Doha: a City in Progress

At first, I thought of Doha as a sort of twin sister of Dubai. All that gloss - I thought - all that unembarrassed display of fantasy in the middle of a desert. I even checked online fora to have a glance of “reality” in Qatar. Silly me. Most of the comments advised to be cautious because of their “strict Islamic law” and one remark warning against carrying prescription drugs without medical authorization made me feel concerned about a doses of painkillers that I carry around just like that, prescribed by God.  As it often happens, reality is far more different than online gossiping.

Unlike Dubai, Doha still signals struggle between modernization ‘Emirates style’ and the maintenance of its own local color.  The city is, nonetheless, on the same development path of Dubai although about a decade behind in terms of extravaganza.  

Statistically richer than its neighbors, the Qataris don’t display yet the lavishness that characterizes the atmosphere of Dubai, for instance.  The streets of Doha are still packed by cars of commercial and medium range brands, mostly American and Japanese, so typical of other cities around the world. And just like many other cities, this city seems to be a place under permanent construction.

Quite conveniently the first image of Doha upon arrival was, indeed, a bus packed with foreign workers transiting around the airport at 5 AM.   Since then, buses carrying workers from one spot to the other at any time from the very early morning until late at night became the constant and unconscious object of my attention, and I couldn’t avoid to relate it to the controversial celebration of the World Cup in 2022, and the endless debate about the labour conditions of foreign workers from the South of Asia: the construction workers, taxi drivers, cleaning ladies or customer service attendants from the Philippines, India, Pakistan...

During years such criticism seemed unfair to me.  The fact, for instance, that foreign workers choose to remain abroad voluntarily suggests that salaries and living conditions are superior than back home, or at least, that conditions in their own countries are not better. The second fact is that the way in which western media consistently denounces working conditions of construction and domestic workers in rich middle eastern countries suggests a biased approach to their culture and a reminiscence of the division of the world between the west and the non-western regions that many geopolitical scholars, with Said in the front line, highlighted. 

Souk Waqif

Doha did not seem to me to exploit foreign labor force to the extent that I had heard before.  Due to a random coincidence I visited the site of the multi billion dollar construction of the Museum of Qatari history and, aside of the design and its likelihood to become one of the world’s leading museums, nothing surprised me more than the air-conditioned spaces disposed indoors for the workers to work without the heat of summer, and the discovery of a minimum wage created by the Government for construction workers - perhaps to controvert foreign criticism.  Moreover, working conditions imposed by capitalism have proven more aggressive and rough in countries that promoted democracy and human rights as a measure of development:  The lack of paid holidays, increasing working hours and expensive health insurance (denied to those who don’t work), for instance, are only a few features of the labor market in the most developed Economy in the world.  


Such thoughts just reinforced the impression that our own perceptions and prejudice reflect imaginaries taken from the outer world. After all, Addis-Abeba is not the massive camp of refugees starving to death that we learned about in the 80’s,  Paris is not made of love as Hollywood is obsessed to show, and Nairobi is just a modern and international spot in East Africa.

Still, Doha wrestles to conciliate its aimed future with its culture. There is, of course, the omnipresent awareness of visiting a Muslim country, pointed out by the calls for prayers during the day. The Souk Waqif is a bit more authentic than others in the Emirates and the Museum of Islamic Art intends to pay tribute to the complex relation between art and Muslim religion.  Aside of that, other Doha’s memorable places such as The Pearl, equivalent to The Palm in Dubai, and the Qanat quartier (a magnificent imitation of Venice located in the Pearl) show the effort made by the whole local society to follow the development process of Dubai.              

My thinking about modernity and tradition brought again the issue of the World cup and it seemed to me, once again, that the FIFA had unwittingly decided to test the eternal division between the west and the “non-west” by taking the World Cup to the Middle East, to measure the endurance of its values and how resistant it still is to the powerful liberal dogma. Then, I found the criticism justified.  
                                                                         
It is difficult to imagine tourists getting drunk or even drinking alcohol in public places, holding hands in the streets, kissing outdoors or doing any other naive, spontaneous activity in a country in which the Law is inspired by Islam.  Nonetheless, Qatari authorities have arguably solved the problem by creating a sort of special, international area, close enough to Doha to visit but “isolated” enough from the city, so that it can contain all the sins that foreign visitors would bring.

Doha Bay 

The Museum of Islamic Art

It is also an interesting time to visit the city due the feud in which the Country was engaged with its main neighbors, whose commercial and aerial boycott over Qatar had evidently caused an impact on the economy and became notorious in the decreasing price of hotel rooms, the sales in the shopping centers and the overall lack of hectic activity in areas that are supposed to be full of foreign tourists. Such a political and diplomatic quarrel made me think again of the contradictions in the Middle East and I recalled an interview of Al-Jazeera to a senior Qatari Official who, confronted with the questions set by Saudi Arabia about the links with Iran, Hezbollah and “terrorist” groups in the Middle East, replied: “You know?...when you live in a glass house you shouldn’t be throwing stones”.  

In some sense, because of its paradoxical modernity and protection of tradition, Doha somehow became a glass house, exposed to be stoned from abroad. And such a paradox of a City committed to achieve the cosmopolitan dream yet traditionalist and enclosed by its own inflexible beliefs, was the idea I had when I thought of Doha as a struggle.