Shopping in Doha

[qatarperegrine]

Overhead the albatross hangs motionless upon the air
And deep beneath the rolling waves
In labyrinths of coral caves
The echo of a distant time
Comes willowing across the sand
And everything is green and submarine.

Nope, not a description of the Arabian Gulf; it's the lyric of a Pink Floyd song that was playing in the grocery store yesterday. I started hearing a familiar ping noise as we were waiting for our cab, and I turned to Justin and asked, "Are you hearing the opening of Pink Floyd's 'Echoes'?" Sure enough.

I've decided to talk a bit about one aspect of living in Doha every day this week, and I'm starting with shopping because that's how I spent my weekend. I'm not generally much of a shopper, but between setting up a new household and trying to find appropriate work clothes, I had a lot of shopping to do.

Groceries

Before we moved here, I had read in several sources that getting a maid is essential in Qatar, because household tasks like cooking and cleaning will otherwise take all your time. Reading this, I imagined having to cook everything from scratch, with "scratch" meaning a whole lot of lentils and chickpeas, and maybe some second-rate vegetables. (Qatar, with a whopping 55 square miles of arable land, is trying to become self-sufficient in the vegetable department.) This expectation turns out to be entirely unfounded; I think we've found everything we've looked for in the grocery store. The selection of produce is much wider than we have in Pittsburgh, including things like manioc and countless vegetables and fruits we can't name. Our Arkansan neighbors were also excited to find okra, which is not widely available in Pittsburgh. There are also large quantities of imported prepared foods, from Cheez Whiz to Amy's organic pot pies. We even found some UHT milk in our favorite brand, Horizon. Many of the foods available are more like British food than American -- Kellogg's Sultana Bran instead of Raisin Bran, for example. It's also much easier to find British food here than in the U.S., and every time I go to the grocery store I'm drooling over something new: the largest Nutella jars I've ever seen, Orangina, Lilt. They also have Weetabix and Ovaltine, although I haven't drooled over those. (I was amused to see that Cadbury's Mini Rolls are considered refrigerable here, whereas in the UK they're kept on shelves.) On the other hand, there are American foods available here that are hard to find in the U.K., like Kraft Mac & Cheese and peanut butter. The only real "hardship" so far is that lowfat milk is difficult to find here. And, I admit, it is a little strange going to the "Exotic food" aisle for spaghetti.

One of my favorite things about shopping has been seeing the Arabic labels. Almost everything is transliterated, and it's been a great way for me to become more comfortable with the alphabet. Later this week (DSL should be installed today!) I hope to post pictures of some of my favorite labels.

Malls (and people-watching)

Doha is full of malls -- enormous, elaborate, air conditioned malls. These malls don't just contain clothing stores (Marks & Spencer, Bh, United Colors of Benneton) and accessories stores (Claires, Accessorize), although they do that too. They also contain all of the grocery stores I've visited, plus each mall has some sort of attraction (movie theater, amusement park, ice skating rink, bowling alley). The City Center Mall even has its own mosque.

Aside from the grocery stores, I've been mallratting to find more work clothes. I'm glad I decided to do most of my clothes shopping after I got here instead of trying to find appropriate clothes in Pittsburgh, because in Pittsburgh, most of the business clothes that covered my knees were made for either Pennsylvania winters or frumpy women -- and usually both. Here, there are a lot of non-revealing clothes that are cool in both senses of the word. My fashion sense (such as it is) tends towards the '60s flower child look anyway, and many of the clothes here fit that aesthetic.

The unfortunate thing is the sizing. While I'm no Twiggy, I don't think of myself as a particularly large person; in the U.S. I usually wear a size 10 or 12. In Qatar, getting into an XL skirt is a struggle. Looking around at Qatari women, I don't feel that I'm larger than average, but most of the women my size seem to be older women who wear traditional clothes. I suspect the modern clothing I was admiring was aimed more at the teenybop set. Luckily, I did find some XL clothes I liked.

The other fun part about the malls is people-watching. It wasn't until I wandered around the Landmark Mall that it really struck me that the abaya most local women wear really is just a cloak. Women wear all kinds of things under their abayas, from long Indian dresses to blue jeans. There seems to be quite a bit of leeway regarding how fastened the abaya is, as well; some women's are buttoned or zipped all the way up, while others have them thrown loosely over their western outfits, making them look very much like graduates at a post-commencement party. The abayas themselves are absolutely gorgeous, many of them with all kinds of embroidery or lace or bright insets like a Dracula cloak. They are also much more closely tailored than I had expected. If it weren't inappropriate for me to wear one, I definitely would.

As a westerner, it's also fun to watch people interact at the mall. Male bonding seems much more common here than in the West, and I frequently see men walking around holding hands. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not in the Castro, and these men are (probably) not gay. On the other hand, men and women tend not to hold hands; I've only seen three couples do so, and in each case it was momentary. foobart and I are having a hard time retraining ourselves not to touch in public. I doubt anyone would be offended if we did, but I want very much to respect local customs as much as I can.

In many ways, Doha seems more diverse than places I have lived. Wandering around any populated area, like the malls or souqs, and you will see people dressed in everything from tank tops and shorts to abayas and full face veils. Most Qatari women wear an abaya, but in a variety of ways, and some don't wear it at all. Even of those in abayas, some wear a simple hijab, some wear a niqaab that shows only their eyes, some wear a Bedouin-style gold mask over their mouths, some wear a sheer cloth over their whole face (don't know what that's called). foobart even saw one woman in an abaya without any head covering at all. And, of course, many women (Western and Qatari) wear entirely Western dress, some with a hijab and some with no head covering, and other foreigners wear their own country's dress, like a salwar kameez or a sari. There is even more variety among men, since men are from a wider variety of countries, and Western clothing seems more common among men, but Qatari men of all ages seem to wear the thobe, and young men particularly seem to spend a great deal of time adjusting their gutras. Thobes look exactly like ankle-length Oxford shirts, complete with pen pocket, and French cuffs seem to be all the rage. Of course, I'm only discussing adults here: children are usually in T-shirts and shorts. So no kind of clothing really looks too out-of-place here, and nobody seems to find any one else's clothing particularly strange.

Souqs

Thursday night we made our first expedition to the souqs, or traditional markets. We seemed to end up at the clothing and fabric souq, which suited my neighbor just fine as she was hoping to have a dress remade. We are told that you can take any kind of clothing to one of the tailors here -- or even a picture or sketch -- and they will remake the outfit for you. I haven't done this yet, but one woman I know had a suit made and was very happy with the results. It seems complicated, though, to go to a fabric souq and choose the fabric you want (then haggle for it) and then take it to the tailor. I'll have to write more later if we ever do this. It was fun to look at all the fabrics though -- everything from gingham to sari fabric. There were also ready-made clothes in the souqs. I tried on, and fell in love with, a beaded Indian dress, but we couldn't get them below QR170 ($47) and that seemed too much. I think I showed too much interest in the dress before we started talking prices; I imagine we'll do better next time. (foobart did the actual haggling, as white women are reputed to have zero bargaining power.) I shouldn't leave you with the impression that all the souqs sell clothes, though; we also visited a few electronics souqs, and I was attracted by a souq selling prayer mats and prayer beads. There are also souqs (in different parts of town) for gold, vegetables, even falcons.

I felt entirely out of place in the souq. It being the weekend, I was wearing a T-shirt and jeans, which I have not previously worn outside the compound. I also had a backpack with me so I'd have somewhere to put my Lonely Planet guide. Thus I looked, and felt, completely like a tourist, and we didn't run into any other Westerners while we were there. I feel more confident that next time we go, I'll wear a more appropriate outfit -- but it's disheartening to know that I'll never not be a foreigner.

I'd planned to talk about food, too, and maybe church, but I can see I should leave those for future days! Please let me know if there's another aspect of life in Qatar that I should write about.