Communities form quickly when we are sharing a situation that’s beyond our control. It can happen anywhere but Qatar provides especially rich opportunities. It’s such a common experience in Doha to be expected
to meet bureaucratic requirements, even while having, at best, only a vague idea of
the necessary procedures. It can be so incredibly frustrating to try to navigate
this as an individual or family, but I’ve learned from two recent experiences that it can be surprisingly rewarding to undertake these challenges in a
group of fellow confused people.
Three months ago I boarded a minibus along with fourteen other women, all strangers to one another. We drove through back streets of Doha, following a little sedan holding an officer from the traffic department and
a woman chaperone in the back seat.
One by one the ladies on the bus took a turn in the sedan's driver’s seat,
and drove wherever we were told, hoping to pass our road test and gain some freedom of movement in our adopted city.
My seatmate and I quickly established that we had no
language in common and she went back to talking to others in Arabic and praying
quietly to herself. I had no idea if
there was an order to who was being tested.
Little by little, though, over the next two hours, a camaraderie grew
amongst our small group, first tentative and then truly warm. When my seatmate went to take her place in
the testing car, a woman from Jordan sat down next to me and started telling me
a little of what was going on, about the woman who was testing who had already
failed six times, that there was no order- each person just volunteered when
she was ready, and most reassuring of all, that no one ever knows quite what’s
going on in Qatar.
We all watched the little car in front intently, women
clicking their tongues at errors or chanting "signal, signal," sighing in
commiseration when the route took us through a busy roundabout. One woman came back nearly immediately for
forgetting to put on her seatbelt. Most
that failed were philosophical. One
young woman got on the bus sobbing and everyone rallied round her, listening
and then comforting and encouraging. They wished me good luck as I got up to
take my turn and then welcomed me back with congratulations and questions about
the examiner when I returned, having passed.
Today I drove through dense and unruly traffic with my husband and youngest child to get new
ID cards. This was our second attempt-
last week we left when we saw the line extending out the door and heard rumors
that the machine was broken and that those who had been called had
still not returned.
At first we were just a group of unrelated people filling a room,
dulled by the prospect of hours of tedious waiting for various biometric scans necessary
to issue our new ID cards. Eventually mothers and children spilled out onto the lawn
outside and sat in small family groups. We offered to share our art supplies
with the nearest pair and soon two girls were making us playdough pizzas and
nests full of eggs, with breaks to run in circles as fast as they could before coming back and demanding snacks.
We
reluctantly returned to the crowd inside when our number was nearly up but the
group there had started to loosen up too, with former strangers deep in
conversation. The girls set up their
playdough lab in a corner and reappeared at one point with mouths full of
chocolates given to them by a security guard. By the time we received our new cards, three and a half hours after taking our numbers, we were sharing a laugh about the ridiculousness of the whole affair with others who'd been behind us in the queue and making plans to get the girls together again one day soon.
