Prologue

Hello, my name is Rowena and I am a middle-aged school teacher from a small town in Yorkshire.  Nothing too exciting there but perhaps you should read on. Being fed-up of with filling the fertile minds of my students with a bunch of moral rubbish, a programme of studies foisted upon me by my school-board, the very same board that practiced nepotism, corruption and harassment, on a whim, I quit my job after 30 years of teaching.  What a sense of relief and well-being.  I had demonstrated to my friends and foes...the world....my moral integrity.  Yes, I was above other mortals, I was able to stand up for my beliefs and put my money where my mouth was.  Wait!  Back up a minute there...did I say money?  And what about money?  What would I live on now?

The answer came in an email from a childhood mate living and working in the Middle East.  “Why not come and teach in Doha?  You’ll love it here.  There’s plenty to do, many interesting people to meet and the money is good.”  And on another whim, that’s just what I did...I found a teaching position in a British school and set off for Doha.  Gossips back home suggested that I was inspired by the book, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ and was looking to find my inner soul surrounded by ancient Middle Eastern philosophy.  My answer to that would be:  Never read the book, fell asleep from sheer boredom during the movie on my British Airways flight from Heathrow to Doha, and I am far too pragmatic and unimaginative for anything like that.  No chances were that I entirely needed the money and was just plain bored with my life as it was back home.  I had been to the Middle East before, having friends and family in the Gulf region, and had envisioned few surprises.

But there were surprises, plenty of them and a great deal of food for thought.  Living in Doha is like Miss Marple living in a ‘virtual’ soap opera, observing but not being observed. If I had been a doctorate student, I think that Doha would be the perfect place for a thesis on ‘radical changes and transformations that take place in an ex-pat’s values and life-style from the moment he/she sets foot in his/her new ‘home’land.’ Doha resembles a giant fishbowl of humanity where the glass magnifies and reflects the virtues and vices of its occupants; such virtues as friendship, generosity and kindness and such vices as greed, corruption, bribery, cruelty, violence, fear and sex...oh yes, plenty of sex.  The following are the stories of those people that I, the middle-aged school teacher from Yorkshire, Ms. Rowena, had the opportunity to observe during my stay in Doha.  The names have been changed and certain facts may have been modified to protect the innocent or perhaps not so innocent but the stories are real...oh so very real!  One wonders; was Golding so off his mark in ‘Lord of the Flies’?