Qatar lives the dream
30th April 2011
Fa'ad eases the Landcruiser to the base of the sand dune, settles his ample frame deeper into the seat, then plants his foot. We bucket up the dune's brow, tyres scrabbling for purchase in the soft sand, the vehicle pitching like a fairground ride. Sylvia is rigid beside me, arms gripping her seat in terror. For the first time all day Fa'ad grips the steering wheel with more than two fingers as he wrestles to keep control. It seems a petrol head in Qatar is much like a petrol head in Mid-Canterbury, even though he is dressed in what looks like a full length nightie and a veil.
At the top of the dune we fishtail to a halt, Fa'ad stabbing a chubby finger to the horizon. His commentary is brief but eloquent: “there Saudi Arabia, you make photo.”
We wobble from the vehicle into a blast furnace and make photo. 'There' is a landscape of sand stretching towards a shimmering horizon. Beneath us a tidal inlet cherishes a film of briny water and off to our right huddles an oasis of cellphone towers.
On this sand dune, just an hour from downtown Doha, Qatar reverts to form; a small scab of sand jutting uncertainly into the Persian Gulf, home to a few thousand Bedouin, their tents and camels, a cluster of date palms. With a long but meagre history, few could have predicted Qatar's transformation two or three generations ago. But it turned out that these dreadful sand dunes are the skin of a rice pudding. Beneath the surface is an almost limitless wealth of oil and gas.
We clamber back aboard the Landcruiser and Fa'ad rolls us down to a small beach camp. The Gulf submits to the midday heat, its salt-laden water oily and exhausted where it laps the beach. Doha's towers shimmer on a hazy horizon.
Qatar, like neighbouring Dubai, appears to be recreating itself as a theme park. Doha, the capital – and only – city is a frenzy of pulling down and building up. Freshly minted motorways snake among canyons of skyscrapers where a decade ago was only bare ground. Any one of these buildings would cause a sensation in New Zealand. Here they are hurled skyward by the dozen; wild, whacky, outrageous buildings, without rules or restrictions; 30, 40, 50 storeys tall.
I'm told many of these towers – office blocks, hotels, apartments – remain empty or only sparsely occupied for months or years after completion. They are more icon than real estate, their job is to inspire confidence in the vision of Qatar's rulers.
The vision is serious and it works. This is not the hawking, spitting, haggling, thronging, ferocious and fetid Middle East of my previous experience. It is self-consciously elegant, well-mannered and ambitious. All the world comes here: statesmen and sports stars, financiers and fashionistas. Billboards trumpeting Qatar's ambition to be the sports capital of the world, the cultural capital of the world or the airline hub of the world, are more than hollow rhetoric. Anybody who had previously failed to notice sat up and paid attention when FIFA awarded Qatar the rights to host the soccer World Cup.
The achievement is all the more remarkable considering Qatar has been a country for only 40 years and has a population of just 1.6 million. The human story intrigues when you consider that less than a quarter of the population is Qatari. The rest are expatriates who floated in on the gold rush, mostly from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.
These are the men who construct buildings, sweep roads, open doors, and the women who feed babies and wash laundry. They form a shifting, subdued underclass, firmly held in place by a visa system that allows them only a toehold. Fa'ad, has no hope of becoming a Qatar citizen despite being born here because his family comes from Palestine.
Just as Asia supplies the muscle, other nationalities, mainly European, furnish the brains. These include kiwis, like our friends who work in education, engineering and trade. They acknowledge the contradictions. As one said to me the other night, “here I earn twice as much, enjoy twice the comfort and have half the control.”
It is a compromise they seem to bear. For the price of being an outsider they enjoy tax free salaries, five star accommodation with maids, golf courses that rival St Andrews and Michelin-rated restaurants. Oh, and joy riding with Fa'ad.
Qatar has so far remained untouched by the political unrest among its near neighbours. There is no more freedom here than in Egypt or Tunisia but its rulers, shrewd judges of human nature, have spread the wealth enough to dampen any latent desire for democracy.
How long this will remain so is unclear, but Qatar's future will be determined not by fabulous wealth or outrageous buildings, but by its human story – just like anywhere else.
