Registering the Car

Like in states you are required to register your car with government each year. And like in the states I usually do it 3 to 6 months late. Three weeks ago I decided I was going to dedicate my Saturday morning to taking care of this. I woke up called a friend to find out where this place was, brought a book and made my way over to the industrial area of town and only had to ask for directions once. My destination was the technical inspection center. The process here for cars older then three years is to get a technical and legal inspection on one side of town, then register your car with the traffic department on the other side of town. Since Kara’s car is now three years old this was my first trip to this place. I found it to be surprisingly efficient. The only bottlenecks were caused by me not taking a second to look around at the instructions posted on the wall. I showed up and got a ticket as soon as I drove onto the lot. Sat down and waited for my number to be called. Next I paid the fee, sat down and waited for my number to be called again. Next I got my keys back and drove my car to the line where they do the actual inspection, went back inside and waited for my number to be called again.



Finally my number was called for me to pick up my inspection and luckily I failed both the technical and legal inspection. It was like I was back in school again after a bad exam. Now what? Luckily there are official shady looking guys trained to spot the dazed white kid trying to figure out what the two “FAILED” messages really meant. He told me he would take care of the technical issues across the street. OK, why not, I’ve got nothing better to do with my hard earned code monkey money. I went to this guys shop which consisted of medium size prefab steel building with 0 spare parts. They had a couple of cars sitting to one side, one of them with Texas license plates. It looked like their core competency laid more in their location across the street from the technical inspection site then anything else. For a mere $25 they changed two lights and proclaimed I was good to go.



So I went back and this time I got directed towards the retesting line. I parked my car and you guessed it, sat down and waited for my number to be called again. This time I got my report back with only one FAIL mark. Everyone was telling me to go to the police but I wasn’t sure why. It didn’t matter because at 12:00 they were closed anyways.



The next day I went to the traffic department before work ignoring the fact that I had failed the legal inspection and expecting it to work itself out. Now I don’t actually go into the office because they speak less English then I speak Arabic and have no interest in playing language school. I go to the office across the street and pay a guy from the Sudan $15 to do all the paper work / haggling. As soon as he saw my inspection he told me to go back to the police station on the other side of town to get them to wave the citation. The citation was for having windows with too dark of tint. I guess they can’t just waive it on this side of town. So what’s another week of being late with registration? The next Saturday I made the trip back to the technical inspection center got in line at the police station with all the other cars that had really dark tint. A police officer looked at my report, scribbled something on it and that was it. I’m really not sure of why they fail you on one side and waive it on the other. Either way I made it back to the traffic department. The same guy took my money, showed me a chair and went to go do whatever they do.



The other parts I had uncertainty about but by this point I knew I was home free. That’s where I made my mistake. 10 minutes later the agent I paid $15 to came back and told me I had two fines. One traffic and one with CID (plain clothes cops you really don’t want anything to do with). The first was for running a red light which I had no objections to. I was half way through the intersection and it turned red. No big deal, my fault. The 2nd one was with CID and they had no idea what it was. The agent said for $15 more he would drive over there and take care of it. OK, I don’t speak Arabic and you do, sounds like a good idea. I also gave him some extra money to pay the fine. Two hours later I get a call saying that I need to show up there to take care of this. Nice, if I’m not back by 2:00 call the embassy. So on Sunday morning me and the agent make our way over to the other side of town in the general area of the technical inspection. This whole time I’m wondering what I could have done in my car to warrant this. We get there and after some talking the officer tells me that it’s big trouble and I will have to get my car impounded for 3 to 6 months. Now you really have my attention. Apparently our car had been caught driving around round-a-bouts on two wheels. You say funny, I say that I want to keep my car and I know they don’t play by innocent until proven guilty on this side of the world. They said that I will need to speak with the captain so come back early tomorrow. The thing I found interesting at this point was nobody volunteered any information. I had to pry the details out of the officer about what actually happened.



I get to work and I asked an Arabic speaking colleague about what had happened and if he could go with me tomorrow. He agreed and the next morning we drove back to the police station. After some more talking we were told that we came too late. It was 7:30 AM and we were told 8:00 AM but I knew to not say anything and this was how things were done. My friend gave them his number and asked that they call him when they had more information. My friend was able to get more information this time. Apparently I wasn’t driving on two wheels but I had burned out at a round-a-bout. The date was 12:00 on April 2nd. My emails showed that I was at work at this time and Kara was 9 months pregnant. Good to know. We waited two days and heard nothing so my friend tracked down the number of the guy who issued the ticket. Apparently he was the top guy at CID but that’s a relative term so I will just say that he was somebody wielding a whole lot of influence. When my friend called they told him to come by in person to the traffic department. This was good since it was on our side of town. I’m still confused as to why we had to go to the police department in the first place but it is Doha.



We get there, he talks to the guy’s assistant for a few minutes and then we wait in the waiting area for about 30 minutes. The guy comes out and says “Hallas” (finished) and that was it. No explanation of what happened or why it is being waived. I don’t know if he admitted to making a mistake, didn’t have the time to deal with it or was feeling particularly benevolent that day. As we walked out, we ran into the agent and he asked if it was taken care of. We said yes and he had us follow him to the counter at the registration office. We then walked to a back office, a guy in a uniform signed a form and then I was told to come back at 5:00 where my registration would be complete.



So as quickly as the idea of losing my car for 6 month came, it left. And the task I started two weeks ago was finally done. The great thing about not having a system is there is always a way around it. Now I need to do my car.