Day Eight

A picture that makes me laugh.  Another toughie, as I decided to go with something more personal than the punny-funny I post on Reader so often.

You jackass of a building.

It was the first full day of last month's two-week Qatar trip.  My colleagues and I were as thrilled with our accommodations as the pauper on his first day in the prince's castle.  I'd forgotten a toothbrush; my other colleagues wanted to sample the local flavor, maybe pick up some snacks for the room and souvenirs for folks back home.  We'd heard from the driver who picked us up at the airport that the buildings nearest our resort (hereinafter referred to as The Zig-Zag Buildings for their delightful design) were a mall, so we decided to take a stroll off of the grounds.  First, we asked if we could reach the Zig-Zag Buildings on foot (Doha don't have a lot of sidewalks, much less crosswalks).  "Yes," we were told.  We asked if the Zig-Zag Buildings were, in fact a mall - "Yes" again.  Five seconds after exiting the resort, the heat began to work on us.  Qatar may be on a peninsula, but it's still a desert country - the water just means it's hot and humid.

We reached the first of the buildings, and it seemed a bit barren.  We went through what appeared to be a rear entrance, and walked until we found ourselves in a lobby that strongly reminded me of the entrance to my father's law firm.  Beginning to have doubts, we asked the security guard at the desk if we could get to the mall by going through the front door into the courtyard between buildings.  "Yes, right through that door," he said.

We emerged into the courtyard to find it, and the low-slung building connecting the Zig-Zags, very definitely still under construction.  Lots of scaffolding, lots of construction dust, hard-hat-bedecked workers staring at us like we'd just teleported in from the U.S.S. Don't-Belong-Here, and very definitely no mall.  Adam began a diatribe against the peculiar social custom of Qatari culture that often precludes the outright denial of a request.  Qatari never say "no," when asked a direct question by those who appear higher-status, even if "no" is the right answer.  They might accept an invitation they have no intention of fulfilling, and fail to show at the appointed time.  They might give you all sorts of directions, when "I don't know" is the truth.  Steph and I approached the situation with a great deal of humor, which exploded into gales of laughter when I saw this on the dusty windows of Zig-Zag Building Two.

It wasn't enough that we were deliberately misled to believe there was a mall here by multiple people; it wasn't enough that we took a ten-minute noontime stroll in the damn desert to experience this defeat; it wasn't enough that we were choking down construction dust-infused oxygen. No, Zig-Zag Buildings had to make sure we knew they were laughing at us for our efforts.  If the building had somehow read "Gotcha," it wouldn't be more appropriate.

(I also just appreciated the irony of completing the assignment with a photograph of a naturally-occurring "LOL.")