Greetings from Doha.
I’ve quickly fallen into a routine, up early for breakfast in the hotel and then an hour to catch up on overnight emails before heading out for a morning stroll and then to the University in the afternoons to meet with students and teach my sessions.
Evenings are cooler here, but not much, and people are out eating and shopping, this is the perfect time to grab a drink or wander through the Souk with all its sights and sounds. Despite a bit of jet-lag, I fall asleep exhausted and wake up with the morning sun seeping through the curtains.
I’m on the 37th floor here in the hotel, looking inland, the city fans out into a distant haze from the skyscrapers and business center to the homes, houses, and suburbs beyond. From here I can see flat roofs, tan and magnolia buildings, date palms, green parks, traffic, busy highways, bridges, cranes and high rises, and strange, interestingly shaped superstructures.
Everywhere is a hive of activity, the city bracing itself for the arrival of a million fans, here to support their team in the upcoming World Cup. It is a race against time to be ready.
Stephan
Teaching & Learning
I’ve been teaching students based at CMU’s Doha campus for the past few years, using zoom, and this is the first opportunity to travel and spend a week with them. I’ve been excited to come, these students have always created interesting work, and we’ve always had thoughtful discussions. I had some nervousness about how open they might be to conversations about culture and identity, how much they would interrogate ideas but I’ve been very pleasantly surprised.
Both Qatari nationals and international students in these classes have shared aspects of their lives, discussed world issues, talked about being a young person, and their prospects, and ambitions, and talked about cultural differences, gender equality, and generational experiences. The films we make are informed by place, inspired by feelings and thoughts of home, culture, and what they love and enjoy and how they can relate these things to who they are. Like their colleagues in Pittsburgh, students here approach learning as a series of opportunities; some they embrace, needing just the slightest of openings to dive into a subject, and others aspects rejected (they just don’t need that bit), or perhaps even they’ll bank the learning, save for a later date.
I like intensive learning, spending a week immersed in a subject or blitzing an activity in a workshop. On the other hand, students have to weave their way through different classes and thought processes and jump from one subject to another as they work through the week. Between each session you have with them, you have to remember that they’ve discussed and studied many other things; your class is a task that they keep returning to, a work in progress. Some students were a little surprised to see me as if I’d broken through the screen. During the week, I held office hours, and each of the students came to find me and talk through their projects.
Today, Friday, will be my last session here with them, next week we’ll finish up the course remotely. It has been so great to meet them, it really makes a big difference being here.
Life Lessons
This is the first time I’ve visited Qatar, the first time in the region and spent time in a Gulf state. The first thing you notice is how people are dressed, Qatari men wear perfectly ironed cotton-white thaub and on their heads, a guthra, a white cloth held by a black coil; and women a long black abaya and hijab or headscarf. At the university, the men often wear sandals or smart shoes, but women sometimes modernize their look, and you can see them sporting cool-looking Nike or Adidas sneakers and carrying Burberry and Louis Vuitton bags, some they tell me, bought on trips to Paris and Milan. International students are decked out in casual student wear, and it’s fun to see familiar CMU branded
t-shirts and sweaters.
Outside in the city, you see families together, dining in the cooler evening, walking through parks and pristine city streets, sitting in cafes and restaurants, taking selfies, and shopping with friends. The evenings are lively and social, people meeting and talking, much like in Spain or the South of France. I’m not sure how they are going to respond to having their worlds disturbed by all these football fans, the streets are going to be busy, and restaurants full. There will certainly be a clash of cultures. Many women are private people in public, and men seem quite reserved and respectful. Although there is so much English and French spoken, communication will be challenging. I’m hoping fans will behave themselves, that they will be perfect guests, keeping displays of public celebration and holidaying to a respectful level.
At least there are places to unwind, I’m typing in a lovely cafe a few doors down from the hotel, looking out across a quiet street. I can hear chirping birds but can’t see if they are caged or somewhere outside. Friday is a religious and family day, so it is relatively quiet. I’ve been writing little bits of this newsletter in the week, and today sipping coffee and moving between the laptop and my book. I’m not sure I’ll have time to sketch, but if I head out to tomorrow, I might take a pen and brush.
Lost and Found
On Tuesday morning, my first opportunity to sightsee, I visited the Qatar National Museum, with its incredible architecture inspired by a desert rose, the beautiful crystal formations that happen when salt evaporates and sand minerals bind into petal-like shapes. Inside, each room takes you on a journey through the history of the country. There are amazing exhibits of nomadic life, fishing, pearl diving, trade, and now oil, natural gas, and finance. There were interesting presentations by the Qatar Foundation, funding educational projects, and about the media and the creation of the Al Jazeera network. Films projected on curved walls as you walk through different spaces tell the stories of people and places. It is a display of national pride, an archive of culture, and a telling of identity. My favorite spaces were those with immersive film, great high-resolution projections split-screened in triptychs, and close-ups of Qatar life, for instance women laying out textiles, horses galloping across the sands, falcons, plants, sea, and desert.
Later that day, meeting my dear colleague, we visited Mathaf, a gallery of contemporary Arab art not far from Education City, where the university is located. We walked through an exhibition by Taysir Batniji reflecting the fragility of life in occupied Palestine, with faded photographs, missing people, empty spaces where portraits and personal possessions had once been, and pencil shavings across the floor of an abandoned building.
I also managed to walk find time to walk across the road from the University to the National Library of Qatar, a vast white building housing an immaculate collection of books, and papers. Downstairs, there are incredible collections of historical archives, a collection of manuscripts of the Quran, photographs from across the Arab world, books, illustrations, and even letters by T.E Laurence, along with first edition copies of The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. There’s also an exhibition space, there were a series of cinema posters, and a light-filled and colorful children’s library.
Thank you
I’m hoping that I can explore a bit more in the next few days, visit some of the areas that we’ve driven by, see more of these vast building projects, and sampling more of the delights this city offers.
It has been tricky, with time-differences and classes, to keep up with emails and everything happening back home. We’ve only managed a couple of calls, and I wish the family could be here to share this experience with. I’ve missed them this week and hope everything is good. I’ve bought a few gifts to take home.
Right, I’m going to try and record the audio, trying and spot the typos (disclaimer below) and start my day. Take care, speak soon.