People still associate the Middle East with terrorism — the kind of danger that has people strapping bombs to their chests or cars. This week in Qatar started with a stark reminder that the everyday dangers are equally deadly.
The building boom around the Arabian Gulf has raised a lot of eyebrows. People often murmur questions about building codes, quality of materials, and emergency response infrastructure. I was at one of the country’s biggest malls two years ago, while 8 months pregnant, when a cafe kitchen started spewing fumes. At another mall a few years prior to this, a department store went up in flames, singeing other retailers nearby. One of the high rise towers were many friends live caught on fire, burning out the garbage chute and sending everyone to temporary housing for several months.
This is why when my students said to me on Monday, “Villaggio is on fire,” none of us expected what came next. A fire (causes still largely unknown) claimed the lives of thirteen children, fire fighters and teachers on Monday. The fourteen people reported killed in the fire is a staggering loss to a country known for safety. The community reeled in shock as the photos and videos of plumes of smoke went around the social media sites and onto people’s Blackberry display pictures.
Yesterday several vigils were held in solidarity with the families — one couple lost their triplets — who were grappling with the realization that the morning’s nursery drop off was anything but routine.
Stories flooded the message boards from other parents who had intended to send their children to that same nursery but hadn’t, others asking when the mall would be reopened, and the grief poured in on all sides. In a show of unity, the Twitter community was circulating the hashtag #onecommunitydoha, #oneunitedqatar in solidarity with the families.
The fire has struck a cord on both the emotional and governmental level. Needless to say, there are many issues that this tragedy has exposed: fire safety awareness, materials in construction, equipment used by firemen. And the rumor mill is busy at work as well.
For now, for a moment, we pause and remember that life is only as important as the perspective from which we view it. We mourn with those who lost loved ones. And with the memory of the fragility of life, cling to those whom we are fortunate enough to have in our lives.
The Emir of Qatar in prayer
Display picture image from Blackberry profile, asking for God's protection of Qatar
I’ve been blogging for a few years: I’ve been Indian my whole life. Most of the early part of this life, (as you’ll learn from reading parts of FROM DUNES TO DIOR, my latest release), was spent in America.
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 28: Fireworks streak by the Statue of Liberty in celebration of the anniversary of the dedication of the Statue of Liberty on October 28, 2011 in New York City. (Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
On most days, I dress and sound like an American. “I’d think you were white if I couldn’t see you,” a friend joked last week over dinner.
I forget that the Internet doesn’t know all this. The Internet, the oft touted vehicle of democracy, has another side. Only this one makes it easy for people to jump to divisive conclusions.
My avatar is of a smiling brown faced woman. Put that together with the name, either Mohana Phongsavan (married) or Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar (maiden) and this is what you get from someone who only knows me through my online presence: oh i just realized from her name that English may not be her native language.
This was in an email, about, but clearly not intended, for me. The email gremlins (jinns in the Middle East) made sure it didn’t reach the person for whom it was intended.
Needless to say, I was less than thrilled. Especially since the piece of writing she was judging me for was better than most of the other people who had posted on a certain topic.
I slept on the email because I didn’t want fatigue to taint my fury. The next morning, I was no longer angry. But I didn’t want to be pushed around. For the last year I’ve been standing up for myself in various ways and I added my reply to her onto my list of assertive moments.
Here’s my reply:
Sorry, what exactly was reflective of a non native speaker of English in that preview?
By the way, I am a US citizen, lived there since I was 5, and have a Phd from the University of Florida. None of which apparently didn’t train me enough for your high giveaway standards.
Are you always so charming or is it just people with foreign names who experience your best?
She wrote back, swiftly, and apologetically, in the style of most politicians:
I owe you a huge apology….. This email was meant for someone else and I had just harangued her for her bad grammar and spelling so when i saw the errors in that paragraph I couldnt resist pointing them out to her, so it was meant in more of a joking way, nevertheless, I do not know who wrote the intro to that post and I apologize making the assumption that it was you. Trust me we do not have high standards for our giveaways, (as is apparent in the intro post) and we are continually making errors. I take full responsibility for this email and hope it will not reflect poorly on XXXX.
Was she really apologizing or was she more concerned about reflecting badly on her business partner?
Official photographic portrait of US President Barack Obama (born 4 August 1961; assumed office 20 January 2009) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I’ve no idea. But in either case, I shouldn’t complain. What else can you expect in a country where people still disparage a sitting president for everything from his nation of origin to his father’s religion? For a nation started by those fleeing religious persecution, and then built by immigrants from all walks of life, from all over the world, life in the famed ‘melting pot’ proves less than cordial.
“Jen” (no, I’m not making that up, that’s her name, as bland as vanilla) reminded me we still have a lot to work on.
July 2012 will mark seven years that I have lived in Qatar. Seven consecutive years is my record with only three other cities in the world. Doha joins a short list which includes Gainesville, Florida and Raleigh, North Carolina.
My formative years in American suburbia had erased most traces of my parents’ sub-continental pronunciation in my own speech. My “h” was “h”; not the “heche” of my parents. I was American in sight and sound. However, on the inside, I was still Indian. By looking at me, you couldn’t sense there was a war being waged on the inside. To the outside world, identity was measured by clothing and speech—having an established Western orientation in both cases, I was regarded as one of the crowd by my white, Southern classmates. On these counts I failed both tests and was eyed with suspicion by the other housewives at my mother’s parties. But blue jeans and flat vowels never hinted at the inner world of my family or what happened when the front door closed on our home.
Inside life was governed by the same principles that had ruled my mother’s teenage years in Chennai, India. No movies after seven p.m. In fact, no women outside the house after dark, not for football games, parties, or sleepovers.
Like so many of the “American Born Confused Desi generation,” referred amongst ourselves as the ABCD generation, I was a socially emaciated, well-behaved Indian daughter who railed at endless parental restrictions. The split identity meant non-relatives never saw all of me. They only knew “white” me. Meanwhile my immediate family thought they might lose me to the outside world, so they mounted an “it’s better in India” campaign to override my resistance and
North America (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
suspicious of inferiority with reasons for our cultural superiority.
“A better maths education,” was one of my father’s favorite refrains as I remained confounded by geometry.
“No child shows an over-dependence on calculators,” he would say throwing up his hands on yet another weekend when I failed to solve one of his problem sets…
Respect for elders – children taking care of their aging parents – more of it in India.
“Marriage as a commitment.”
My mother wouldn’t say more but implied where a boy and girl learn to love rather than fall into it is taken more seriously in India.
I didn’t ask the obvious question, although it hammered in my brain; If everything is better there, what are we doing here? I didn’t dare. Partly out of fear of my father, but also partly out of fear there would be no answer.
What if the secret behind our semi-nomadic life had no greater answer than my father’s wanderlust? What if a series of pharmacology grants was the single red line on the map leading us from a veterinary program in South India to a series of North American institutions?
I continued to play these two parts simultaneously; intensely outgoing and enthusiastic – “American” – and constantly communicating with my parents – “Indian.” I didn’t find the bridge that spanned the outside/inside gap until later, after college and graduate school, when my own desires for professional fulfillment and monetary rewards led me to move several times. This realization emerged slowly as pieces of a scattered puzzle – from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Washington, D.C. – as I met more of my generation, children of immigrant parents from all over the world, juggling these competing demands. Then, for the second time in my life, globalization entered stage left, having already taken me as a small child with my adventurous father and sheltered mother from Chennai, India onto and all over the North American continent.
This time I traveled alone, east, not west, ending up four hours from my birthplace. I landed in the Arabian Gulf, thousands of miles from my upbringing in North America, and in an ironic twist, closer to the extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins, than any of my immediate family. Situated in Qatar, I found myself in a region often described as a human rights quagmire for migrant South Asian workers. The questions from my young adult years resurfaced within the minutiae of life in the Gulf. Their return disturbed my temporarily coalesced identity. Familiar, opposing pressures reappeared – the tension between an outside/public life and the inside/private one, the contradiction between physical appearance and personal affiliation – and my newly gathered reflection erupted like a cracked mirror, splintered pieces flying in all directions.
The splinters of being South Asian American in an Arab country and the echoes of my teenage angst are the stories I tell in From Dunes to Dior which will be soon be released as an e-book on Amazon.com. You’ll see some of the contrasts in Qatar in the book trailer.
In the meantime, enjoy one of my other four ebooks – on everything from modern motherhood to how to get started as a writer. The best part is they are ALL free to download until May 16, 2012. Drop me a line (or a review) and let me know what you thought about any or all of them. Happy reading!
