Day 310 - Other Travels in the Region

road map of the United Arab Emirates showing
the triangle of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and Al Ain

The roads connecting three cities in the United Arab Emirates form an equilateral triangle. Sixty miles separated Abu Dhabi from Dubai, Dubai from Al Ain, and Al Ain from Abu Dhabi. We traveled that triangle often.

Our first trip to Dubai was in the fall, just after all the family members of expatriate workers, who abandonded the peninsula for the summer, returned. Also, coincidentally right after a number of roads had been added or rerouted within and around Dubai. We got lost on our way to the souq in Sharjah, one of the smaller emirates of the seven that constitute the United Arab Emirates, and even the traffic police couldn't tell us which way to go. Sharjah was adjacent to Dubai and had one of the most modern souqs in the country. It was also the home of Pinky's a set of three warehouses where the owner stored items he imported from India for his shop which had been in the downtown Dubai souq. When the owner of Pinky's learned several years earlier that the old souq was going to be replaced by a modern souq, he closed up his shop in anticipation of the old souq being destroyed, but that still hadn't happened. But the three warehouses gave him so much more room, he never looked for new space. Instead, he welcomed shoppers to the warehouses which were so crowded with stuff that just walking into them was an adventure. There were treasurers to be found everywhere.

by  J I G I S H A
 a.k.a Nitin Badhwar

We often headed out on the weekend for breakfast either in Dubai or Al Ain. The Jumeirah Beach Hotel opened in 1997 and offered a spectacular location for Friday (Gulf Sunday) brunch with its view of the Burj Al Arab, a companion hotel located off the coast on a man-made island.

Al Ain was an oasis city, the original home of the then leader of the U.A.E., Sheikh Zayid bin Sultan Al Nahyan. Flowers, especially roses, lined the roads of Al Ain, making it a garden in the desert. Lucent had a hotel suite permanently rented there for its staff when work needed to be done in that area. More than once, I went with Alex and while he worked, I spent the time around the pool at the hotel.

by  fchmksfkcb  Al Ain was right on the border with Oman. The Omani city of Buraimi sat across the border, and together with Al Ain formed international twin cities. We often crossed into Oman at Buraimi on our way to the Al Suwadi Beach Hotel on the coast of Oman, just outside Muscat, where we spent more than one Eid holiday during our three years in Abu Dhabi. The two Eid holidays begin when the religious leaders of the country see the new moon or otherwise determine when the holiday begins. Most countries on the Arabian peninsula follow whatever the religious leaders in Saudi Arabia declare. Our friends told us that Oman, however, did not. Oman had its own designated religious leaders who declared when the holidays began. Their religious leaders always seemed not to see the signs until the day after the leaders in Saudi Arabia. But since so many people traveled internationally to be together with family for these important holidays, the Omani government gave employees the day before the holidays began off. A neat trick, right? We also spent time in Muscat with friends. A couple we met through Doha Players, Alf and Gina, had moved to Oman from Doha. And my friend Gloria, the ambassador's secretary in Doha, was also on assignment with the embassy in Muscat. Our travels to Oman were the only trips where we couldn't get unleaded gasoline for our car. We filled the tank in Al Ain and hoped we wouldn't run out before returning to the U.A.E. If we ran dangerously low, we would add a few gallons, but never fill it. by  rapidtravelchai  There were pockets of Oman completely surrounded by the emirate of Dubai as well. There were no border crossing booths at the edges of these pockets, but no one could mistake that we were in Oman. The Sultan of Oman was insistent that the streets not just be clean, they sparkled. The rocks and bricks lining the roads appeared to have been shellacked or washed just moments before we passed them. We also traveled in 1998 from Abu Dhabi to Doha. Doha had been an important period in our lives since Alex and I met there. Several people we knew in Doha were in Abu Dhabi with us - the deputy chief of mission and his wife, one of the information program officers, Allan and Janis, and Ian and Julie. Allan worked with Alex at Etisalat. Ian worked with Alex at Lucent. We met others who had also previously been in Doha including Don who also worked at Etisalat. And one evening at a representational event at the ambassador's residence, a couple who were talking with the head of the consular section, Charlie, overheard one of us mention that we had previously been in Doha and they asked to be introduced to us. They also had been in Doha and had equally good memories of their time there. There was something magical about Doha that drew us back. by  vobios  In 1998 the embassy was still in the same building I knew although a number of temporary buildings had been added along the edge of the compound where all the administrative functions were now housed. The main building had been turned into a controlled access area which required everyone to be escorted within. We never went in. But we thoroughly enjoyed walking through the places we enjoyed so much when we lived there - the Center, the Caravan restaurant, the Sheraton Hotel, and the ring roads. We also went to the mall which had opened since we left Doha. In contrast to the elaborate and exotic and over-the-top malls in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the mall in Doha could have been in any midwestern U.S. town, just one more reason that we enjoyed living in Doha. It was a small town, just like the small towns we had grown up in, with just enough exotic foreignness to make living there an adventure.

Day 217 - Keeping Secrets

Image of a secretary by Vin Crosbie, via Flickr.com

I learned the origin of the term secretary from Gloria - one who keeps secrets. Gloria did so much more than keep records, file documents, record minutes, and manage correspondence, the tasks I had previously associated with secretaries.

Gloria was unflappable. I received a phone call one day from a person who called to say that she would be unable to attend the reception at the ambassador's residence. Getting those invited to RSVP was a challenge, complicated further by various accents and invitation lists that weren't always alphabetized. In this case, it sounded like the caller's name was Jaxson, someone who was not on the ambassador's list of favorite people. She had been one of those enthusiastic about the idea of an American School opening in Doha until she understood the students might include non-Americans and naturalized Americans, like the ambassador.

I scanned the list of invitees to see if the ambassador had changed his mind about including Jaxson and her husband, but their names were not on the copy of the list I had. I wasn't too worried about not catching the name because we didn't rely on the numbers of those who confirmed they would attend. But I was curious, so I went up to Gloria's office, told her about the call, and asked if she had an additional list of those invited. The ambassador heard me say that I thought the person who called with her regret was Jaxson. He walked to Gloria's desk and told her to call Jaxson to tell her that she had not been invited to the event. He wanted there to be no misunderstanding. He didn't leave Gloria's desk until she had completed the call.

Gloria was unflappable.

Gloria had a series of colorful phrases that kept conversation lively. Alex's nationality and personality made him one of her prime targets. Gloria's usual characterization of him was that he wasn't wrapped too tight. That expression conjured up a lot of images for me, from Alex in a straight jacket to Alex in a caftan that needs a belt. Others Gloria described as not being the sharpest knife in the drawer or having an elevator that didn't make it to the top floor or being a few cards short of a full deck.

Image of chocolate mousse by abakedcreation, via Flickr.com

Gloria and I also spent a lot of time checking out restaurants in Doha. Because liquor was not served, the final bill was never outrageous, but the food was, in the best possible way. During Ramadan, the big three hotels, the Sheraton, the Ramada, and the Gulf, all served buffets at sundown, for iftar or breaking of the fast. During the rest of the year, the big three served Friday morning breakfast buffets. Gloria and I used our many opportunities at these meals in search of the best chocolate mousse. Hard as we tried, we just couldn't agree on which one was best. So what else could we do but keep up the search.

Gloria stayed on in Doha nearly five years after I left. I don't think she ever stopped searching.

Day 216 - Dressing for Dinner

Image of Bahraini flag by Frans Zwart, via Flickr.com

There were many levels of competition between Qatar and Bahrain in addition to the claim by both to Hawar and adjacent islands off the west coast of Qatar. Evidence of how seriously Qatar took that claim was the insistence by the Qatari Customs authorities that a shipment of T-shirts with the outline of Qatar on the front must have the islands added in magic marker before the Hash House Harriers were allowed to take possession. The competition spilled over into many other areas, such as the competition between the U.S. ambassador in Bahrain and the U.S. ambassador in Qatar. Since our embassy in Bahrain was much larger, the ambassador in Qatar was seen as lagging behind. His ambition to establish an American school and a church may have been sparked by the fact that Bahrain already boasted both institutions. His initial ambition that our local guard force be staffed by Gurkhas was another attempt to keep up.

Image of Qatari flag by Mohd Althani, via Flickr.com

History is a useful reference to explain the competition. For nearly 100 years, Bahrain's ruling family controlled Qatar as well as land on the peninsula stretching from modern day Kuwait to the south of Qatar. Other empires including Persian, Ottoman, and British ruled large portions of the Arabian peninsula as well as both Bahrain and Qatar. Both countries gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1971, Bahrain on August 15 and Qatar on September 3.

Qatar and Bahrain are separated by just a few miles of water. Their flags are the same except for the shade of the red and the number of saw teeth that connect the white with the red. Qatar is a larger land mass, but Bahrain has a larger population. There is evidence that both countries were inhabited as far back as 7,500 years, but only on Bahrain can ruins more than 100 years old be seen today.

Dressed for dinner

Many of our friends in Qatar eventually found their way to Bahrain for work, among them Pete and Lorraine and their children. Once they had settled into their new house, they invited us to join them and a few of their friends for dinner. They told us to bring formal clothing as we would be dressing for dinner.

The occasion for the dinner was that it was the same evening as a formal dinner at the Bahrain Equestrian Club. Pete and Lorraine decided the lack of an invitation to that exclusive formal event shouldn't prevent them from appropriately marking the occasion through hosting a smaller scale event in their home.

Alex and I flew to Bahrain for the weekend, bringing tux and formal gown with us for Thursday evening. Lorraine had arranged for the meal to be prepared in her kitchen and served at the table in the style of Downton Abbey dinners.

The only thing missing were the valet and upstairs maid to help us change.

Day 215 - Project Management Lessons

Image of blueprint by Mirandala, via Flickr.com

I had six months of training before heading to Doha. During that time, I contacted a number of offices to get familiar with issues I would have to deal with once I got there. One of those issues was a planned Public Access Control or PAC project. The project would be completed by a construction company, contracted by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS). The primary project manager, therefore, was someone in that bureau, a security professional, not a construction professional.

During the six months I was getting familiar with the project, I met with three separate DS staff members assigned to the project as responsibility was shifted often. The project had already been delayed beyond the original completion date. The security equipment which included a vehicle barrier and gate to improve the ability of the guards to keep vehicles out of the compound had been delivered more than a year before. The rest of the project involved hardening the wall between the space where the consular staff worked and the waiting room.

The first lesson I learned from this project is that I never wanted to work in an office responsible for building projects because no one ever saw the projects through from beginning to end. Instead, one person saw the beginning, another or more saw the middle, and yet another saw the end. And that seemed to mean that none of them really took responsibility for the whole project.

Those at the beginning of the project only worked on the plans through about the 35% level. This was too early to be sure that all the details were included. Then as the project moved forward into the middle stage, more details were added, but occasionally requests for changes would be rejected because it as already too late to include them. But since the project was still far from completion, most of those involved wouldn't press the issue since they wouldn't have to live with the result. Instead of insisting that the plans be reviewed and changed, the involved gave in. And that meant that when the project reached the final stages, it really was too late to make changes. In our case, the equipment was already on site. We were stuck with what was in the plans.

By the time I arrived in Doha, the DS project manager had changed yet again. Within a couple of months, that project manager scheduled a visit to inventory and inspect the equipment that was on site. He was the first of many visitors who seemed not to understand that our work week was Saturday through Wednesday, not Monday through Friday. He scheduled his arrival, along with representatives of the construction company that would complete the project, for Wednesday evening, Gulf Friday, and his departure for Saturday morning. I reminded him that would mean he would only be in Doha for the weekend. He thought that would be fine since he wouldn't then be disrupting us during our work week. It didn't matter to him that I would have no weekend. More than once I asked him if he would need anything special available during his visit. Each time he said he didn't need anything special. He would be able to do everything once he arrived.

Image of forklift by galeria_stefbu, via Flickr.com

On the Thursday morning when I picked up the project manager and the three people he traveled with, brought them to the embassy, and showed them where the equipment was stored just outside the back door of the building - we did not have a warehouse - the project manager's first question was "Where is the forklift?" I invited him to join me in my office so that we could discuss it without the others. When we reached my office and I closed the door, I reminded him, perhaps a little louder than needed, that I had asked him repeatedly if he would need anything to be on site for his visit and that he would be here on a weekend, yet he had never mentioned the need for a forklift. His response - he just assumed we would have a forklift. He hadn't thought it was necessary.

I called Mahmoud, one of the local employees, to ask him to come in to see if there was any way we could get a forklift and driver for the day. Mahmoud succeeded.

By the time the project was ready to start, the first project manager I had met in Washington had again inherited the project. And there were delays. Instead of beginning in the winter when the weather was pleasant, the start slipped into the middle of summer, the hottest time of the year. This was the source for my second lesson - project schedules should be set to begin at the worst possible time because if the schedule slipped, it would slip into a better time. And if the schedule didn't slip for other reasons, the project manager could then make a last minute change for the better time. Of course, this lesson would never be followed. Anyone who proposed such a schedule would be ridiculed. But time and time again I saw projects scheduled for the best of possible times slip into the worst of times.

When the contractor staff arrived, they told us the contract spelled out we would provide escorts so they could work 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. But we did not have Marine Guards to be present during the work. That meant that we members of the staff had to be on site all those hours. Only a small number of the staff were entitled to get paid overtime, so the extra hours were divided up among them - Arnold, Gloria, and Jeff. Within a month, however, only Arnold was still in Doha. And that meant he worked 84 hours a week. The lesson I learned from this is that I should never have accepted those conditions. I should have insisted the Department send additional staff as escorts. Over time, the Department also learned that lesson. At my next small embassy, Chișinau, Moldova, the Department provided Cleared American Guards or CAGs when that embassy building had to be refurbished.

Image of fanby db0yd13, via Flickr.com

When I was becoming acquainted with the PAC project before arriving in Doha, I was annoyed by the constant rotation of project managers who all seemed to be learning about the project at the same time I was. But when the project was completed, we discovered the real pitfalls of rotating project managers. The consular waiting room, for example, was outside the reach of the building's air conditioning. That's what happened when the wall separating it from the office was hardened - there was no ventilation shaft through the hardened wall. The waiting room was like a sauna. And when we decided we would have to provide fans in the room to move the air around, we discovered there were also no outlets within the waiting room. Those were the little details no one noticed on the early blueprints. The best we could do was to open the windows, leave the door open, and then run an extension cord through the gap at the bottom of the ballistic teller window to plug in one fan in the waiting room. The same extension cord was used to plug in the vacuum cleaner at the end of the day when the waiting room was cleaned.

But we were so much safer than before the project.

Day 213 - Protocol

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.

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

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

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.

Day 212 - The Souq

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.

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.

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

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.

Day 211 - 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 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

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.

Day 210 - Location, Location, Location

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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, 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.