Every teen girl should have someone who looks like her in literature. That’s why I wrote a Christian romance as my first novel attempt and why Love from A to Z by S. K. Ali is interesting to me. What does a Muslim girl in America want to read? A story about a trip to Qatar where she meets a cute boy? It was interesting to me to compare the values I put into my juvenile novel (belief, health, and education) with the values S. K. Ali put into her more professional one (behavior, peace, and justice).
The second book I read about Qatar was The Away Game by Sebastian Abbot. I learned so much about what makes a soccer player great and the investment Qatar is putting into African soccer players. If you watch the World Cup in November, you will be seeing more of Qatar. In the meantime, I recommend The Away Game or you can see an interview with Sebastian Abbot here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMEvBm6GfMY
The third piece of literature I enjoyed from Qatar is fun story about a businessman who traded in cats. Words Without Borders has this and many more: https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2020-02/february-2020-qatari-folktales-the-sunni-and-his-friend-tariq-ahmed/
After all that reading, you know I had to eat! Vonnett and Kevin indulged me while I made four pots of tea, one for each of the recommended spices to try: cinnamon, ginger, cloves, and saffron (thank you Kristen for the lovely gift of saffron – I am still enjoying it). We tried each separately, and then combined them. The tea was delicious! I had already soaked the wheat overnight for the harees and it takes two hours to cook with the chicken so we had plenty of time to enjoy the tea and prep the dessert. Once the harees was done, we served it with dolmas and pita bread (there are recipes in the link, but the Arabic market has perfectly good ones). Then we did the final assembly of the toasted bread, rose water syrup, whipped cream, and pistachios - it was so good! https://www.internationalcuisine.com/about-food-and-culture-of-qatar/
If you want to learn more about food in Qatar, see this video by Mr. Q: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHxs-6LSefM. Mr. Q describes himself as your friendly neighborhood Qatari and makes videos explaining Qatar. You can see his TEDx talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9b2x3ocakE
Besides soccer and food, Qatar is known for camel racing using robot jockeys and dog racing using Salukis, which have great racing endurance. Here are a few videos on the subject:
· This camel racing video is part of a series by a young woman living in Qatar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYDL-FGZoIw
· The Saluki racing videos from Qatar didn’t have the explanations this video did, so I chose it instead: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuXFxy2x2IM
· If you have been inspired to raise a Saluki, there are clubs in both Los Angeles and San Francisco with a show coming up in Lodi on October 8 and 9, 2022. Here are some things you would want to know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lWvfkq2mCw
The news outlet Al Jazeera is headquartered in Qatar and is named after the Qatar Peninsula. I have already made it a habit to scan through the websites of various news agencies in the United States to get a variety of perspectives. I have appreciated the news from Al Jazeera this week and I need to add it to my regular rotation: https://www.aljazeera.com/
I found this interview with the Qatari-American artist Sophia Al-Maria interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHLXsTRHzF0
And yes, this next video is from Qatar Airways, so there are a lot of plane shots, but I appreciate the music and the views of what we might see in Qatar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkKm3p_9AYk
There are many things to do in Qatar as illustrated by their tourism page: https://www.visitqatar.qa/intl-en/things-to-do/art-culture. I would love to go! I look forward to that time when we can travel broadly again. In the meantime, I’m hoping we all survive, thrive, recognize our mutual humanity, learn to deal with our conflicts, and allow peace, health, and safety to flourish in Qatar and throughout the world.
Photo credit: Florian Wehde https://unsplash.com/photos/Do6yoytec5E
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