Doha Qatar Car Bomb

So it is likely you have heard about Qatar's first terrorist car bomb this last weekend. I’ve been meaning to write about it for awhile but things have been popping up this week so I haven’t been able to give it justice. Now it’s Friday night over here so I thought I would finally sit down and write out what happened from my perspective.

I heard the bomb go off when I was actually walking back to my building as Kara drove to the airport to pick up Danna who is a friend of ours. We were running late so I asked her to drop me off a block away from our building. So while I was on my random walk home I heard a definite boom. It wasn’t like an earsplitting explosion but a solid noise. My first thought was a car bomb. I then thought no way this is Doha, it's probably a construction accident. I guess I felt incompetence was much more of a danger here then terrorists were.

Well as you probably know by now it was a bomb and not an accident. From what I understand the terrorist was an Egyptian man who lived in Doha for 15 years. He had a steady job, a wife and two children. He was a computer programmer for Qatar Petroleum and on most accounts was an average upper middle class family man. His wife was reported to say that he was a devout Muslim and never imagined that he would do something like this. In the Muslim culture men are the ones who primarily go to the mosque while the wife stays at home. It is not surprising that she did not know what was happening. I want to be clear, I see terrorists as a very small subset of the Muslim community. Much in the same way the KKK is a small subset of the Christian community. He could have also been part of a sleeper cell this whole time. All I can really do is speculate so I won’t say anymore about it.

Life in Doha has changed or at least the attitude in the expatriate community has. The security has been stepped up at the building we live in and all of the compounds. The security at education city is no longer a joke. I got to see my first car bomb detector and they are not allowing anybody to park under the building I work in. We also have a full time police officer watching our parking lot. We went to church today after much talking and praying. One of the other churches in Doha is actually not meeting for a while. This past week the government knocked on the doors of our church and pretty much said we are going to protect you. From what I heard it wasn’t up for debate not that there would have been any protest if it was. I don’t want to give out too many details except we now have concrete blocks located around the existing concrete wall that encloses our building. They’ve also taken several other measures for our protection. It’s a great thing that they took the effort to protect us. I see it partly as God working in this area. On a secular level you could argue that having a church full of westerners is better then having a bombed church full of westerners.

I don’t know how to explain it, for the most part everything is the same but it seems like Doha lost its "innocence". I think what we saw was a definite turn in the history of this country. This is the first time something like this has happened here. We can no longer laugh about being in the Middle East because we know what connotations it carries compared to the actual reality. We never really thought of Doha as the "Middle East". In contrast to last week I spent most of the church service today scanning the exits to see what would the quickest way be out if a car came through the wall. I also thought about which outside wall was the most likely to be hit. When a car went roaring by I tensed up some. The car that hit the theatre raced into it before exploding. This maybe residual paranoia but in the end I think it’s somewhat helpful. I feel like it’s good to be alert / scared but you can’t let it control you. I’ve done a lot of praying for protection in the past 6 days. In the end I know prayer is the reason we didn’t have an incident today. Concrete barriers are nice, but nothing man can do is full proof.

Below are a couple of links to different news stories about the bomb in case you have not read any yet.

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/March/middleeast_March615.xml§ion=middleeast&col

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/March/middleeast_March618.xml§ion=middleeast&col

http://www.forbes.com/home/energy/2005/03/25/cz_0325oxan_qatarattack.html

http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticle.asp?xfile=data/middleeast/2005/March/middleeast_March705.xml§ion=middleeast

These aren’t exactly the most comforting articles but they are not meant to scare our family or friends either. It’s just an account of what we are reading over here. I hope all is well with everybody.

Jumpy, who’s jumpy?

Well this morning I had a fun little incident that I would like to share. As you may have picked up by now I drive a rather old vehicle that has more character then actual value. Well as I do every morning I went down stairs to my basement parking lot and got into what I affectionately call “The Beast”. As I turned the ignition the motor started turning and BAMMM!!! it backfired. When a car backfire’s it’s pretty loud but added to the enclosed parking it sounded like a bomb went off.

After the sound of the bomb I mean back fire I heard a guy in the garage yell “S***” and duck below the car next to him. I think he chose the fall on your face approach as apposed to the tuck and roll because his torso was hidden while his briefcase still hung in the air. Apparently the sound of my trucks ignition and then a backfire brought back conversations of “You’re going to get blown up over there” to this guy.

Well I got out of my truck and walked over to see if he was OK. He first asked me if I was OK, apparently thinking the car bomb was a dud. I just smiled and told him that it was just a back fire. He just laughed and admitted that he needed to sit down for a second. He ended up to be OK so I laughed and told him good morning and we both went to work.

That’s my funny story for the week.

My Bah Tah Thas

And this is how you say "In the name of God" (Bismillah)

I have recently started taking Arabic classes at the local QCPI (Qatar Center for the Presentation of Islam). They offer free classes in Arabic with the intent of converting you to Islam. Most expats in Doha understand this concept and many won’t take the classes because of it. My thoughts were that I am strong enough in my faith that this should not be an issue. It is a great chance to interact with some locals and get my whiteness on. With that said one of the reasons I’m comfortable about taking the class is because I’m taking it with two of my friends from church and we are keeping each other accountable.

During the first set of classes we are simply learning the alphabet. At the end we should be able to read and write classical and modern Arabic. That doesn’t mean we will know what it is saying we will just be able to read it. It will be like reading Spanish. You can make out the words for the most part but that doesn’t mean you know what you are saying. Our instructor is pretty humorous but they seem pretty squared away in the structure. They are teaching us the fundamentals (Yeah I get it, fundamentals) from the ground up. At the end of the class they will teach us a couple of phrases but it is not the main point of this class. I will keep everyone posted on how it goes.

Fighting the monsters

Last Saturday I got food poisoning and was out of commission for several days. I did a lot of magazine reading but it wasn't as fun as it sounds. I’m not sure what food it was but I have my suspicions. So after missing work from Sunday to half way through Tuesday and feeling hung over for most of the rest of the week I am finally feeling conscious this week.

Car drama finishes its 2nd curtain call

We have wrapped up the latest fender bender without much incident. After dropping the car off with the guy’s uncle cousin who ran into us I wasn’t 100% on how the car would end up. Well all went well and the damage from Kara’s second run in was fixed to. My Sudanese friends held to their word and everything was fixed. After picking up Kara’s X-Trail I got another offer on the beast. The guy’s friend wanted to buy it from me on the spot. I tried to tell them I would like to but I can’t until I buy another car. That didn’t translate so I just told them no.

That’s it for now

Because it's Doha, that's why

Kara and I got to meet some new people today. Well Kara got to meet them first when they rear ended her X-Trail and then I got to meet them when she called me. Kara and I had made plans to eat lunch at A&M around 12:00. When she called me back before she got to the school I had a feeling about what had happened before she said anything. The good news was she was OK, the bad news was I knew this would be another adventure in the land of Qatar bureaucracy and laziness. Bureaucracy of having to jump through a hundred hoops to get a form filled out and laziness of the individuals in charge of filling out such forms doing as much as they can not to have to fill them out.

Well once she called me I headed to where I thought I heard her tell me to go. She called me back in ten minutes asking me where I was and letting me know that the guys who had hit her were telling her that it wasn’t a big deal and she should go. I knew this routine because it had happened to her a month earlier. So I did a u-turn and drove the beast the fastest I’ve ever taken it. In a couple of minutes I was at the roundabout where three guys were standing outside of their truck behind Kara’s X-Trail. Their truck was this small blue Toyota single cab that looked older and more warn down then my beast. I parked on the curb about 2 feet behind where they were standing. I got out and asked them why they were telling my wife to go. Of course this being Qatar we didn’t have a common language between us. They pointed at the dent and said it was small I told them I don’t care, how dare you talk to my wife that way and other things they probably didn’t understand. It turns out that this group was from Sudan and had been living here for eight years. I didn’t get much else out of them but by the slight differences in their dress and attitude it was interesting to see another Arabic subculture.

The first police car finally made it. He took the other guys registration told us to go and drove off. I assumed that he was saying get out of the road and we’ll discuss it. Well he vanished and we drove around the roundabout and we regrouped when we realized that the police had left. One of their friends showed up as an interpreter. I told them it was going to be fixed I don’t care how small. So the police came a 2nd time. When I showed him my registration he wrote it all down, when the other guy showed his he laughed and gave it back to them. At this time the bilingual friend offered my 50QR ($14) to fix the car. I laughed and he then offered 100QR. I told him no way. So we then drove to the police station to file a report. Yes, if you are counting we spoke with two officers and we then had to drive ourselves to the station to file the report.

At the station everyone was having a grand ol’ time. I had tried to call several Arabic speaking friends but couldn’t get a hold of any of them. Luckily Kara was able to contact a friend of hers. I figured by about this time I needed to know what was being decided. So I learned that the other guy was seen at fault and it was agreed that since the damage was so small and probably because he didn’t have insurance and the police officer didn’t want to fill out a form that he was going to pay for it himself. So the next step was to meet him at the auto shop (Shack with some tools) and they would do the repairs. We dropped the X-Trail off and I’ll see tomorrow how this saga ends. Well lets hope that it ends.

Ramadan Kareem!!! (What Kara says when she’s frustrated)