My First Days in Qatar

This is the first of few articles that tell about our experience in Doha, Qatar in 2007 during our 6 months stay as a Fulbright scholar. The airplane takes off from Cairo Airport early in the morning heading towards Doha, Qatar. I am alone. My family will follow me in about one week. That will give me a chance to get things straight and ready for their arrival. I am excited about this trip and eager to see what the Gulf is like. I am a little anxious about what to do in case I do not find someone waiting for me at the airport. I have tried to get my address prior to arriving, but was told things will be ready when you arrive.

The plane lands and I feel a little more than the usual sense of urgency from those around me about leaving the plane. The airport looks very small, maybe the size of that in Knoxville. A bus meets the plane and I manage to get on the second bus. As we reach the terminal, things look clean and organized. In a few minutes, I pass the passport control, collect my luggage and exit the terminal hoping to find someone waiting for me. I see someone carrying a picture of me and feel relief. The university sent someone from their external relations to meet me and the department sent an engineer as well. This is a good start. 

The external relations person greets me, points to a driver who will take me to my new home for the next few months, and quickly excuses himself. The other person chats with the driver and I understand that he will follow us to my to-be residence. My driver is an Indian, a Muslim, and speaks English with a heavy accent, but I can still partially understand what he says as we start our drive. Doha, looks like a small city, I cannot see any high risers as we drive. The buildings are mostly white and yellow small buildings. I am a little disappointed, but I know I have seen high risers on the internet; I must be at the wrong side of town. I ask the driver whether he can help when my family arrives in a few days and he says that I have to talk to his boss. 

We arrive to a gated complex. It looks like it is still under construction; at least parts of it look this way. We park the car; a Qatari person approaches me, greeting me and points me towards a 2 story building. My apartment is on the second floor, he says. “I thought I am supposed to live in a villa”, I question. He indicates that I would have to discuss that with QU. He quickly shows me around the apartment, stops at the kitchen and points out few basic items including milk and juice as hospitality items. My luggage is moved to the apartment. By a quick look I do not notice a phone in the apartment, so I ask about it. We submit a request to QTEL, the phone company, and it will be installed in few days. “How about the internet?” I ask. “It will come with the phone since it will be a dial up connection,” he points. I kind of panic a little. I am in a new city without a phone, a car, or internet. What if I have an emergency, or need some food, or just want to see the city? The driver from the university leaves me with a promise to be back by 8 AM to take me to the university. 

The other individual who met me at the airport comes into the picture. I quickly get to know he is an Egyptian who has been working at QU for a few years. He offers to drive me to change currency to Qatari Riyal, buy a cell phone, and have lunch. This is an offer I could not refuse. I had no idea when my next meal will be!We went to a shopping area made up of small stores and entered into a restaurant, Turkey Central, was its name. It did not look fancy, but the food was good and relatively cheap. A plate of grilled meat is around $6 and a large bottler of water is less than $1. No tip is necessary and there is no sales tax. 

For the first time in so many years, I can easily figure out the exact number on the bill, just add up your purchases. Afterwards we went into Al-Sadd Street where several outlets for foreign currency exchange are available. However, they were closed until 4 PM. I learned that many of these stores take a break from 1-3PM or 2-4PM. The exchange took only few minutes, but as I had seen in Egypt, people are so particular about the shape of the dollar bills. They may not accept bills with markings, tears, etc. that you would not notice in the US. Next was a visit to QTEL to get a Hala card that would be inserted into my cell phone. This will allow me to purchase prepaid cards for my cell phone. Since I did not have a residency in Qatar, I was not allowed to get a regular cell phone or land line. The application took only few minutes. I paid a 100 Riyals for my cell phone number and now I am ready for purchasing a cell phone.

My host drives me to Carrefour where I purchased a basic cell phone ($50). I felt relieved. I have a way to contact the outside world. I learned the emergency number in Qatar is 999. The cost per minute for using the cell phone is 55 dirhams/minute (16 Cents/minute). QTEL is a monopoly so it is easy for them to keep the rates that high. This was the first thing that I missed from the states, an open market, where competition works in favor of the consumer. My host drives me back to my apartment. I thanked him for all his help and I am ready to spend my first night in Qatar. 

Things are so quite around me. I think I am alone in the whole apartment building. With no TV or Internet or anyone to talk to, I turn to TV. There were hundreds of channels. Many were Arabic channels, many were European channels. I could not find any American channels that are not ciphered. To my big surprise, as I was going through the TV channels, I noticed some European channels soliciting phone sex with live nudity. It was so obscene; I thought to myself “I have to find a way to block these channels.” How was I going to let my kids flip through the TV channels without knowing what they will see?  This was the second thing I missed from the US: “Parental Control”. Something I did not expect to miss in a Muslim country like Qatar. I was surprised that the government would allow this to happen in a country where almost all the women I saw so far are all covered except for their eyes? Some will even cover their face completely with a black veil. This was one of the first signs of contradiction that I felt in Qatar.

Renting a Car in Qatar

This is the second article that addresses our experience in Doha Qatar during a 6 months visit as a Fulbright scholar.  For the first few days I had a driver that would drive me to the university and back to my apartment. The drive takes only 30 minutes. I tried to familiarize myself with the road by following on a map, but it was hard to find road names. I later came to know that street names were not used in Doha that extensively. People will use land marks to describe the road to a place rather than names of roads. There were many roads that have no names or signs including the one where our apartment complex lies. 

One more thing I noticed is the great number of roundabouts. It looks like a mess. Drivers compete to get into the roundabout and any hesitation will be punished by few honks to encourage you to jump in. I was surprised that I was not really that anxious about driving, I guess it will be like going back to Cairo. I later came to enjoy driving in the roundabouts. It offers some sort of entertainment in the quiet city of Doha!!! 

I have to find a permanent method of transportation around the city to regain my freedom. Doha is not a city with a great public transportation system. I have seen buses going around sparsely, but it seems to be mainly for the non professionals. So the other options for transportation in Doha are Karwa taxis and renting or buying a car. I wanted to weigh my options so I started making few calls to rental companies from the phonebook. I was in for a surprise. I wanted to rent a car for 6 months and hence felt I could a good deal, but the least expensive rental car I could find was the most basic Mitsubishi Lancer. The lease was for little over $500 per month for the 6 months period. “Maybe I should consider buying a used car and selling it in 6 months”, I thought. One of the instructors at QU offered to help me look for a used car and I gladly accepted his offer. 

We started our search for a used car. He drove me around the city in his personal car. I am still not sure of the direction we are moving. These roundabouts can really mess up the sense of direction for new comers to Doha. We visited few dealerships, but the prices are not cheap. A decent car was in the range of 20-30K. I am not ready to spend that much on a car to sell in 6 months. Let us go home I asked Mohamed and he makes a sudden U-turn to go back to the complex, but mid way through the turn, we are shaken by the impact from another car; my first accident in Qatar within 48 hours of arrival. 

A quick check and the humans are OK, so we focus our attention on the property damage. The damage is moderate, but the drivers have to wait for the police. No car can be fixed in Doha without a police report. In less than two hours a policeman arrives, asks few questions of the drivers and fills in paperwork and leaves within 10 minutes. The drivers will have to go later to the police station to collect the report and find out whose fault it is. My colleague insists it is the other driver’s fault; he should have avoided him while making the U-turn. I secretly smile to myself, but say nothing. I decide to call Avis and rent the car, at least I will have some control over my fate while on the streets of Doha. Next day, I am the proud renter of a white Mitsubishi Lancer. A color that proves popular enough in Doha to make finding the car a challenge each time I park it at the University parking lot.

Resturants in Doha, Qatar

The 3rd article describing in more details part of our experience in Qatar during a Fulbright visit for 6 months.

This is one of the harder articles to write although one of the most important ones for those planning to visit Qatar. I am not an expert on restaurants, I am just merely giving our family's experience. If I sound like I am advertising for a restaurant, I am not, we must have just really liked it. To be frank, food is probably the most we enjoyed in Qatar.

Qatar offers a very wide variety of food choices with a wide range of cost. The first restaurant I visited in Doha was Turkey Central on Al Mirqab street, few hours after arriving in Doha. It was not very fancy looking, but I was hungry enough and not that sure about future meals, since I did not have a car at that time. The menu was mostly grilled meats and a mix of middle-eastern salads. My host, Mohammed Alsayed, an engineer at Qatar University proposed a mix of chicken and beef Kabobs and a set of mixed salads including Taboli, Hummus, green salads, yogurt salad and eggplant. The prices were very reasonable less than $6 per person. The aroma of the food as it was being delivered was amazingly delicious. The food itself looked and tasted great. This simple, low cost restaurant became our favorite restaurant during our Fulbright visit to Qatar. We especially enjoyed their chicken kofta sandwiches which consisted of chicken kofta rolled in a pita bread with tomato sauce. Both these were served hot and sizzling, and were extremely appetizing with their savory flavor. There were multiple restaurants that have a much better atmosphere, service and a similar menu, but somehow Turkey central remained the favorite when it comes to taste. So we learned to just order for take away. Across the street was another restaurant, Al Bukhari, we visited once. They are very famous for lintel soup and it is worth the try.

Al-Majlis Al-Arabi

One of the restaurants offering a similar menu, but in a much more elegant ambiance is Almajlis Al-Arabi. It has at least 2 branches, but the one we visited several times was within a very short distance from the landmark Mall, an upscale mall in Doha. The problem was always finding a parking space. Doha has grown so much in a very short time and parking has become a very difficult problem in the whole city, but especially the Malls. After few visits to all these restaurants, we just got a little tired of the same grilled kabob theme. At the recommendation of another Fulbright scholar we decide to give a chance to an Indian restaurant called Caravan.

Caravan restaurant is on a plaza off of Salwa Road. The plaza has different other restaurants including Pizza Hut, Pandarosa and Starbucks. After fighting the parking problem, we venture into the restaurant, the entrance is appealing and an Indian host dressed in western cloth leads us to our table, lights a candle and leads us to the buffet. A large room lined up with between 20 - 30 items of food. The highlight of the buffet, at least for us, is a small whole grilled lamb served on a bed of rice. I tried carving, but did not seem to be that handy with the knives and a server soon came to save me from carving my own fingers. Around the room were other Indian, Thai and even Arabic dishes. Everything looked and tasted just great., but the savory taste of lamb remains etched in our memory. The most popular of the sweets in Doha is Omm-Ali. It seems different countries are fighting on the ownership right of Omm-Ali, but the name supports the Egyptian claim on this delicacy. The buffet was 25 QR per person. I do not believe that this would be less than a $25 buffet in the US.

There are plenty of other smaller restaurants on Salwa road close to the Plaza where Caravan is located. The ones we tried for breakfast were Syrian and Lebanese restaurants selling Falafel, Hummus, Foul (beans), eggplant and other traditional Arabic breakfast delicacies.

Bulhambar Restaurant

The Qatari society is a very closed society. It is very hard to get invited into a Qatari home, but we managed to experience the closest we can get to a Qatari Cuisine in a restaurant on the Corniche overlooking the gulf called Bulhambar. We ventured there without any referrals. It was just a perfect winter afternoon with temperature in the 70's degF. Walking on the Corniche, near the Asian games huge symbol, it is hard to miss that building. It is only few years old, but it is decorated with traditional Qatari rugs and pictures of the old Qatar. This is the first time we have seen workers in a restaurant that were Qataris. The location and authenticity of the environment comes at the price of 100 QR ($35) per person. It is an open buffet. All food has Qatari names that were hard to decipher. The food was very delicious and mostly made up of different types of meat (chicken, lamb, beef, fish) packed within rice and cooked tell extremely tender. The elegantly spiced rice captures all the flavor of the meat. The experience was a great one, but we did not venture there very often.

Although several American restaurant chains such as Pizza Hut, Chilli's, Applebee's, Pandarosa are in Doha, we were not in Qatar long enough to miss the American chain food. Prices in American chains are a bit more expensive than their prices in the US. Starbucks was the only American chain that we have frequented to load up on caffeine. A decent cup of coffee can easily make it to the 25 QR. Famous hotels in Doha including the Sheraton with its unique shape and the Ritz Carlton offer very fancy dining western experiences. I loved the salad bar at the Ritz with the fancy smoked salmon, cocktail shrimp and sushi bar.

It is enough to sum this article by the fact that I have gained 15 pounds in the period I spent in Qatar despite the fact that I was exercising during the same period.

A Summary

When I first talked to my wife about spending time in the Middle East as part of a Fulbright program, Qatar was not the first name that came to our minds. We did not know much about the country. We started looking at our options and researching countries in the region. To our surprise, the name of Qatar was coming once and time again as associated with interesting developments. We started hearing about prestigious US universities opening branches in Qatar, the Asian Games being hosted in Qatar, Qatar aiming to be the Gas Capital of the world and we decided Qatar should be high on our list of choices. Qatar made it as our first choice when I started contacting different universities in the region and the first to respond was the Dean of Engineering in Qatar University at the time, Dr. Nabil Al-Salim. The letter of invitation was very personal and encouraging and I started to feel this would be a place where not only I could make a difference, but I will be welcomed as well.

After the regular proposal writing and screening, I was selected as a Fulbright scholar to the State of Qatar. I made it to Qatar at the beginning of January with a lecturing/research assignment. My plan was to focus on multidisciplinary education and research. My research was to focus on the gas industry being the most important industry in Qatar. I would like to write few thoughts about only those things that invoked extreme feelings in myself and my family. Some of these are listed hereafter,

1. What impressed me the most in Qatar are Qatari women as represented by those I dealt with directly like Dr. Sheikha Al-Misnad and Dr. Sheikha Bint Jabor and those that I did not deal with directly, but whose actions influence the whole country like Her Highness Sheikha Moza. It was a great experience to show my daughter that women in the Arab world are leaders and that modesty and following Islamic traditions does not impede their ability to be effective leaders and innovators. To add to these fine role models, I was happily surprised by the percentage of women choosing engineering as a career in QU. I compared this to the struggle that we have in the US to recruit women into engineering. This is a phenomenon that I hope social scientists in the region will study and it sure is something that Qatar and probably other countries in the Middle East can teach the west.

2. What made me most optimistic are the abundance of opportunities created by the wealth generated from the natural resources in Qatar. Opportunities created by the availability of research dollars for faculty and students seem to be abundant. Programs such as UREP, and NPRP funded by Qatar foundation are new and promising. Companies are sponsoring chair positions as other venues to encourage research and development in Qatar. QU is a melting pot for faculty and staff from many nationalities and educational backgrounds. This makes it in a great position to offer education that is unparalleled in the region. Moreover, if well utilized, these opportunities could create a great culture of research. However, these programs are still new and it will take time for things to fall in place. The lack of graduate school in QU is a big hindrance to establishing a rooted culture in the university and the country. Although QU is mainly a teaching institute, research needs to become an integral part of each faculty’s performance evaluation.

3. The most enjoyable part of my Fulbright experience has been the teaching component. One of the two courses I taught was the automatic control course. As defined in the catalog, the course contents seemed too packed for a one semester course, so it was a challenge to keep the students interested. Balancing a hands-on component with the theoretical component has also been a nice challenge. The students have been respective and enthusiastic. Many have impressed me with their dedication and hard work. The second course, electric circuits, had a different flavor. It is a college requirement and is taught to all majors within the college. The section I taught had mostly chemical and civil engineering students. Electric circuits are usually a tough sell for students from a non electrical engineering major. Motivating the students through examples from everyday life and explaining circuits’ concepts through analogies from other fields such as fluid mechanics seemed to help. As with the first course, students have been interested, enthusiastic and hardworking. I believe that this has been one of the most enriching teaching experiences for me.

4. What surprised me the most was the speed at which things change in Qatar and QU. Most of the changes I have seen were positive, but a process for affecting changes seems more of a choice rather than a must. This was a bit different from what I was used to back in the US where circumventing the process is not usually an option.

5. What disappointed me the most was the accommodation? This seems to be the issue every Fulbright has complained about. I have a long list of issues that would make this article a lot longer than I planned. I have seen the signs of wealth in Qatar in many places, but not in the housing for visiting professors. Bureaucracy is what I have seen the most of when it comes to accommodation.

6. What agitated me the most was driving in Qatar. Although, growing up, I was trained on driving in the busy streets of Cairo; the danger level was always limited in Cairo. Speedy drivers roam the streets of Doha in huge SUVs and cameras and speed tickets do not seem like a big deterrence. My son spent a little time on the internet investigating cars with tickets in Doha. One of the cars he investigated had 7500 QR of traffic tickets in one week. The three Fulbright scholars that visited Doha this year have all had one or more accidents; mine ended up in a broken finger and a run-away driver. This is one of the issues the government of Qatar needs to address.

7. What my family and I wished for was a chance to get to know a Qatari family up close. Although the Qatari colleagues that I have dealt with have been extremely polite and generous, we did not have the chance to visit a Qatari home during our stay in Qatar.

To sum it up, Qatar is not a perfect country, but it sure has the ingredients and momentum to be one of the best countries in the region if not the world. It offers interesting challenges and opportunities. We will miss Doha as we go back to our home in the USA. I will follow up with a series of more detailed articles about our experience in Qatar.

I will continue to write about our experience in Qatar in more details in this blog hoping it will benefit someone as they venture into this area of the world.