Al Wakrah, Qatar
Trip Start
Jun 05, 2006
1
44
Trip End
Ongoing
What I did
The Public Prosecutor's Office
Al Wakrah, Al Wakrah, Qatar
Thursday, December 8, 2011
"I don't understand. The car is parked in the basement of my building. I parked it there myself."
"Will you kindly go and looking just to make for certain it is there? They are telling me the car is in Wakra blocking all the other cars from coming and going. I am giving them your number."
"I know the car is here. My apartment has gates and security and a private parking garage below the building. I parked it here just an hour ago. It's not on a public road and nobody steals anything in this country."
"But they are saying... Will you just check?"
"All right. I'll go look."
At the mention of Wakra the ominous grey storm began rattling the doors and windows. It eliminated the possibility of this being some sort of misunderstanding. That afternoon I had driven through Wakra on my way back from the sand dunes in the south. The town consists of one continuous strip mall built on old fishing village dust particles blowing through the air conditioners of fast food chicken restaurants like imported labor. I did in fact make one stop in Wakra, parking my car for five minutes on the beach while I walked around. It couldn't be that. Parking illegally is like a sport here. It's wasn't even illegal to park on the beach anyhow. The odds of the police spending an afternoon sniffing out the owner of an illegally parked car roughly equated to the odds of them sniffing out anything but lunch. Bona fide crime does not exist in Qatar. Obviously the police were lying to my Indian friend. They just needed my phone number. But why? I looked at the phone, rumbling like thunder on the counter. It was time to find out.
"Hello?" I said.
"Hello," he said. I'm still not aware of the etiquette when receiving a call. I only know not to expect the callers to identify themselves.
"Hello," I said again.
"Hello," he said again. Pause. "I am, ah, Mohammed with Wakra police."
"Hi."
"Ah, do you, ah, have rental car...Honda Civic?"
"Yes, I do."
"Is car, ah, number 86 double-5 31?"
"Yes."
"Did you, ah, drive in Wakra today? 4pm?"
"Yes."
"Oh-kay. We need you come to Wakra police station."
"Is something wrong?"
"Please come to, ah, Wakra station. We, ah, ah, talk then."
"I don't understand. Is there a problem?"
"Just come Wakra station."
"Right now? It's 9pm."
"Yes, ah, my captain, ah says for you come now."
"Will you tell me what's wrong?"
"You know Wakra station? You must come now."
"No, I don't know where it is." I failed to mark that one on my map. "I guess I'll have to find it. I don't understand why you can't tell me what's happened."
"Just come Wakra station. Five minutes and you go."
"Please, can you tell me if I'm in trouble?"
"Big problem. Ah, my English no good. You know Wakra station?"
In Qatar there are no addresses. Giving directions is like taking the GED, you either can or you can't. One must know the city and all the insignificant landmarks built haphazardly along outdated roads. My apartment was off B Ring Road near the Jaidah tower. That was my address. A taxi driver at the airport shared that bit of info three months after I moved there, when he didn't understand my instructions. Receiving mail was a completely different story. Things had been sent to me and some of them had arrived, always on a yet to be identified schedule. One day I received three packages postmarked over a month apart. Maybe the postal service was tidying up that day. And without an address Google does not help much either.
Driving was a task I did my best to avoid. My apartment was within walking distance of my office and the main souk, the two places I spent nearly all of my time. If only because Doha was such an undesirable locale, the traffic was minimal compared to cities like New Delhi or Jakarta. Sitting through three red light cycles was standard during the busy hours, but the city was small enough to navigate relatively easily. Most of the frustration, for me at least, came from the demeanor of the roads. It was a passive aggressive war zone drawn along class divisions. Locals in luxury cars often raced up and down the streets, flashing their headlights at any car in the way. Never mind that all the lanes were full. In contrast, nearly 80% of the population was a foreign, mostly male labor force. Of those foreigners with cars, the habit was to excessively obey certain laws of the road for fear of extreme repercussions. Roadside cameras monitored speed. Red light cameras issued 10,000 riyal tickets (approximately $2740). The roads were full of tension between those driving too fast and those driving unbelievably slow. Finding a middle class route through town was a task of aggression; skirting the slow-goers from my own impatience or dodging the drivers of fast-paced luxury cars because it was their country and nobody knew that better than a Qatari. Other common driving regulations were ignored by all. People frequently turn from outside lanes, cutting off one or two lanes of traffic in the process. Double parking was commonplace. So was parking on the curbs. If there was a code of conduct it remained a mystery to me.
The call had come just as I was sitting down for a late dinner. Tomorrow, Sunday, was the beginning of another work week. I wanted to handle this quickly, soon enough to get much needed rest. I left my dinner on the counter, right there next to that vibrating harbinger of doom, and took a quick shower. I dressed like an accountant, combed my hair like an accountant, and removed the rings from my ears. Whatever the trouble, I knew enough to recognize their decisions would be based on an emotional response to me as a person more than due process. My appearance was critical. With several degrees of reluctance, I turned the key in the ignition and made the trek to Wakra.
On average, the summer temperatures bounced between 45 and 50 °C. For young and old alike, the city came to life at night. Shops, restaurants, parks, and playgrounds were at their busiest after 9pm. So were the roads. My frustration with the traffic, and circumstances in general, increased as I crept closer to the destination; a destination I still needed to find. In Wakra I made a few pointless loops through an area with an official air about it, banking on blind luck to guide me through the small town. Quickly throwing in the towel, I asked directions from a Filipino waitress at a fast food joint. The station was three buildings down on the opposite side of the main road, a busy six lane affair dissecting the town in two. Driving a couple kilometers down the road, I reversed directions in one of the countless roundabouts in the country (the most frequent perpetuators of traffic skirmishes), drove the two kilometers back, and pulled up in front of the station. Two parking places were available, the two spots nearest the front door. One was handicapped parking. The other had a sign in Arabic, blatantly (even to non-Arabic speakers) reserving the space for the head honcho. Now 10pm, I parked in the reserved spot, guessing no senior level Qatari worked past 4pm. Especially not a senior level government employee. I figured I would be in and out anyhow. Sometimes it's easier to believe in myths.
Inside I was directed to a room where a team of five or six junior staff filed papers and typed at computer relics. I arrived in the midst of a heated discussion between several officers, three Arabic men, and a Nepalese guy with a bruised face. The one mid-level officer, a Sudanese man in his mid-40's, asked me to sit in a waiting area in front of the counter. I sat, analyzing each cop with an eye for the most sympathetic to my cause, whatever that cause may be. Without doubt it was Omar, the Sudanese man. The younger police were basically clerks, all in their mid-twenties. Not only were they unable to make any sort of value judgment, their lack of authority among the ranks contributed to an exaggerated sense of authority towards those outside the ranks. When my time came, 30 minutes later, a younger Sudanese clerk sat in front of me at the counter, slouching in preparation for the next story to be told by the next pest. By this time I would talk with anyone who would have me.
"Yes?"
"I was called to come here."
"For a traffic accident?"
"No. I don't know why. They just called and said I needed to come in."
"Give me your ID card."
"I don't have one."
"No ID?"
"Only my passport. I'm on a tourist visa."
"Who called?"
"Mohammed."
"Mohammed Abu al Rahman?"
"Ah, I don't know." He turned me over to Omar, who asked the same questions. I gave the same answers. "Wait one minute, I will find out who called." He left the room. Ten minutes later he returned. "I can't find anyone who called you." Hope peeked in on my thoughts as it often does, just before it's washed away by the changing tides. A pencil thin officer sitting at a desk in the back of the room overheard the discussion. He burst from his chair and pointed at me while speaking frantically to Omar in Arabic. Not good. His superior turned to me, "Did you drive through Wakra today?" I confirmed that I had. He typed my license plate number into the system. "Ah. Oh-kay. Were you in Wakra at 4pm?"
"Ahhh, yeah. I think it was around four." I knew damn well it was four.
"Did you...show, ah, the middle finger to another driver?" Everything fell into place like a row of dominoes tumbling upwards in rewind.
"Ohhhh...yeah. I did," I stated with as much false shame as I could muster.
"Why would you go and do such a thing as show the middle finger?"
Still with utmost shame, "Because I'm stupid. I got angry."
"What did the driver do to cause such anger?"
"I was driving in the left lane and a car raced up behind me." Using both hands like a hula dancer, I portrayed how close he came to my rear bumper. "There were too many cars to switch lanes and I was already going 120."
"What happened next?"
"When I was able to get over he raced by. That's when I...." How do you say flipped the stupid fucker off while sounding penitent?
"That's when you showed the, ah middle finger?" He halfway performed the bird, being careful to keep his ring and index fingers close to the offensive one.
"Yes. Am I in trouble?"
"Please, come around the counter and take a seat. I will talk with the captain." He led me to a chair by the desk of the skinny lad who pointed me out. At my arrival the kid sat upright, authoritarian.
"Give me your ID card," said the youngster.
"I don't have an ID card."
"No ID?"
"Here's my passport." He took it and thumbed through the stamps as if they contained answers to my puzzling existence. "You went to Oman?!"
"Yes. I loved it too. Oman's a beautiful country."
"Where did you go?"
"Only Muscat."
"Did you see the forts?"
"Yeah, the ones on the hilltops." Turned out he was Omani. We quickly became buddies and he let down his swagger while we recounted the glory of his home country. With that settled, he pointed to a phone near the front counter and asked if I wanted to call someone. A revelation struck my brain like a bucket of water to the unconscious. I was now in their custody. From the moment I walked past the counter I was no longer a free man. Nobody knew I was there. I was the only person in the country from my office. The people I work with on a daily basis were not fellow co-workers and I would not call them at 11pm to say that I was in jail. This was a situation I would have to resolve on my own.
"Can I go and move my car? It's not in a good parking spot. I'll leave my passport with you." My question served the practical dilemma of needing to find a legal parking space while testing my limits of freedom.
"Wait. I will go with you in a few minutes." Not very free.
I continued to sit, watching the young officers flopping around in unzipped black boots. Any degree of polish inferred by the cut of their uniforms -- dark blue trousers and light blue collared shirts with black braids at the shoulders -- was lost to the floppy boots. Particularly in the context of a junior policeman's mentality. Regardless of how hard I tried to take these guys seriously, and I'll be honest, I didn't try that hard, the floppy boots negated each attempt. It was like watching The Stooges carry the one nearly functioning stapler from desk to desk.
A few minutes passed. All but the young Sudanese officer were called to another room. By the way they fixed their little beret-like caps and straightened their shirts I assumed they were either meeting with superiors or gathering for prayer. In the absence of police I glanced around the room at the other criminals -- a Qatari who looked to be about twenty, a battered Nepalese guy with dirty, tattered clothes, a bulky man in a pin-striped suit, and another Arab man, roughly the same age as me, with a look of anger and aggression written on his face. We all avoided eye contact. A westerner in his thirties dressed like an accountant was clearly an anomaly, to all parties including me. This was just bizarre.
The officers returned and Omar followed behind. He gave some orders in Arabic and pointed to me before turning to explain. "You will stay here tonight. In the morning you will get to speak to the public prosecutor at about 7am."
"What? I have to stay here?!" I freaked out.
"Yes," said in an of-course-you-are-staying tone of voice.
"Please, is there no other way to settle this? I am from a crude country. It's different here and I'm trying to learn, but it's hard." All sense of dignity went out the window.
"Hold on, I will see what I can do." He left the room again.
After my performance, the man in the pin-striped suit nodded to me. "What did you do?"
"I showed my middle finger." He nodded again, knowingly.
Time ticked onward. Every fifteen or twenty minutes Omar returned to the room to give orders to the underlings or tell me to wait a little longer. An hour passed before he had the verdict. He instructed the officers to check me in. By this time I accepted my fate. The Omani followed me to my car so I could move it to one of the now available legal spaces. He took my belt, phone, and car keys but let me keep my money and my passport. He wrote my name and passport number on a special form and ran a metal detector wand over my body. He then led me around the metal detector framing the hallway to the jail and unlocked a metal door with a square portal and bars set just below eye level.
The jail was a roughly ten meter by ten meter square room with rows of fluorescent light ensuring every grain of dirt was visible day and night. Four cells lined the wall to my left, all were unlocked and served as semi-private rooms. Towels, clothes, blankets, and strips of cardboard were jammed in the bars of each cell to obstruct the ever present artificial light. A quick scan of the room was enough to see that all the cells were occupied. Three Nepalese shared one cell. Two older Arabs, the presiding alphas, each had a cell to themselves. Two other Arab men shared the last cell. A woven mat filled the center of the room. The bathroom was a small rectangular closet built into the far wall opposite the rear cell. A basin with four metal taps lined the wall between the bathroom and the back cell like a tile cattle trough. A pile of sleeping pads and blankets were stacked in the corner to the right of the door next to the only vacant wall. A radio in one of the cells blasted 1990's American R&B. I couldn't decide if it was someone's idea of a mix tape or someone's idea of a radio station.
I stood just inside the door and stared blankly at the surroundings, no longer freaked, just stunned. I was in jail for extending my middle finger. The others did their best not to stare back. Now midnight, sleep seemed like the best thing going. The pads and blankets looked like a pile of debris gathered from one of Qatar's many condemned buildings after the residents abandoned ship. I removed my accountant's shoes, lay down on a discolored sleeping pad, and covered my eyes with a blanket that smelled of cigarettes and the 500 previous occupants.
Sleep might have been an option, even with a brain spinning tales of what was yet to come. A simple fine? Deportation? More time in jail? Would I lose my job if they kicked me out of the country or held me for too long? Did I care if they kicked me out of the country and I lost my job? None of the officers gave a hint of the possible repercussions. Sleep might have been an option. I was exhausted and the R Kelly song could have been an excessively loud lullaby -- but the two alphas were playing cards, slapping them down on the mat while hee-ing and haw-ing Arabic style. I looked up from my blanket and glared at them both. The one with the potbelly and crooked smile looked back. "Hey, why you here? For drinking?" He motioned an imaginary bottle to his mouth.
"No. I did this," and showed him my middle finger.
"Ahhhh, oh-kay."
"Why are you here?"
"For fucking the lady. I fuck the ladies, the ladyboys...no problem."
"How long do they make you stay for that?"
"I stay for one month." Pointing to his friend, a darker skinned Arab with a shaved head, "He stays for six months."
"Why would you go and show your finger?" asked the man with the longer sentence.
"I don't know." Asking about his crime did not seem like the thing to do. I just pondered the fact that the man with a six month sentence was questioning my morality.
Pot-belly went to his cell to retrieve a Coke from his styrofoam cooler. "You want a Coke?" he asked me.
"No thanks."
Club Nouveau replaced R Kelly on the radio, singing a synthesized version of Bill Withers' Lean On Me. Then it was Annie Lennox.
Through the night, when not kept awake by card playing or music, it was the shower, or tooth-brushing, or nose-blowing, or someone pacing back and forth in the room and talking to himself. The fan in the bathroom sounded jet-propelled. Every time the door opened, mechanical screams bounced around the masonry walls. At 4am, just as things began to wind down, the call to prayer wept in from the one little window set above the basin far beyond head height. One by one the Muslims climbed up from their cells and performed ritual ablutions in the basin, washing their faces, hands and feet, and clearing their noses once again. One by one they took turns doing prayers on a rug set over the mat. Standing, bowing, kneeling, and touching their foreheads to the ground.
An hour later I was called from the cell. I stood, wondering if I had slept during any portion of the night. If so, it was thin and vaporous and barely recognizable as true sleep. Omar motioned for me to sit in front of his desk. He typed the important details from my passport into the system, pecking away at the keyboard with one finger.
"Oh-kay, so tell me what happened yesterday."
"I was driving in the left lane at 120--"
"On Wakra Road?"
"Yes, I was going from Wakra to Doha."
"Oh-kay. You were driving to the north in the fast lane. Wakra Road is three lanes and you were here." He drew the three lanes on a sheet of paper and pointed to the far left lane.
"Yes, the fast lane. A car traveling very fast came up behind me and pulled to within a meter of my bumper."
"Was it a big car?"
"No, maybe a medium-sized sedan. Not big and not small."
"And you were frightened because he was so close?" I saw where he was going with this and I liked it. A lot.
"Yes, very frightened." Quivering.
"And he was flashing his lights?"
"No. No flashing." He pecked the details of my story into the computer as we spoke. "There were too many cars for me to switch lanes so I turned on my headlights so he would see the taillights come on."
"You turned on the lights?"
"Yes, so he could see my taillights."
He read the report from the man who called in the complaint. "Did you touch the brakes?"
"No, I only turned on my lights so he would see the taillights come on." I wasn't going to admit to tapping the brakes just to fuck with the guy.
"Ah, so it was a warning?"
"Yes, he was too close for me to use the brakes."
"Oh-kay."
"So when I was able to switch lanes he raced by and I showed my middle finger." I held up my left hand, without extending that special finger, to show how it was done.
"You showed the, ah, middle finger when he overtook you?"
"Yes."
"And it was with the, ah left hand?" His look suggested it was odd to use the left.
"Yes."
He pecked the tale into his report, stopping to count out the Arabic names of each finger. He couldn't recall the proper name of that special digit. This was not a common case. "What is the name of the middle finger?" he asked one of his subordinates in Arabic. Then typed it in.
"Now why would you show the middle finger?"
"I just lost my temper."
"Is that a nice thing to do? In America is showing the middle finger a nice thing?"
"No, it's not." This is really what it all boiled down to. I couldn't argue that, whether it was nice or not, in America showing the middle finger is like sign language. Vulgar sign language, yes, but legal nonetheless. We have the right to speak freely. In the strict regions of the Arabic world, middle fingers are obscene and obscenity is illegal; much worse than driving like a madman. I was guilty, plain and simple.
"Even people drive that way around me. Sometimes when I am with my family. They honk and wave and flash the lights. But never show the middle finger. You are a grown man." Once chastised in true elementary school fashion, a different officer led me back to the cell with the rest of the dunces. "Have some breakfast," he said. "This will all be handled today and you will be free to go, inshallah." I could have done without the inshallah part of that statement.
Now that it was morning and I was close to leaving, the jail was silent. With the lights on 24 hours and the majority of jail activity happening at night, I realized I was the only person operating on outsider's time. For the tried and true, sleep came during the quiet hours of the day, when the sun was up for the rest of the country. Breakfast was brought in and a few people ate in silence on the mat. The dark-skinned man paced back and forth, talking to himself while he thumbed prayer beads between his fingers. Otherwise, most slept.
At 8am I was brought back out. A group of three Filipino and two Nepalese construction workers were waiting in the hallway. A third Nepalese motorcycle delivery driver was with them. The twenty year-old Qatari kid, guilty of driving without a license, was brought out of the office he was allowed to sleep in. Two by two we were handcuffed to a partner (though The Finger remained free) and led outside to a van by three underling Stooges. One drove, one sat in the passenger's seat and smoked cigarettes with all the windows closed, barred, and covered in black, and the third took a seat in the back with us, reserving a bench seat to himself in order to lay down for a snooze. The driver raced away, hanging g's through the roundabouts and throwing us side to side. Halfway to Doha, dashing my assumption that the prosecutor's office was near the Wakra station and this would be a quick mission, Sleepy Stooge woke up and realized he forgot something. The driver raced back.
In Doha we entered one of the brand new office towers built in a clusterfuck of scattered development called West Bay. We took the slow, busy elevator, stopping at each floor on our way to the 8th. The Three Stooges, flopping in their boots down the faux wood-floored hallway, motioned us to a small waiting room with just enough seats for eight handcuff buddies to sit side-by-side. They closed the door. We waited.
Occasionally Sleepy Stooge checked in on us, smirking like a chihuahua among chained pit bulls. He leered around the room at the Filipino and Nepalese prisoners, just looking for a reason to act the way he was already acting. "Put your feet down! Sit up!" He never looked at the Qatari or me. Satisfied with himself, he left. We waited.
A senior Qatari officer with a clean shave, crisp uniform, and tight boots opened the door. He was Officer Wahib. The Three Stooges stood behind. "So, you guys are the fighters? You, you, you, you, and you? Is he with you? No? Oh-kay. You guys...we will let you work it out on your own. It's between you so handle it yourselves. If you can't work it out then we will have to get involved. But, if you do it again..." He paused for emphasis. "It will be big trouble. Why are you fighting anyways? You are here to work and make money for your families. You are not here to fight. Oh-kay. Who's the guy with the motorcycle? You? Oh-kay, you will see the prosecutor." He then spoke buddy-buddy in Arabic to the young Qatari. "You," pointing at me. "Why did you show the middle finger? You are an adult. Even my youngest boy knows not to show the middle finger. Is it oh-kay to do that in America? No, I know it's not oh-kay. We have training programs with the police in the U.S. and the U.K. In those countries it is much worse. I know. You will see the prosecutor and it will be 500 riyal ($137) for the bail. I suggest you go back to Wakra station and you get the phone number of the man who made the complaint. Call him tomorrow and apologize. Say that you have a family or something and see if he will let it go. That way you can avoid going to court and spending more time with this."
"Okay, thank you." He closed the door. He was the first to give any indication of what I was facing. Relief swept over me. We continued to wait.
The fighters began to work out their dispute. It was the Filipinos versus the Nepalese.
"Why you punch him?”
“He say fuck you to me.”
“His brother say fuck you, not him.”
“I try stop it and he hit me.”
“You hit him first.”
“He say fuck you to me!”
“Who say fuck you?" The volume grew. More aggression.
"Maybe we fight again to end it?" one suggested. They laughed and agreed to squash it.
The door opened. The Stooges un-handcuffed the motorcycle driver, the Qatari, and me. We waited for the elevator as it stopped on every floor before arriving at ours. We loaded and descended to the 4th, stopping again at each floor en route. On the 4th we stood in a row in the hallway outside an office. And waited. Wahib later came by and motioned to one of the Stooges, pointing at his watch. He was getting impatient with their performance. Fifteen minutes ticked by before the unlicensed Qatari driver went in. Thirty seconds later he was done; a minimal fine and he was free. Another five minutes and the Nepalese guy went to explain his accident. On his second stab at driving a motorbike, he swerved across a lane and ran into a car. He was released with no fine. My turn. Wahib joined me. He pointed to a worn spot on the carpet as though it were an 'X’ taped to the stage floor. Appropriately positioned before an old Qatari man sitting at a large wooden desk three meters away, the officer asked, "Did you show the middle finger?"
"Yes, yes I did," bowing my head in shame. The prosecutor shuffled papers and Wahib said, "Oh-kay," and motioned for me to leave. It was done.
The Stooges and the officer went with us back to the 6th, 7th, and 8th floors. Sleepy Stooge put us in handcuffs. Wahib then told him to release the Qatari and me. He followed orders, albeit reluctantly. "Next time, don't go showing the middle finger. Just call and make a complaint. We make no special cases.” He continued, ignoring the fact that he had just given the Qatari and I special treatment, “Qatari, Indian, Filipino, American... All get the same punishment.” I think he even believed it when he said it.
The elevator hesitatingly descended to the ground floor. With the events drawing to a close, I thought of the one persistent question I was asked. Why did I do it? Who knows really? It may have been simple frustration or an accumulation of many frustrations. Maybe it's like the idea of peeking under an abaya or bringing a special lady friend back to my room. Pissing off a local had the added joy of being a forbidden fruit. In a place where the native stalk acts like sacred beings from a dusty, stiflingly hot Eden, common human pleasures were seen as a wicked intrusion; original sins that must be purged lest the fantasy crumble. Though few live up to the fantasy and most of the frivolous laws are rarely enforced, drinking, inappropriately socializing with someone from the opposite sex, wearing shorts or other revealing clothes, cursing, and, yes, making certain gestures towards the wrong person, all are punishable offenses.
Odd things happen when extreme wealth and extreme piety collide. Especially in an emirate where the economy is a gigantic straw sucking resources from the ground. The straw also sucks away creativity, personal growth, and a tangible, boots-on-the-ground awareness of being a fellow human. With no need to work, struggle, or create, a sense of entitlement fills the void. The roads made this idea most apparent, and for me, most annoying.
We piled into the Stoogemobile – three Official Stooges and a ragtag band of Unofficial Stooges. Relief swept through the unofficial ranks. Driver Stooge had the engine running and Passenger Stooge was already smoking. Sleepy Stooge was fully reclined. As the van wheels rolled forward, Sleepy Stooge jumped up nervously. He forgot his cell phone on the 8th floor and needed to go back to retrieve it. We sat in the hot van and waited.
Sitting there, already sweating as the sun baked the idle van, I contemplated all the places I had seen up to that point. All the different countries and cultures; all the ways in which I was now different; how the places changed me or how I changed between places. Had I known from that first solitary step onto foreign turf that the path would ultimately lead to where it led, would I have continued down that path? I like to think so. But I will never know. The decisions were made and there's no going back. Ever.
