Marjorie in Qatar

International Day at Carnegie Mellon Qatar is always one of my favorite events of the year. Students, faculty and staff come to school in their national dress and bring in national foods and other representations of their culture. (As you can see from the photo shamelessly stolen from Alex, I again represented NorCal.) In the evening there's a fashion show and performances of cultural songs, dances and poetry. I'm glad that this was one of the last events I will experience on the Doha campus, because it makes me so proud to be part of such an amazingly vibrant community.

I put together a short video of clips of some of the cultural performances last night: a nasheed, or Islamic religious song; dances from Tamil Nadu and Persia; a W.H. Auden poem; Bengali and Keralite songs; Pakistani, Ghanaian, Palestinian, Dominican and Latin American dances, and a Coldplay song. :-)

The video quality improves after the first clip, so don't despair.

While I was away from Qatar over the holidays, what one journalist has called a "national cultural war" broke out over an online post by a friend of mine.

On the evening of Qatar National Day, VCU professor Lisa Clayton posted a note on her Facebook page about the irresponsible things she'd seen drivers doing during the festivities. The note, which was sarcastic in tone, called attention to issues that many people have been complaining about, for example:

It took an ambulance 20 minutes to get through a single round-about with their lights flashing and sirens blasting, because these Qatari boys were so intent on showing off they blocked all traffic and couldn't hear the sirens with their music blasting. No problem if anyone died because the ambulance couldn't get to them; after all, it's more important to have a HUGE display for Qatar National Day!

Lisa also posted the note pseudonymously on Qatar Living, Qatar's most notable English-language online forum. It has since been deleted but for reference I reposted a cached version here.

Within a day, Lisa's post was the talk of the town. Her real identity was "outed" on Qatar Living by VCU students and alumnae who joined in order to post responses and attacks (including some with language I've never heard Qatari girls use). Two Facebook groups were started to respond: the first an explicitly anti-Lisa Clayton group (its name has since been changed) with over a thousand members; the second calling for Qatar Living to be shut down. A popular Qatari CMU professor posted a blog entry calling for tolerance of social critiques, but lambasting the expats' "condescending rhetoric," and in the comments she congratulated the students on their success in coming together to defend their culture.

By 21 Dec, the story was on the front page of the Peninsula. Qatar Living issued a semi-apology, deleted the thread and removed Lisa's account. Lisa issued apologies on the CMU professor's blog (saying, "I am destroyed by my own poor choice of words and my life here is over"), on the Facebook group against her, and on her own Facebook account, describing herself as "a destroyed woman who is afraid to leave her home and humiliated by being at the root of this terrible firestorm in my adopted home."

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I was shocked that Lisa's words had the effect they did. Truly racist things are said on Qatar Living all the time, so why would this be the post to create an uproar? Part of the answer is that it was her own students who saw the post and took offense. I think part of it, too, may be that Lisa's words reinforced Qatari fears about what Westerners really think of them. I think that to a large extent Qataris and Westerners here, despite collaborating on a superficial level, still spend much of our time peering at each other over the wall of our cultural divide with some level of distrust and resentment. Stereotypes abound on both sides: Westerners are prone to characterize Qataris as indolent and spoiled, a nation of Paris Hiltons. Qataris are prone to characterize Westerners as second-rate mercenaries with no respect for Arab culture who come to Qatar merely to get overinflated salaries and job titles we're not talented enough to merit.

Of course, that stereotype doesn't fit Lisa, and it's not true of most of us in Education City. So it's disheartening to see that this stereotype is the most consistent theme of the Facebook group posts. More disheartening is that many of the Qataris writing these comments are Education City students. It's profoundly saddening to think that, even after years at one of the Ed City campuses, many students apparently think that their professors and uni staff only put up with them for the money. A CMU student wrote: "This shows how many unappreciative expats are walking amongst us in the streets, looking into our eyes, faking big smiles and pretending to be sooo fascinated with this amazing culture of ours." Is that how she sees us?

From my side of the cultural divide, it's shocking to realize how little our students share the values that, on the surface, we all seem to embrace. John Esposito sought to reassure Westerners that there is no clash of civilizations when he wrote after substantial polling that most Muslims value freedom of speech and other "Western" values as much as Westerners do. But what an American means by freedom of speech and what a Qatari means by freedom of speech are not necessarily the same thing. As the anti-Lisa Facebook group founder said, "guests in this country ... certainly have no right to offend us in any way." Over and over, I've been told: You have freedom of speech, but not the freedom to insult. You have freedom of speech in moderation. You have freedom of speech, but don't transgress the limits. From my perspective, "freedom of speech" is a meaningless phrase if it only encompasses the right to say inoffensive things.

The ruckus about Lisa's statement seems to have died down, but the exchanges I had on those Facebook groups have in some ways changed how I see Qatar. It was nice to think that by being here, by bringing an American institution to Qatar, we are building bridges between cultures and helping both sides to see each other as real people instead of stereotypes. So what does it mean when people who have spent years at these universities still look at each other with distrust and resentment?

I was just commenting to my parents how much my work-life balance has changed in the last few years. For my first few years in Qatar, my job was boring and undemanding, and my life revolved around my friends; for a long stretch of time, in fact, the only reason I didn't quit my job was that it would mean seeing less of my friends.

Now all those friends have left. I miss them, and haven't really replaced them adequately. However, now that my job is interesting and stimulating, it's fine that I no longer have a tight-knit circle of friends for my life to revolve around. (The downside: my new workaholic life does not lead to interesting blog entries.)

I did have a fun social occasion last night: a group of TAs, young professors and staff went out for iftar (the fast-breaking meal at sundown during Ramdan) at a Lebanese restaurant. I had a blast. Even if I don't get as much social time as I'd like, I love that working here gives me the opportunity to interact with such a fun, smart, diverse crowd of people. (IIRC the 14 of us represented 9 nationalities.)

I think this is one of the interesting realities of living overseas. I imagined that moving to Qatar would mean meeting lots of Qataris and learning about their culture. That turns out not to be very easy: Qataris already have their own social networks and life routines that don't include me. This may be partially because Qatari society is rather insular, but I think that people living abroad in other countries often find the same thing. On the other hand, if you're lucky, you end up meeting lots of other expats in the same situation as you and learning about their cultures instead, so it all works out in the end.

I stumbled across an article suggesting that Qatar will soon promulgate a suggested dress code for expats.

It is said to include "eight crucial points." What do you suppose they are? Let's get the obvious ones out of the way: no shoulders, knees or midriffs; nothing tight-fitting or transparent. What else?

The other day I went to a medical lab to get a blood test the rheumatologist requested. I walked into the waiting room, went up to the receptionist's window, and waited for her to look up from her computer. When she finally did, she seemed kind of annoyed, and told me to write my name on the list and go sit down. I felt annoyed in turn that she was acting like I ought to know the procedure, even though I've never been there before.

It was only after I sat down that I realized there was a prominent sign right next to her desk, instructing newcomers that they ought to... write their names down on the list and go sit down.

Before I moved to Qatar, I would have been incapable of walking past a sign like that without reading it, and it boggled my mind that students would ignore the sign on my office door. But now, apparently, I do exactly the same thing. A few weeks ago I even found myself driving backwards down a one-way street, because I was paying attention to how traffic was moving (which was, indeed, backwards) rather than the road sign telling me not to enter. When signs and written instructions fail to correspond to reality, I suppose it's natural to stop paying attention to them.

In other news, I was just very comforted to read that prednisone, which I'm currently on, can cause swift and extreme mood swings. I'll be off it in four days. Here's hoping.

There are three articles on Garangao in today's Peninsula: 1, 2, 3.

In more sobering news, some prominent folk apparently gave a lecture on 'Westernisation biggest threat', specifically highlighting the evils of American universities in the Arab world. Part of me is fiercely glad to see prominent scholars and ambassadors almost-openly criticizing Qatari policies; that doesn't happen very much here. But most of me is just very sad.

We just got our picture from the dress-up booth of the students' Independence Day celebration:

Marjorie, freshly hennaed and sporting a thobe al nashal and (fake) traditional jewelry, pretends to play the rababah, while a thobed Justin shows off a borrowed sword.

There are about 5 things I've been dying to blog about, and somehow the pressure has prevented me from blogging any of them! So let's start here.

In the comments on this post, PeacefulMuslimah (an educator here in Education City) said:

"I was particularly incensed when [Yvonne Ridley] snidely pronounced that the Americans teaching in EC were simply interested in suckking up petro-dollars so they could return to their homes and live the life of rich 'fat-cats'."

to which someone anonymously responded:

"I can tell u that as an 18 yr old Qatari it is common belief amongst many Qatari's that the Americans in EC r infact only here for OUR money & corrupting us but its just said behind closed doors"

I've been thinking about this exchange for several days. It makes me sad that our motivations are so misunderstood. In my experience, if you ask expats why they moved to Doha, Education City employees are pretty much the only group who, on the whole, give answers other than "For the money." Still, it's not terribly upsetting to me that Qataris would think we're just here for the money. There is, I think, equal concern from our side that Qatari society is treating education like a commodity that can be bought for a high enough price. If Education City is really some weird sort of intellectual prostitution, I think both parties are guilty of participating.

I'm far more concerned about the charge of "corrupting us," both because it's more sinister and because, in some ways, it's closer to the truth. Socrates, after all, was executed for "corrupting the youth" because he challenged the young people of Athens to think critically about their beliefs and not automatically buy into the worldview that surrounded them. Aren't the American universities in Qatar similarly challenging traditional thinking here?

Folks at Education City rarely say they came here for the money. But I have heard us saying that we are here to provide good education in the Middle East, to offer more opportunities to Qatari women, to increase understanding between Western and Muslim cultures, and so on. These motivations are not value-free, and they all involve changing the way that people think. That's what education does, after all. Does this count as corruption?

Is exporting Western-style education to the Muslim world inherently culturally imperialistic? Or can traditional, Muslim values and thinking be reconciled with a Western-style education?

I'm particularly interested to hear the thoughts of people here in Qatar. (Hey CMU-Q students, I know you're reading this! Leave a comment! I don't mind if it's anonymous! :-) If Education City is seen as "corrupting" Qataris, what does that mean exactly? And is that what's really happening?

There's an active Satha Sai Baba group here in Doha. Who'd have thunk it?

I'd never heard of Satha Sai Baba before. He definitely gets my vote for Best Swami Afro Ever. (The higher the hair, the closer to Shiva-Shakti?)

That's what the sign on the Coke dispenser in my hotel says. Do they imagine scores of people going to the soda machine with the intention of damaging or abusing it, but then being dissuaded by a polite message from the Coca-Cola company?

We Americans post very strange signs. "Caution: Automatic Door" has been getting to me. Why do I need to be cautious of automatic doors? What are they likely to do to me?

We do indeed live in a low-context society.