what will keep me here: finding imperfection

In the spring I got a new camera and wrote this. I still hated Doha but I was trying like crazy to find reasons to like it. It’s been a long process of working on liking this new home, by far the longest of any home yet. This may be the first post I’ve written in which I don’t feel like I’m trying to convince myself of something I’m not quite sure I believe.

Since then I’ve been exploring deeper into the junkyards and neighborhoods near our compound, and found sights that are a counterpoint to the rows of identical compound houses where I live and the sleek towers of West Bay. If I go out our back gate and walk a couple of blocks I find a property that doesn’t look quite finished, with a low house and a strip of single rooms on the side of it.  There’s a cage full of what might be pigeons out back and another structure, I’m not sure if it’s a residence or workshop.  In the parking area out front three falcons wearing hoods take their morning sun bath on stands amongst the pickup trucks. Around the corner is a weird log-inspired concrete edging holding in overgrown landscaping.  Walk a little further and there is a junkyard with debris from a stadium that’s being dismantled, some carefully stacked, some in teetering heaps.

This is beauty too, but not the kind that Doha advertises, not the kind I was expecting.  I’m starting to suspect I could make it through another year here after all.  I swore when I came back after last summer that I would not get on another plane unless I was planning to permanently leave this country. Then we went on a vacation over the New Year and while Oman was gorgeous, with mountains and wadis and dolphins, I was surprised to be happy to return to Doha. My superstitious flying self was relieved that the gods had forgotten my vow. 

One of my favorite mornings of the fall (second only to this one), just when my attitude started to turn imperceptibly from I hate this hell that is Doha to maybe oh maybe I could be happy here, was when I drove to an unfamiliar part of town to buy cranberries for my son’s school project.  I went a couple of hours before I knew the store was open so I could leave the car there and go for a walk while the air was still cool.  I turned left out the gate and then right, and soon got a little lost, making turns by whim.  It was an older part of town, with fewer compounds, more shops and narrower, busier streets than where I live.  It was grimier.  There were leaking air conditioners and a demolition site and even though everything was paved over, some green growth had managed to force its way through cracks here and there. It was a relief, somehow, to be somewhere so messy, which gave more sense of history and humanity and, despite the pavement everywhere, nature.

Even more recently I’ve been venturing further into old Doha, within a couple of blocks going from bright new high-rise apartment buildings to warrens between crumbling buildings overgrown with vines and laundry to more crumbling buildings being crushed by an excavator to make room for more high-rises. I go with a friend, we take lots of pictures, hoping to contribute to the record of a Doha that's steadily disappearing.

I don't really care about the shiny skyscrapers that make West Bay look like a futuristic spaceport and I'm fine with the soothing oldnew of Katara and Souq Waqif, but realizing there is ever more to discover in Doha than I'd imagined that grumpy first year is what will keep me happy here.

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Even the dust gives us these wild flaming sunrises.

home-not-home turns real after all

Sometimes it feels like real life is on hold in Expatland. We stay long enough to settle in, long enough to make friends and acquire pets and for the clutter to build up in the house, but I never know for sure that I’ll still be here this time next year. It’s a stopover place, with a final vague intention of finishing up in my home country. It’s not quite real, especially when we don’t have to worry about rent or utilities or school fees or shoveling snow.

I make an effort to describe the mundane parts of it all upon friends in the US who might imagine a more exotic lifestyle than it really is. There are the same daily routines as anywhere else, making breakfast, making sure everyone has what they need for the day, hustling books into bags, shoes onto feet, kids into the car, guessing at which will be the least-clogged route to school. Grocery shopping, laundry, sweeping the floor, wondering if I can squeeze in one more school run without running out of gas.

It’s also true that there’s something special about living abroad. There is always the prospect of the delightfully unexpected. It’s hard to get bored as long as I get out of my house regularly. Problem-solving and errand-running can be more complicated than at home and usually require communication with someone with a different home country and mother tongue as my own, usually several.  With patience, it almost always works out in unexpected and often entertaining ways. Even if it was frustrating in the moment, it will make a hilarious story eventually. 

Most expats I know –both the ones who have lived here for 6+ years and those like us who tend to move more often –work hard to establish a "base" for our families, where the kids feel will always be home, and it's almost always the home region of one of the parents, never the country in which we spend most of our time. It's home here, and it's not either. I get this feeling more strongly in Doha than anywhere else I've lived yet, probably because so many of us are from other countries. 

A man who sang with our international community choir died in the hospital here early this morning after having several heart attacks since yesterday.  It seems all wrong, not only because he was a genuinely kind and caring person and loved to sing and was not old at all, but because the end isn’t supposed to come while we’re abroad. Aren’t we here so we can eventually afford to go home? We're just passing through. This is not where it’s supposed to stop. 

And more than anything else, somehow this brings it back to being like everywhere else after all.

Rest in peace, Melvin Mendoza.