
Gloria shopping, one of
our favorite activities
Gloria was a breath of fresh air for me. All the other Americans at the embassy were men, most of them single so there weren't even many wives to be my friends. Marge had decided to leave even before I arrived in Doha, so I didn't take the time to get to know her. That was a poor decision, albeit perhaps not a conscious one, and therefore it was my loss. When Gloria arrived, she and I became friends quickly, spending lots of our spare time together as well as going with one another to official functions.

One event we attended together was a Qatari wedding. In a segregated society such as Qatar's, weddings had two separate venues, one for the men and one for the women. Gloria and I were invited to the wedding because the groom was one of our Qatari contacts. But we were invited to the women's event where we knew no one as it would have been inappropriate for us to attend the men's event.

Muslim marriages are concluded through the signing of a contract, not the performance of a public ceremony. The wedding ceremonies are just celebrations that the marriage has taken place. The women's event involved women gathering at a large venue - the one we attended was in the ballrooms of the Sheraton hotel - moving the chairs around into conversational groups while musicians and dancers performed as entertainment.

When Gloria and I arrived, there were rows and rows of chairs set up from front to back of the ballroom, facing the end of the room where the musicians and dancers performed. The rows were set up just as a fire marshall would prefer - with a wide aisle down the middle and even wider aisles on either side of the two halves. Gloria and I sat down in chairs about two-thirds of the way back. Since we didn't know anyone and neither of us spoke Arabic, there weren't other people for us to join.

We watched as more and more women came into the ballroom. Each woman would grab a chair from the neatly organized rows and move them forward so they could join a group of women they knew. The neat rows disintegrated into messy groups congregated in the front half of the room. It didn't take long until all the other chairs had been moved forward, leaving Gloria and me sitting in two isolated chairs all alone in the otherwise empty back half of the room.

Gloria being fitted for new clothes, another of our favorite activities
Gloria being fitted for new clothes,
another of our favorite activities
Then we saw the ambassador's wife enter. The ambassador frequently reminded us of protocol rules that he felt we staff members either didn't know or ignored. One of those rules was that when the ambassador or his wife entered an event where we were already present, we were to go over to greet them and make sure that they were introduced to someone else so they were not left alone at any time. Gloria and I looked at one another, knowing that once we got up from our chairs, they would disappear and we would be left without anywhere to sit. But we had to greet her.

We walked to the ambassador's wife and escorted her to the area near the musicians as that was where we hoped she would recognize someone she knew since neither Gloria nor I would be able to pick out someone to introduce her to. That worked. Mrs. ambassador joined women she knew and someone among that group gave up a chair so Mrs. ambassador could sit. And Gloria and I headed back to where our chairs had been, hoping they would still be there. They weren't.

So we had to stand for the rest of the event.

Until that point, only guests and those hired to entertain guests were in the room. The bride and her family arrived much later. The groom, the bride's father and brothers and the groom's father may accompany the bride, but they remain for only a very short time. When it was known that the bride would be arriving with men unrelated to the guests, the Qatari women all grabbed their abayas, the black outer garment that covered women from head to toe, and wrapped themselves in them so the men wouldn't see them. What had been a room full of color and patterns and sparkling jewels turned black, as though the lights had been turned off.

Modern brides in the middle east wear white wedding gowns just as most brides in the west do. And the brides do get their opportunity to walk down an aisle of sorts. There is usually a raised platform more like a catwalk runway than an aisle in a house of worship which the bride walks along so that everyone in the room gets the opportunity to see her. After the bride, her mother and sisters have made their way around the room greeting the guests, the bride and the men leave the event, leaving the bride's female relatives with the guests for the rest of the evening.

At a time of the evening that always seemed way too late, the food would be served. For this event, tables lined the area outside of the ballroom where food was set out buffet style. Once all the food was in place, the hotel staff opened the ballroom doors, the abayas covered most of the women again, and the guests dashed for the tables where the mountains of food disappeared faster than I thought possible. And then the guests left.

Without Gloria, I would have missed so much.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Day 210 - Location, Location, Location

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Image of houses by Fernando Stankuns, via Flickr.com
Before I left for Doha, my predecessor, Tom, gave me a choice between two houses as my residence, a two-story, three-bedroom house with a good-sized yard and a one-story, three-bedroom house with almost no yard except for a patio enclosed on three sides by the house and on the fourth side by a wall. The houses were under lease with the embassy for two employees, Tom who would be leaving a week before I arrived, and the economic/commercial officer who had already left. The lease on whichever house I turned down would be given up because it wasn't known when the successor to the econ/commercial officer would be named and arrive.

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Image of minaret by dinesh_valke, via Flickr.com
The one-story house had been vacant longer so it was easier to get ready for me, but it was right next to the minaret on the housing compound where a recording broadcast the call to prayer five times a day. The two-story house was ideal for a family with children. Since I wasn't bringing a husband or children with me, the house with the yard that would need maintenance had little appeal for me. In spite of the call to prayer source right next door, I selected the one-story house.

Many people were surprised by my choice. They assumed the proximity to the minaret would eliminate my choice. And then there were factors others knew of that I didn't, like the decorating my predecessor's wife did to the house. All of the furniture had been recovered to coordinate the sofa and chairs with the drapes and carpeting. Those who had seen both houses thought the two-story house was a far better choice.

Others saw the house as it was while Tom's wife was there. But she and the children left a month before Tom. Very few people saw the house during the month between the rest of the family's departure and Tom's.

The embassy had about a month to get the furniture and appliances out of the other house in order to cancel the lease. It should have been a simple process of removing the furniture, cleaning up the house and then turning the keys back to the property manager. But the most senior local employee strongly suggested that I first go to see the house so that I would understand if it took longer than expected to complete the work.

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Image of dirty dishes by edgeplot, via Flickr.com
There were rumors. . .rumors that my predecessor had used the house for parties during the month after his family left. Now I don't claim to know the rumors were true. All that I knew was that someone had been using the house for parties. Every waste basket in the house was full of beer cans, soft drink cans, and liquor bottles. The sink and dishwasher were full of dirty dishes that had been there so long mold had started growing on them. The refrigerator had food in bags, all of which was also moldy, milk that had soured and butter that was rancid. The pantry had cans, opened cereal boxes, moldy bread. The medicine cabinet had partial bottles of cold remedies, bottles of pills and other garbage. And food and drinks had spilled on the white upholstery and wall-to-wall carpeting.

I took pictures for the files, but I didn't show them to anyone. Perhaps I should have. I did tell a few people how disgusting I found the state the house was in. I think those who knew my predecessor's wife didn't really believe me. They knew that she kept the house immaculately. I guess they thought Tom couldn't have undone all her work in such a short time-span. I hadn't understood how much some disbelieved me until Marge, the ambassador's secretary, was getting ready to leave about four months after I arrived and she told someone else how hard she had to work to clean up her house because she heard how fussy I was.

It reminded me of a children's story about two men who fell into a chimney when they were working on a roof. The first man covered his face with his hands and the second man didn't. When they got out of the chimney at the bottom, the first man looked at the second man and saw soot all over his face, so he went and washed his face. The second man looked at the first man and saw his face was clean, so he didn't wash his face.

I should have shown Marge the photos instead of letting her rely on her memory of the house the way it was when Tom's wife was still in town.

Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Day 209 - Six Reasons

The ambassador was a challenge to figure out. To be fair, he faced more challenges than most of us in the community, not just because of his higher profile. As a naturalized American citizen of Armenian-Egyptian background, he wasn't American enough for the native born Americans but he wasn't Arab enough for the Arabs. The rest of us didn't have so many expectations placed on us. We were plain vanilla Americans who weren't expected to be able to speak or understand Arabic.

To most of us, the ambassador seemed to alternate between changing his mind without warning and sticking to his decisions no matter what obstacles came up. His determination to establish an American school in Doha was an example of the latter. Another of his goals was to bring a priest to Doha in order that Catholic services could be held in Doha. There was no church in Doha. There were evangelical services held in people's homes, but the location wasn't well known, nor was there an ordained minister to lead the services. While I wasn't aware of the ambassador's goal to establish a church when I arrived, I learned of it toward the end of my time in Doha. The American school was a key to making it possible. Once the school had operated successfully for two years, and the public affairs officer's wife, the principal, was getting ready to leave Doha at the end of her husband's assignment, the ambassador had already lined up her replacement, a priest who had been working in Bahrain. Sponsoring the priest was an exception the ambassador was happy to make.

The ambassador's insistance that no Brit be hired to work at the embassy was a second example of a decision he never changed. But there were many other examples that posed more challenges to me.

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Image of Marine Security Guards by US Mission Geneva,
via Flickr.com
For example, my predecessor had begun the process of soliciting bids from companies to set up a local guard program at the embassy. Doha was so small that we had no Marine Security Guard detachment. The ambassador wanted Marines and told me when I arrived that he expected we would get a detachment assigned within a few months. But the smallest MSG detachment for embassies was six guards plus a detachment commander. That was the same size as the American staff at the embassy. The Department made it very clear to me that they would not support establishing an MSG presence. Instead, there were concerted efforts to upgrade the local guard presence at all embassies, especially those without MSG detachments.

Before I arrived in Doha, there were a few security incidents that appeared to target the embassy. A pipe bomb was found on the grounds of the Public Affairs annex and another was found attached to the vehicle of a local employee. There wasn't enough room for all the employees to park their cars on the grounds of the embassy within the walls. The local employees had to park outside the compound wall. But had their been an explosion outside the compound walls, there would likely have been significant damage to the main building.

I heard about the discovery of the pipe bombs during my consultations in Washington. The explanation was that the devices were very unsophisticated and would not likely have gone off at all. Some suggested that they may have been built by the ambassador or at his direction in order to bolster his argument in favor of getting Marines.

Some rights reserved (to share) by Nelson Wu http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
Image of gate keeper by Nelson Wu,
via Flickr.com
The "guards" at the embassy in Doha when I arrived did little more than walk around vehicles that approached the entrance and then raise the vehicle barrier to allow them to enter. They also screened walk-in visitors and incoming local mail. The men in those positions were not employees of the embassy; they were employees of a company the embassy had contracted with. Because the Qatari government considered their country to be safe, companies that provided security services usually had names that didn't give that away, such as Qatar Cleaning Company.

Since the Department wouldn't send Marines, the ambassador decided it was essential that the embassy contract with the most impressive local guard company for its guards. The local guards at the U.S. embassy in Bahrain were Nepalese Gurkhas. The ambassadors in the two countries were constantly competing with one another. Therefore, the ambassador decided we needed to have Gurkhas as our guards as well.

But the company in Bahrain wasn't represented in Qatar. That fact contributed to that company's very high bid for our guard contract solicitation. The two other companies that responded with bids did have a presence in Doha.

The ambassador had six reasons for doing - or not doing - something. Whenever I would talk over the process I went through to select a new employee, a contract, a new piece of furniture, he would roll out one of his reasons if the disagreed with me. His six reasons were:

  • It is good for security.
  • It is good management.
  • It is good for morale.
  • It is bad for security.
  • It is bad management.
  • It is bad for morale.

Some rights reserved (to share, to remix) by Danny Nicholson http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Gurkhas, image by Danny Nicholson,
via Flickr.com 
There was a large difference among the bids from the three companies, making the prudent decision easy. I knew that there was no chance the Department would provide us with the funds for the top bid, the ambassador's preference, the Gurkhas. And there wasn't sufficient difference in the scores for the other two companies not to select the low bid. I laid out my decision for the ambassador. He rejected my analysis, citing his reasons - selecting the company with the Gurkha guards was good for both security and for morale. Therefore, they should be selected. Of course he had to roll out reasons to eliminate the other two. In both cases he said selecting them would be bad management. And in the case of the second highest bid, he declared that selecting them would be a double strike-out since all of their guards were from Tunisia which meant that they didn't speak English and we couldn't be sure that they would be loyal to us, making them a bad security risk as well.

The Department came back to say they would not fund the ambassador's preferred company because it would mean the cost of the local guard program would be higher than all our other budgets combined. At that point, the ambassador argued that selecting the company with Gurkhas would indeed be bad management because they weren't already in business in Qatar. But now suddenly the middle bid company was the one that was good for security and good management, leaving the low bidder as the only one that would be a bad management choice.

When the Department refused to fund the middle bid, too, the ambassador took the entire bidding process away from me and told me he would sort it out. He came back to me a few days later and explained that he had gotten agreement from the middle bidder to accept the contract at the low bid price. I don't know how I dared to tell him that I wouldn't sign the contract on behalf of the embassy because his negotiation behind the scenes with just one of the companies violated the solicitation process.

The ambassador signed the contract himself.

Monday, August 26, 2013

Day 208 - The Syndicate

I have always thought the term syndicate slightly threatening, probably because the first time I heard it, the term referred to organized crime (see meaning 3 at left). And the next time I heard it, the reference was to groups of people who bought interests in a race horse, a business that seems dangerously close to organized crime (see meaning 2 at left). Then heard about syndicated newspaper columns at which point it was clear there was another, less menacing meaning (see meaning 4 at left).

In Doha I got involved with a syndicate - the Cable and Wireless Liquor Syndicate. Cable and Wireless was a British company that operated in many countries around the world providing telecommunication service and consultancy. Since alcohol was not available in stores or served in restaurants, there was only one way for us to buy liquor. First we had to get a liquor license from the British embassy. Liquor licenses were only issued to expatriates. But the British embassy couldn't be in the business of selling liquor. The solution - Cable and Wireless went into the business of importing liquor and handling the controlled sale to those with liquor licenses.

Having a liquor license permitted the holder to purchase up to 400 riyals (about $133) of liquor each month. Payment had to be by check; no cash changed hands. Since most of us at the embassy did not have local bank accounts, we had to purchase cashier checks each month at a cost of 10 riyals. Because we could not get change if our purchase totaled less than 400 riyals, we were determined not to waste a riyal. After all, we already had to lay out 410 riyals for the 400 riyal cashier check. We all got very good at adding up the numbers on our head, turning in our orders only when we were sure the syndicate wouldn't get a spare riyal from us.

One month a year, the syndicate was closed: in the month of Ramadan. To make up for the loss of a month's purchasing power, we were each able to purchase two month's worth of alcohol either the month before or the month after Ramadan. Since I had a liquor license, and Alex had a liquor license, that meant once a year we would end up purchasing 1600 riyals worth. That much beer, wine, and hard liquor put a lot of strain on the suspension of the car, but we made it work.
Alex's Mom
Alex's Mom

That much liquor needed a lot of room to store. We had a closet in the back of the house fitted with a lock that became our liquor closet. When we later arrived in Barbados, we realized that our Doha  liquor closet often had more in it than a typical rum shop in Bridgetown.

Alex's mother came to visit us and was more than a little concerned about what she saw as excessive quantities of alcohol after Alex gave her a tour of the house. Within a few days, however, she was getting up about the same time Alex did. One morning she slipped into the hammock in our central patio with a gin and tonic in her hand. "Don't tell your father," was all she said when Alex looked at her with a smile.



Sunday, August 25, 2013

Day 207 - Rima

Just as nearly any group can be subdivided into two categories, there were two categories of Palestinian employees at the embassy. There were the Palestinians whose families left the area of the Palestinian mandate when Israel declared itself as a sovereign nation, settling in Lebanon, Jordan, or other Arab countries, and there were those who remained within the land that Israel claimed or the disputed territories surrounding the 1948 boundaries of Israel.

Of course, it was also possible to subdivide those who left the land into two categories, those whose claim to land was in the disputed territories and those whose claim to land was smack in the middle of the land known in 1948 as Israel. The former were considered as having abandoned their land. The latter were expelled.

And then there was the religious division between the Palestinians who were Muslim and the Palestinians who were Christian.

All of the above is just to make the point that lumping any group of people together to ascribe to them the same motives, the same objectives, the same emotions is likely going to lead to some mistakes.

Rima (standing in the middle) with American and locally hired employees of the embassy
Rima (standing in the middle) with American and
locally hired employees of the embassy
Rima was one of the Palestinian employees at the embassy, one of a very small number of Christian employees. Rima's family left the land previously referred to as Palestine because their home was within the disputed territories - not within the 1948 borders of Israel. Rima's family settled in Lebanon initially, but like so many Palestinians, they had almost no prospects for the future there, so they moved to Qatar, one of the newly independent Gulf states where there were economic possibilities they would never have in Lebanon. Other Palestinians went to Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia, and Oman.  Rima went to school in Doha and when she finished high school and then college at Qatar University, she began working at the embassy. So long as Rima's father remained in Doha, he was her sponsor, a requirement for Qatari residence. The Gulf countries considered the father or husband of each family to be the head of household or the primary support for all the women and children. Employers sponsored the head of household, their employee. Then the head of household would sponsor his family members, provided the Qatari government considered he earned enough.

Before I arrived in Doha, Rima's father reached the mandatory retirement age after which he could no longer work in Qatar. And that meant he could no longer live in Qatar. And that meant he could no longer sponsor Rima. Rima's family had previously taken a very common route to address the end of residence rights in Qatar: one of Rima's brothers had gone to the U.S. as a student, had applied for permanent residence and been approved, had become a U.S. citizen and then applied for the rest of the family to join him. The rest of Rima's family had already moved to the U.S.  Rima remained behind because she was engaged to a Philippine tennis pro she had met in Doha. Her family wasn't all that happy with the engagement, so Rima decided to remain in Doha to give herself some distance and time to consider her future.

The embassy made an exception for Rima and sponsored her. But with her family gone, she had to find a place to live and landlords were not eager to rent an apartment to a single woman. Rima found someone who was willing to work as a maid and live in the apartment with her. But the Qatari government would not accept an application from Rima to sponsor an employee. Rima asked if the embassy would sponsor her maid. The ambassador said he wouldn't allow the embassy to sponsor a personal employee of an embassy employee which meant that Rima had to find another solution. For a few months, she shared the apartment of the ambassador's secretary at that time, Marge. But that wasn't ideal for a number of reasons.

By the time I arrived in Doha, I think Rima was staying with friends, but it was just another stop-gap step. She had broken off her engagement as the time and distance from her family made her realize how important their approval was. By December, barely two months after I arrived, Rima decided she wanted to travel to the U.S. to spend Christmas with her family. And while she was there, she decided she wanted to leave Qatar and join her family in California.

Rima returned to Qatar to turn in her resignation and make arrangements to leave Qatar permanently. She brought with her a copy of a Los Angeles Times editorial with a title along the lines of The Most Dangerous Man In the Middle East. It wasn't about Saddam Hussein or Ayatollah Khomeini. It was about two U.S. ambassadors to two small countries most people had never heard of - the ambassadors to Bahrain and Qatar. The article pointed out that both ambassadors were political appointees, not career diplomats. And the two were the first political appointees to either of the countries. Political appointments are more typically made to large ally countries where the cost of maintaining a diplomatic residence and the representational entertaining required someone of independent means or to small countries that are considered safe and out of the way of political turmoil. But in this case, neither of the ambassadors were independently wealthy. And the journalist's point was that there is no insignificant country in the middle east.
Rima, the ambassador, and Sandra
Rima, the ambassador, and Sandra, with Rima's award

As Rima's departure date approached, we arranged a farewell party for her at the embassy. I nominated her for an award which the ambassador approved. And he decided he would give her a special gift, one he was sure she would appreciate since he was the final ambassador she would work for. His gift: an autographed photo of himself. I could hardly supress my laughter at this suggestion.

I decided I had to warn Rima so that she wouldn't find herself in an embarrassing position as the ambassador handed her his photograph. But the rest of those around the table didn't know what was coming. Most of them knew how Rima had struggled with finding a way to remain in Doha and about the ambassador's decision not to allow the embassy to sponsor a maid. Some even knew that the embassy was already sponsoring the personal employees of other embassy staff, making the ambassador's decision look like he had singled Rima out for different treatment.

And maybe he had. For the next two years, much of what the ambassador said or did remained a mystery to me.

Saturday, August 24, 2013

Day 206 - Sheikha and Sharifa


Sheikha
Sheikha
Once I met Alex, we decided we needed something to make my house more like home. We decided a cat would do. Alex knew someone who had a cat that had just given birth to kittens, so we picked one out - an all black female half-Siamese we named Sheikha, the feminine form of Sheikh, a common title in Arab countries.

Sheikha moved in with us and settled nicely. For a few weeks, that is.

Three weeks later, I was out shopping with Gloria, the ambassador's secretary. When we returned, there was an orange crate on Gloria's steps. An unexplained package on a doorstep set off alarms in both of us, but we stopped worrying when we saw a small white paw sticking through one of the holes in the top. When we got to Gloria's door, we saw a tiny white desert cat in the crate. Since Gloria already had two adult cats, she said she couldn't take in the kitten. I took her home. We named her Sharifa, the feminine form of Sharif, another Arab title.

Sharifa in a box
Sharifa in a box
We learned later that the guards at the entrance to our housing compound had been taking care of Sharifa.  Housing compounds were frequent dumping grounds for litters of kittens, although Sharifa didn't look like other cats. We called her a desert cat because her head was very small, her ears were too large for her head, and her rear haunches were huge. When she ran, her back legs got ahead of her front legs. When the guards realized they couldn't continue taking care of the kitten, they asked some of the boys on the compound to find a new home for her. One of the boys was PJ, son of my embassy colleague Pete. Whether they asked anyone else on the compound I don't know. But it wasn't a surprise they concluded Gloria would take in another cat since she already had two.

Sheikha and Sharifa with one of their toys - a rubber band
Sheikha and Sharifa with one of their toys - a rubber band
Sheikha wasn't pleased to have to share her space with Sharifa, but Sharifa was determined. Sheikha would try to keep her distance from Sharifa, but Sharifa would would prance right over to Sheikha and jump on top of her. Sheikha was bigger, but Sharifa always came out on top.

There were a few other reasons we considered Sharifa a desert cat. She seemed to create her own toys out of whatever she found. And what she seemed to prefer were raisin-shaped, dried up turds which she batted all around the house as if she were dribbling a soccer ball. When we found them, we threw them away, naturally. So she started hiding them under the throw rug in the kitchen. But the silly cat didn't catch on that when she took them out to play while we were home, we could hear her toys rolling around on the tile floor in the kitchen. And we threw them away again.

Sharifa leaping higher than her height
Sharifa leaping higher than her height
She was also incredibly athletic. In contrast, Sheikha seemed lazy, satisfied to sit in a corner and wait for entertainment to come her way. Sharifa, on the other had, had those huge haunches so she could leap into the air to catch bugs or whatever we tossed up to catch her attention. A helium-filled balloon with a film box tied as ballast so that the balloon wouldn't just rise to and rest on the ceiling was hours of entertainment for both Sharifa and anyone else in the room with her.

When we left Doha, we had to send Sheikha and Sharifa to England since Barbados, my next assignment, required dogs and cats spend six months in quarantine in England before they could be imported into Barbados. We sent them off to England as kittens and collected them six months later as cats.



Friday, August 23, 2013

Day 205 - Vernal Bear Day

Before I left Minneapolis to begin my Foreign Service career, I was introduced to a personal holiday by my friend Thom, Vernal Bear Day. Thom and his ex-wife created the holiday for themselves since they enjoyed the memory of children's holiday activities such as exchanging Valentines in February, looking for Easter baskets in March or April, and exchanging May baskets, but they had no children to share those holidays. Vernal Bear Day was the solution. On a Sunday in the spring, not necessarily on a fixed date (it was, after all, a personal holiday) they would exchange Vernal Bear Day baskets.

The rules for what to include in a Vernal Bear Day basket were simple:

Vernal Bear Day in Germany
Vernal Bear Day in Germany

  • There must be bears.
  • There must be chocolate.
  • There may be flowers.
  • No bunnies are allowed.
  • Chickies and peeps are optional.


When Thom and his ex split up, Thom and I observed the holiday while I was still in the U.S. Once I arrived in Germany and the space shuttle blew up, I began to share the holiday with my colleagues.

The first year in Germany, a friend from Romania, Gayle, was in town the weekend I had had invited my friends to celebrate. Together, Gayle and I created a basket for everyone and we hid them around my apartment. My guests arrived for brunch and we took turns looking for the hidden baskets.

Vernal Bear Day Loot in Qatar
Vernal Bear Day Loot in Qatar
The next year, since I now had photos to show everyone what a Vernal Bear Day basket looked like, I invited friends, some from the year before and some new, and this time asked that they bring a basket to hide, but with the additional twist that each basket should be brought in disguise or hidden in a bag or box. That became the pattern in the future.

The first spring in Doha, I invited all the Americans at the embassy to a Vernal Bear Day brunch. All the Americans, including the ambassador and his wife. I found birthday party invitations that had a bear on the front with the words, Come to a Bear Day Party which I modified with a caret between a and Bear to add Vernal above. I gave everyone the rules and looked forward to how the baskets turned out.

One of the guests was an extra - a sailor in town to make arrangements for an upcoming ship visit. He was one of those TDYers we included in all our socializing and entertaining. He won the most creative basket award, if I had decided there would be such an award. His basket consisted of a box of alfalfa sprouts as the Easter grass substitute with a stuffed teddy bear and chocolate bars on top.

That first Vernal Bear Day in Doha was most memorable because of the ambassador's reaction to it all. He kept mentioning that he had never heard of the holiday before. I must have told him ten times that no one had heard of it before because it was a personal holiday. It never seemed to sink in.

That wasn't the last time the ambassador and I experienced a failure to communicate.

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Day 204 - It's Just A Game

In addition to offering me something to do every spare evening during the rehearsals for upcoming plays, Doha Players introduced me to a Gulf Sunday* afternoon tradition in Doha - team trivia teasers, a two-hour radio program that mixed music and trivia.

Some rights reserved (to share, to remix) by OZinOH http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/
Listening to the radio by OZinOH,
via Flickr.com
To take part, people formed teams and picked out silly names for themselves. They gathered each Friday (Gulf Sunday) afternoon by 5 p.m. and tuned in to the English language radio station which posed 12 trivia questions interspersed with music between 5 and 6 p.m. The teams spent the next hour coming to agreement on the answers to the questions, calling in their answers to the radio station before 7 p.m. when the answers were revealed. Chris and Matt kept track of each team's scores, accumulating them each week throughout the school year months. At the end of each season, the radio station hosted a dinner and party where prizes were handed out to the teams with the highest scores.

Not all of the teams were in Doha. The radio station could be heard in Bahrain as well, so at least one team called in from that neighboring country each week. One team was known to call the London Museum each Friday to get help with the answers. Most of us just collected trivia books of all sorts and looked up the answers. Our team had members who specialized in certain subjects so that we could divide up the questions and not spend all our time on the same ones. Phil, for example, was our music specialist. He would record the musical clip each week and go off into a corner of a room far from the rest of us to listen to it over and over again until he thought he had the answer.

Our team took turns hosting the evening. Hosting meant providing the meat - usually grilled - to accompany the pot luck contributions of everyone else. The hosts concentrated on getting the food ready and were excused from trivia duty.

It didn't matter which team won. It only mattered that we have fun. But team trivia teaser only happened during the school year. When summer arrived and so many of the women and children left Doha, we were without a Friday evening activity, until one of our team members figured out how we could play other games as teams, without the radio. We began playing team Scrabble.

Some rights reserved (to share) by alex_untitled http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/
Image of Scrabble board by alex_untitled, via Flickr.com
Now back when Chris and I began hosting the English Language Social Club in Iași, I had thought Scrabble would be a great way to get the students to use English in conversation. It didn't take long, however, to discover that word games might involve language, but usually they are accompanied by silence. And only one person at a time is involved in playing the game. Our hosts found a way to change that. Instead of each of us taking a turn at laying out words on a Scrabble board, we worked in couples all with the same tiles to see how many points we could get with the letters drawn within a fixed time limit. When time was up, each couple revealed the word they had put together with the tiles and what was already on the board. The score for each team for the round was the score for the word they added - and the highest scoring word was written onto the oversized version of a Scrabble board that stood on an easel in front of us. Play continued when new tiles were drawn to replace those put down for the high score. Everyone was involved throughout the game, every team received a score for every round, and a level of competition prevailed along with the fun.

Pictionary was also a big hit in Doha. It is another game where everyone in the room is invoved, even if the teams aren't all drawing at the same time and at least the picturist for the team must not speak. We ran into some serious Pictionary players in Doha. The couple Alex and I were teamed with for the international road rally, for instance, observed the rules of not using letters of numbers on their pictures, but they had developed an extensive set of shared symbols that were more helpful than letters or numbers. For example, a large equilateral triangle with a smaller triangle balanced upside down on the tip of the larger one was Great Britain. A dot appropriately placed identified a city or region within England in seconds.

PJ and Heather
PJ and Heather
The most impressive Pictionary play I recall however was as removed from the Great Britain example as I can think of. Heather and PJ, the children of my friends and neighbors, Pete and Sofia, were teamed up one afternoon when the phrase was Pacific Ocean. One of them drew what I could only describe as an amoeba-shaped scribble at which point the other said immediately, "Pacific Ocean."

If they had been twins, I could better have understood it.

*The work week in Qatar and most of the other countries around the Gulf was Saturday through Wednesday, with Thursday and Friday being the weekend. But since the names of days of the week conjure up specific contexts, many of us used "Gulf" in front of the western day of the week that the actual day of the week was comparable to. Thus, Gulf Sunday was Friday, but since Friday conjures up "end of the work week" to most people, not "day before I go back to work" the Gulf prefix helps convey the context for the events mentioned.

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Day 203 - The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly

I give credit to Lincoln Jones for meeting my husband. The day of Lincoln's memorial service, the day that I asked members of Doha Players what I could do that evening so I could avoid going home to spend the evening alone, that was the day I met Alex. And the reason I met Alex was that I spent that evening thinking about what Lincoln would do if he were in my place.

Some rights reserved (to share, to remix, to make commercial use of) by Valerie Everett http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
Image by Valerie Everett, via Flickr.com
For example, instead of just standing behind the table with the T-shirts and trinkets with the Doha Players logo on them, waiting for the people on the other side of the table to ask me questions of tell me they would like to buy something, I asked each person if they had been to a play at Doha Players before. Through that simple question, I learned who was also new in town and who had been in Doha for years. One of the people I met that way was James who was in Doha teaching English as a Second Language, something I had in common with him, or at least something my former self had in common with him. As a result of that conversation, James knew that I was new in town so he invited me to the party that was always held on the last night of a show. If I hadn't struck up a conversation with him, he might have assumed I already knew about the party which would have meant I would have gone home after the performance.

So I followed James to the party. When I arrived, I didn't sit back and wait for people to ask me questions. i started asking questions of everyone I met there, too. Simple questions, not earth-shaking ones.

British Bar
British Bar
There was music in another room, but I stayed in the foyer where the bar was - nearly every Brit in Doha had a bar at the entrance of their home or in a corner of the living room. And I talked with the people around me. One couple I met that night, Dave and Anne, had been in Doha for many years. In addition to his work for a Qatari company, Dave had a weekly radio program featuring jazz. Since there was only one English-language radio station in Doha, all the Brits and Americans knew Dave's voice. I was delighted to meet Dave in person that night.

There were two other Brits, Doha Players members, who had daily radio programs, featuring Western popular music - the Top Ten hits and other rock and roll music: Chris and Matt. Chris was nearing middle-age, although he had a Peter Pan quality. He seemed pleased when he told me that he had been having an affair with both a woman his age and her daughter. I think he was trying to impress me, but it certainly didn't work. He was the director of most Doha Players productions and well-known for getting involved with the youngest leading lady of each production.

Matt, in contrast, was still in high school. For Doha Players, Matt was usually in charge of the sound system and helped out with the lights - a backstage star.

While I was sitting at the bar with Anne and Dave, Alex walked by and Dave grabbed his arm to introduce him to me. He advised me to get to know Alex because he was a Geordie, the salt of the earth. Alex and another Doha Player member,Tom, had built the set for the play, but Alex had been back in England the two weeks of the performances so he hadn't seen it. Dave's biggest reason for advising me to get to know Alex was that Dave warned me the wives of the men who were in Doha would be suspicious of me unless I was known to be in the company of one man all of the time. Most of the wives would leave Doha for the summer so I guess they would worry about the designs of the single women on their husbands.

Alex asked me to dance at that point and he told me he would only be in Doha for another nine weeks as his three-year contract was about to end, but he would be happy to show me around all corners of Qatar - the good bits, the bad bits, and the ugly bits. At that point I had only three weeks before I planned to leave Doha for a month of R&R so of the nine weeks Alex had left on his contract, I would only be in Doha for six of them.

When it seemed time to leave the party, everyone seemed worried about my driving home alone. They all knew someone who had been stopped by the traffic police at night, so many people only took taxis at night. I assured everyone that it was unlikely I would be stopped since my car had diplomatic plates. Besides, I knew I had a guardian angel.

The next week Alex offered to take me to see the Doha Zoo. I didn't even know there was a zoo in Qatar. I wasn't sure there were any animals in Qatar that were big enough to need cages in a zoo. While I was in Washington during my training ahead of my move to Qatar, I had gone to the National Zoo and had looked throughout the entire campus for animals native to the Arabian peninsula. The only ones I found were large-eared, hopping mice called jerboas, kangaroo rats, dung beetles, other insects and snakes. I knew there was a species of antelope called the oryx, but I don't recall seeing one at the National Zoo.

Sandra and Alex
Sandra and Alex
Alex showed me around much of Qatar in the three weeks before I left for my R&R trip home. On my return to Doha, I flew through London where I changed planes. When I got onto the plane for the London to Doha leg of my flight, I found Alex in the seat next to mine. He had flown back to England to make arrangements to extend his stay in Doha by two more years so that we could leave Doha together at the end of my tour.

And that is what we did.

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Day 202 - . . . Requests the Pleasure of Your Company at. . .

Diplomatic Dinner
Diplomatic Dinner
A consequence of being a member of the diplomatic corps at a small embassy is the number of diplomatic functions I was expected to attend. That cultural guide for Saudi Arabia that advised bringing books, movies, puzzles, games, and hobby supplies might have been accurate for Qatar as well, if the staff of the U.S. embassy in Doha was as large as the staff in Riyadh. But I was invited to one function or another at least three nights of the week. Sometimes even two events in the same evening. And we were all expected to attend them all.

I got into the pattern very quickly as the embassy was preparing to host the first ever cabinet level visit to Qatar two weeks after my arrival. The ambassador was very pleased that the Secretary of Energy had agreed to come to talk with Qatari government and business leaders. The good news for us was that Washington sent plenty of people to help get ready for and support the visit. That was really good news for us, the club of first-timers, many of whom had never experienced such a visit anywhere.

Diplomatic Reception
Diplomatic Reception
One of the events during the Secretary's visit was dinner at the ambassador's residence. I ended up seated at a table with a member of the staff of the French embassy and his wife who were leaving Doha very soon. I was surprised at how little food the diplomat's wife put on her plate - nearly all dinners in Doha were buffets. I thought she must have remarkable self control because the range of foods was more than I had ever seen before.  It didn't take me many more such representational events to realize that with only three quality hotels with catering capacity in the city, the range of what was offered at each event was only amazing on the first two or three occasions. By the fourth event, I could predict what would be served based on which of the familiar faces I saw serving the appetizers before the meal. The Radisson, Sheraton, and Gulf Hotels each had their specialties and it didn't take long to become familiar, and then bored, with them.

In addition to receptions and dinners at the homes of ambassadors, counselors, and attaches, there were cultural performances sponsored by embassies. I attended concerts ranging from American jazz to opera, dance performances ranging from square dancing to native American Indian ceremonial dances, plays involving large casts and one-person shows. And there were academic lecturers brought to Qatar for educational exchanges.

Diplomatic Reception
Diplomatic Reception
An aspect of life in Qatar in those days was that every cultural event was a family event. I referred to Doha as a G-rated country where parents never need worry that their children will be exposed to an embarrassing concept, word, or image. Several of my friends with children explained they had stayed in Doha longer than they had initially planned because they liked the fact that their children spent time with them while the children of their friends back home were trying to get away from their parents as much as possible. I think it meant that the children felt respected by adults because they spent so much time in adult company, and in return they showed respect to their parents and their parents' friends.

Ship Visit
Ship Visit
On the two or three evenings each week that were not taken up by diplomatic functions, we often spent the evenings entertaining the many temporary duty (TDY) visitors were in town. The hotels were comfortable. The food in the restaurants was excellent. But there wasn't much to do in Doha for those who couldn't get out of the hotels. So we invited them to our homes where they could have a beer, wine or something stronger - alcohol wasn't available even in the hotel restaurants in those days - and we could share stories and conversation. Since most of the embassy staff lived in the same residential compound, inviting the TDY visitors to one home usually meant inviting all the rest of the embassy staff as well. We rotated which house the visitors were invited to, sharing the entertainment responsibilities.

And it was our pleasure to do so.