Stories and photos from my time living in the Middle East

[BehindBlueI's]

I'm starting to see the value of presenting the mundane experiences I had working for DynCorp and living in the Middle East. What most people see is the extraordinary, because that's what makes the news. As such, the view is a bit stilted. I don't think folks grasp how modern and "normal" some nations there are. As such, I'll present a bit of a counterpoint based on my own experiences.

The first few posts are going to be about my friends.

The black guy is Gary. He was my best friend while I was in Qatar. He was hilarious, former Marine, and just a fun guy to hang out with. He was also really big. The guy on the right is the owner of "Tasty World". Tasty World was a small restaurant that made fruit smoothies and it was within walking distance of our villa. Gary loved the smoothies at Tasty World. We all went there fairly frequently, but Gary bought a LOT of smoothies and he was always joking with the owner about the name of the place. One day he asked if he could get a picture with the man who didn't just make tasty food, he made a whole tasty world, and this photo was the result.

This is Ric's Kountry Kitchen. It was the one place in Doha you could get an American style breakfast. Sort of. Qatar bans pork, so the sausage was beef or turkey. Ric was a Filipino guy who'd cooked for the US military in the Phillipines and then immigrated to Qatar to partner up with a local and open this restaurant. I'm in the photo for those who know me. This photo was taken after a shift turnaround. We rotated down a shift every month (3rd to 2nd, 2nd to 1st, 1st to 3rd) so that no one guard team was stuck in the heat of the day all Summer. This meant that at some point you got a long turnaround and sometimes you got a short turn around. Long turnarounds were celebrated at Ric's.

Still at Ric's. The guy eating is Matt. He was nuts, but we didn't know it yet. Last we heard from him he was bar tending in Amsterdam after quitting the guard force. The guy next to him is Terrence. You'll note he made no attempt to hide he was American. This might seem to be an odd choice if you're concerned about security. It was actually a conscious decision that allowed him to get a taxi easily. That brings me to this story that will end this first post. BTW - this photo was taken when Matt was the first guard ever to finish an entire "Mondo burger". It was a cheeseburger roughly the size of a manhole cover...and that's the last bite going in his face.

One guard, Brunson, had a lot of trouble catching a taxi. He was furious and believed the cab drivers were racist and would not pick him up due to being black. The problem with this theory is the cabbies picked up Gary (the guy in the top picture) with no problem. They would pick them both up if they were together, or if they were with me, or if we were all together. Finally we just asked a cab driver. He said Brunson was too thin, so he looked like he was African. Africans didn't pay their cab fare, they got where they were going and bolted. Gary was so big he must be "black American" and so he would have money and pay his cab fare. The thinner and smaller black guys started making subtle indications they were American if they wanted at taxi. Eventually many of us bought or rented cars and got a local driver's license, but most people relied on cabs for the first few months in country, and Terrence was still in that stage.

 

[indiucky]

Brother,

That is some "real world" information.....Thank you for sharing.....I was humming "Rock the Kasbash" while reading it.....It helps explain your "even keel" approach to life and culture...Thanks again....

Ruger GP100's are not better than the Security Six/Service Sixes were....Just because you post a cool post about Qatar does not mean a revolver with a grip frame shaped like a sex toy rather than an actual grip frame is "better"....

 

[T.Lex]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to BehindBlueI's again.

Death to the fascist rep regime.

(Or, if not "death" then discomfort. In a mild, temporary way.)

 

[BehindBlueI's]

These are friends of my wife. They threw us a party for the 1 month "birthday" of our son. This was at Dairy Queen in Doha. The family was Palestinian refugees who had made good for themselves. From left to right, MCSE certified IT worker who was teaching at a local IT school. The mother of the girls. The next girl was a bank teller. The last was a pharmacist, which is how my wife met them. She's also a pharmacist. The family has since immigrated to Canada. I forgot what the father did, but it paid enough to put his three daughters through college. The family was very nice. We ate at their house a few times, and the mother (Rahma) would put out a traditional dinner. There would be one large meat dish, like a turkey, on a big silver platter. All the sides were arranged on the platter and everyone took food off the communal plate. For non-formal dinners everyone got their own plate, but the traditional dinner kept everyone in the same room and she liked that for visitors. She cornered me a few times and reminded me that I could have more than one wife and that she had three unmarried daughters living at home, she'd only found a husband for her oldest. My wife got along with her daughters, so... I think she was teasing me because I had no earthly idea what to say. My wife thinks she was serious, but she can be a bit jealous over that sort of thing. It is true you can have multiple wives, but its a rarity from what I saw. The wealthiest who could afford to give each their own house were rumored to have multiple wives, but I didn't move in those circles.

This is my first morning in Doha. I arrived at night and was put up in a hotel until the next day when I got a villa. It was very luxurious, the nicest hotel room I'd ever stayed in at that point. The water tasted a bit funny when I brushed my teeth. I was concerned it was something that would make me sick, but I learned later it was just the taste of desalinated water. Desalination is the sole municipal water source in that barren little nation. The hotels have bars (and hookers) but I had decided to quit drinking shortly before going, so I stayed in my room most of the night and wondered WTF I got myself into...

This is my SUV. I used taxis or the company van (which we could sign out for 2 hour increments) or simply walked/bicycled until I started dating my wife. Then I decided I needed my own vehicle. I bought this Isuzu, which belonged to a gargantuan fat Egyptian. He used it to drive custom furniture from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It had almost 300,000 km on it when I bought it, and the seat was caved in in the shape of a giant Egyptian buttocks. The price was right, though, and labor is cheap there. I bought it, had the seat redone, the motor gone through, and then drove it until I sold it to another guard as I was preparing to leave. The SUV was "desert spec" and had no heater and no catalytic converters. It did have a double-thick AC compressor and a buzzer that sounded when you were going over a certain speed. I don't remember exactly how fast it was. I think it was 120 km/hr. My wife is on the phone with her parents, so I asked my father in law. He thinks it might have been 130, but the highest speed limit was 100 km/hr. We joked that just meant "turn the radio up" for his daughter/my wife. They do not enforce any traffic laws there. The traffic police respond to crashes but that's about it. They have a pretty high rate of traffic fatalities in the outlying areas and at night, but during the day and in the city they can't get going fast enough to really hurt each other.

Speaking of hurting each other:

Note the SUV under tow. It's being drug through someone else's picnic. This resulted in lots of yelling and posturing, but no actual fight. Arabs are big on posturing and yelling. Apparently it's cathartic and they seldom actually fist fight. You think they are going to, but they both understand it's just posturing. I had a guy road rage me, shouting and shaking his fist) so I pulled over (because I was young and stupid) and asked if he wanted to fight. He was very confused and said no. He wasn't scared. He was simply confused. I was supposed to yell and wave my arms, then he'd yell and wave his arms, then we'd both get over it and invite each other out for tea and then promptly forget the other person existed. I didn't know the rules, yet. It was like you said "hello" to a stranger and he waved a graham cracker in your face to that guy when I offered to fight.

How the guy got stuck was he left his SUV parked too close to the water and the tide came in. He was playing in the water facing out and didn't realize until one wheel was submerged in soupy sand. He asked if anyone had a rope, and I didn't. By the time he found someone with a rope who would help him the back axle was mostly under water. The rope was a thin and sad affair. They broke it several times trying to get him out, as you can tell from the knots. They finally doubled it up a few times and got him moving. The problem was he was sliding sideways and they decided to go too near the other family's picnic instead of risking stopping and having to start again. They did the yell/point/wave arms thing for awhile, apparently made up, and everyone went on their way.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Brother,

That is some "real world" information.....Thank you for sharing.....I was humming "Rock the Kasbash" while reading it.....It helps explain your "even keel" approach to life and culture...Thanks again....

Ruger GP100's are not better than the Security Six/Service Sixes were....Just because you post a cool post about Qatar does not mean a revolver with a grip frame shaped like a sex toy rather than an actual grip frame is "better"....

You're bordering on negative rep there, mister. You only associate sex toys with the grip because the GP100 is so comfortable it is like its loving your hand...

 

[foszoe]

Thanks for starting this thread!

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Here's that SUV getting unstuck pre-picnic dragging. The water is the Persian Gulf. The water is warm and since the gulf is narrow there isn't much in the way of waves. There are moving cold spots in the water for some reason, though, and its like ice water in comparison.

This is a display as you leave Doha into the desert. They put these crashes up on pedestals to remind people to drive safely so they don't end up the next one on the pedestal. I don't think it worked very well.

The Doha Zoo. It's small and kind of sad. The animals didn't have much room and the outside animals didn't like the heat much. I went once with my wife and never went back, as I love zoos but found this one depressing.

That dry stack block building is where a group of workers were living as they constructed a huge villa nearby. The gap between the wealthy and the poor was dramatic, to say the least. Immigrant unskilled and semi-skilled workers often lived in fairly abysmal conditions. This is rougher than most, but the norm seemed to be crowded apartments. The Indians who worked the gas stations lived in apartments over the gas station, for example. There was a definite hierarchy of nationalities. Indians, Bangladeshi, etc. were generally the common laborers for construction projects. Egyptians and other Arabs were the skilled and foreman level workers. British were usually the designers and top bosses. Then a Qatari was in charge in name but didn't actually do anything except provide a local presence. Per the Brits, most of the Qatari sponsors wouldn't know how to find the job site. Our neighbors in our second villa were British and had lived there for over a decade, so there take was often very interesting. There was also a couple that worked for British Airways in the compound, but they were gone a lot (he was a pilot) and I barely met them. Most of the domestic workers, grocery store clerks, and menial inside jobs were Filipinos. The grocery store girls were a source of dates for many of the guard force, and it wasn't terribly uncommon for a guard to take home a Filipino wife or to move to the Phillipines after he was done contracting. The ratio there is terrible, btw, due to so many immigrant workers there are way more men then women. There were hookers, primarily Chinese, Fiilipino, or Indian, but some Sudanese and other north africans. Rumor said there were Russian women during high profile events, but I don't know. Taxi drivers were often in the know, and had a few girls they could 'deliver' discretely. Qataris didn't normally date outside of other Qataris, but one guard did marry one. My wife is originally Lebanese and was a pharmacist downtown when we met. A few guards were dating Tunisian women when I left, but I don't know if any of them married. Generally it was Filipinos, though.

Crosswalk sign. No real story, I just thought it was really funny.

This is a roundabout. Most of the big roundabouts had some big statue thing in the center. Navigation was done by landmark. This was "vase roundabout". These sorts of things translate easier than proper names for roads, and there are so many languages there that this was a huge boon for giving directions. "Go to Castle roundabout, take your second exit, this will take you to..." It's easier to remember Parachute (which was near the airport...) then some name that means nothing to you. Almost every restaurant delivered. My first villa was "Y-gardens". You'd tell them "Y-gardens, near Parachute roundabout..." if they didn't know you yet.

 

[Dosproduction]

this is a cool thread.

 

[Alamo]

Interesting! Would like to see some more.

You haven't mentioned the humidity yet, but when I was in Abu Dhabi one summer, it was unbelievably hot AND unbelievably humid, and yet somehow also incredibly dusty (on the airbase out in the desert, not so much in the city). Every morning there was about 10' of fog along the ground just before sun up. Made Texas summer look benign. Since Qatar was only a Scud-throw away, I can't imagine it was much different. On the plus side, the Persian Gulf water was the prettiest, clearest blue I have ever seen.


Your "road rage" story reminded me: When I was in Saudi Arabia, two guys ahead of Saudi Royal Air Force bus got in a spat, jumped out of their cars, and after some screaming started hitting each other with their ghuttra and igal headdresses (the cloth and the "fan belt" which represents camel hobbles). The RSAF bus driver, a sergeant, exceptionally big for a Saudi, got tired of watching this and jumped out of the bus. He grabbed the two squabblers and slammed them together, yelled at them, then everyone got in their vehicles and went on. Aside from that, there was a lot of screaming and horn honking in Saudi traffic. In contrast, Abu Dhabi traffic was very calm and controlled, and the police enforced the traffic laws vigorously. That was quite a shock after the free-for-all on Saudi roads. Sounds like Qatar trended towards the Saudi driving model.

 

[FishnHunt]

Very cool thread, thanks for sharing your experiences!

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Shop-rite. This was a medium size grocery store that was a long walk or short bicycle ride from my first villa. I got most of my groceries here until I got a car. The clerks were all Filipino ladies, and several ended up dating Americans at some point. Even on desert scale, most of them seemed a bit...rough, IMO though.

This little strip mall was near my villa, and the place in the middle is Pasha's Turkish Kebabs. Other than my wife, it was the best thing in Doha. I would punch a baby for a chance to eat at Pasha's again. The food was incredible, spice perfectly, and just fantastic. I've never had kebab or grilled chicken like that place did it. For 10 R (about $2.70) you could get a full grilled chicken with vegetables stacked on a big piece of flat bread that caught the chicken's delicious, delicious juices. It was soooo good. So very good. We ate there A LOT. I was probably in there 4-5 days a week until my wife and I got serious. Then only 3...

Any time a new guy got in country, if he seemed like he was going to be cool, we'd take them to Pasha's. (We being me, Gary, Brunson, and whoever else was in our little clique at the time, as guards come and go fairly often). We'd introduce them to Pasha. We'd tell them how awesome it was, and generally show the level of enthusiasm a crackhead shows for a rock combined with a fangirl meeting her favorite boy band. Yes, the food was that good. And cheap. Anyway, we'd been going there for at least a year when Pasha's oldest son graduated high school and came from Turkey to help in the restaurant. He asked us, "why do you call my dad Pasha?" We sat there stunned for a bit, as the implication that his name probably wasn't "Pasha" sunk in. I finally said "he's the owner, and it's Pasha's kebab, so we just sort of assumed...and he's never corrected us." It turns out "Pasha" is Turkish for a high level government position in the old times, sort of a royally appointed governor of a province. We'd basically been calling this guy "Governor" since we'd known him. So the son made the dad come over and tell us his real name. It seemed hard to pronounce. He liked being called "Governor" and we happily went back to calling him Pasha and everyone but the son was satisfied with the arrangement. He didn't say anything, but I think he was embarrassed his dad preened so much being called Pasha. Pretty standard kid being embarrassed by their parents, really.

The "Banshee" place near there sold tours on ATVs, rented jet skis, and the like.

I don't know if you can make it out, but the guy's bumper sticker thing says "Life is short...and so am I"

The Harley dealer in Doha. It opened in '05, IIRC, but this was the first week it was open. I wanted one, but shipping it home would have been a bother and with the sand blowing across the road and the nutso drivers there, it didn't seem sane to ride in country.

The "Giant Store". This was a huge grocery store that sold nearly every type of food you could think of. It was far from my house, but we sometimes went there to get stuff we couldn't find anywhere else. About the only thing I could never find was cornbread mix and green tomatoes. My grandmother sent me cornbread mix, but I just had to go without green tomatoes for two years. Anyway, note the SUV near the bottom of the giant grocery cart, and that will give you an idea of the scale of that truly huge grocery cart statue.

This was a park near the beach front of Doha. That boat is called a "dhow" and was what the pearl fisherman used in traditional Qatari society. Pearls are still really cheap there. There was a Qatari artistian jewelry maker who still got pearls from the water, drilled them with a small hand powered drill and sand (sort of like how you use a bow to start a fire) and strung them together. I bought my wife a choker necklace, bracelet, and earrings from him.

 

[shootersix]

"You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to BehindBlueI's again."
death to the rep nazis!
cool post

am i the only one who thinks the girl on the left is kinda hot?

 

[indiucky]

cool post am i the only one who thinks the girl on the left is kinda hot?

No....

 

[BehindBlueI's]

Interesting! Would like to see some more.

You haven't mentioned the humidity yet, but when I was in Abu Dhabi one summer, it was unbelievably hot AND unbelievably humid, and yet somehow also incredibly dusty (on the airbase out in the desert, not so much in the city). Every morning there was about 10' of fog along the ground just before sun up. Made Texas summer look benign. Since Qatar was only a Scud-throw away, I can't imagine it was much different. On the plus side, the Persian Gulf water was the prettiest, clearest blue I have ever seen.


Your "road rage" story reminded me: When I was in Saudi Arabia, two guys ahead of Saudi Royal Air Force bus got in a spat, jumped out of their cars, and after some screaming started hitting each other with their ghuttra and igal headdresses (the cloth and the "fan belt" which represents camel hobbles). The RSAF bus driver, a sergeant, exceptionally big for a Saudi, got tired of watching this and jumped out of the bus. He grabbed the two squabblers and slammed them together, yelled at them, then everyone got in their vehicles and went on. Aside from that, there was a lot of screaming and horn honking in Saudi traffic. In contrast, Abu Dhabi traffic was very calm and controlled, and the police enforced the traffic laws vigorously. That was quite a shock after the free-for-all on Saudi roads. Sounds like Qatar trended towards the Saudi driving model.

The weather sucked. The Summer got to 130 degrees and like you said, its a wet heat. Night was worse. The temp dropped a bit, but the sun wasn't there to burn the fog off, so the humidity was over 100%. Visibility was very low, the air was like breathing pudding, and you got "swamp butt" but not limited to your butt... Sand storms were something to see, but yeah, the air isn't clean at all even when its not a sand storm. Since it seldom rains, there is nothing to knock the ever present dust out of the air. The weather was by far the worst part of living there.

 

[hoosierdaddy1976]

.

 

[BehindBlueI's]

No....

That's Dahlia. She's the Microsoft instructor, and was very nice.

 

[hoosierdaddy1976]

am i the only one who thinks the girl on the left is kinda hot?

no, you are not.

 

[miguel]

This is a display as you leave Doha into the desert. They put these crashes up on pedestals to remind people to drive safely so they don't end up the next one on the pedestal. I don't think it worked very well.

Love the unmentioned camel-crossing sign in this photo. You should see if they'll trade for a deer-crossing sign.

 

[indiucky]

Love the unmentioned camel-crossing sign in this photo. You should see if they'll trade for a deer-crossing sign.

I would have so been serving time in prison there....

"Why did you endanger lives by stealing that camel crossing sign?"

"Dude...How could I not try to get that sign??? It's a freaking camel crossing sign for Pete's sake...I got a man cave that needs that sign sir..."

 

[BoilerMakerME]

Interesting point your previously brought up, our company does a lot of work oversea's, middle east, asia, north africa. It seems as though Indian's have become the world workforce. As mentioned the expat's out number the locals. Also given the region, Qatar varies from Saudia, to Oman. Law's rules, and the way they treat there women. It's deferentially very different, make's your appreciate being in america. At the work camps in the refineries they treat the american's way better than the Indian workers, they are almost like slaves. There's the expat's bathroom that's over flowing with feces, where you crouch and wash you hand off with a water bottle or bucket, then the western style that has a toilet, when lucky, with a seat, that actually flushes. (It's those types of things people don't usually bring up.)