Why You Don't Have Qatari Friends

[toorsdenote]

DohaNews just posted a blog entry about Mohana Rajakumar's recent blog entry, Why You Don't Have Qatari Friends: Part One.

It's an interesting question, and one I pondered from time to time during my years in Qatar. Like many expats, I moved abroad with dreams of befriending locals, learning more about their culture and customs, and becoming a part of Qatari society, if only temporarily.

The reality is quite different. In six years in Qatar I made friends with Sudanese, Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Indian, Japanese, Turkish, French, Chinese, Pakistani and Iranian people, but I never made friends with a Qatari.

When we discuss what this phenomenon says about Qatari society, I think we forget something: it's not unique to Qatar. I studied abroad in London for a semester (I know, so exotic) and who did I hang out with? Americans. I lived and studied with Americans and I didn't go to pubs, so I never really met any locals. And that was London, where I spoke the language and knew the culture!

Mohana's right: people with strong roots in an area don't always have room in their social calendar for people who are going to go away again in a year. Certainly I know expats who've broken through this barrier (care to comment, Doug? Is it easier when there aren't a lot of other Westerners around, for example?) but frequently outsiders tend to remain, well, outsiders.

Now I think about it, even the exchange students in my high school often hung out with the other exchange students. Even though they were from different countries, they had something in common with each other that they didn't with us.

All expat parties end like this.

Eventually I reconciled myself to the reality of the situation. Insofar as I became part of a new culture in Qatar, it was not Qatari culture. It was transient expat culture, which has its own unique set of customs and mores. (Rule 37: Every party, whatever its original theme, will evolve into a bhangra party.) And that's fine. You don't have to make a token local friend to prove you're a legit expat.

The more serious question is, what is life like for non-expat immigrants? I'm talking here about the non-Qataris who live in Qatar not for 1- or 3-year contracts but indefinitely. There are a lot of people my age in Qatar who have lived there their whole lives, but who are not Qatari. If the main barrier to making Qatari friends is transience, I'd expect them to have Qatari friends. For the most part, in my experience, they did not. This may, of course, be selection bias: if some long-term immigrants become part of Qatari social circles, well then, they wouldn't be making friends with me. Looking at our students, though, I think that self-segregating by national origin and gender were more the rule than the exception. Walking through the common areas of CMU-Q you'd see groups of South Asian students, groups of Khaleeji students, groups of Egyptian and Palestinian students. You'd also see many mixed groups, but let's not pretend eyebrows weren't raised if a Qatari girl started hanging out with an Indian guy.

For this reason, I took issue with Doha News calling Qatar "a melting pot"; the melting pot analogy describes the ideal (flawed as it may be) of diverse people coming together and forming a common culture. It is debatable whether the US is -- or should be -- a melting pot, but when it comes to Qatar there is no question: it is not, and no one wants it to be. Qataris don't want non-Qataris to assimilate. There are no serious legal mechanisms for these immigrants I'm describing to gain permanent residency, let alone citizenship. So, while in some countries immigrants may become more and more a part of the fabric of society over time, in Qatar they are always held at arm's distance.

Then again, are things different in the US? Look around CMU-Pittsburgh for Korean students. How many of them are hanging out with non-Koreans? Unlike in Qatar, this self-segregation is generally seen as a negative thing, but we can hardly change the fact that newcomers have more in common with each other than with their host culture.

I don't know what our ideal should be. I don't think it's a melting pot. I love wandering through Chinatowns; I love that the butcher in my Jewish neighborhood has a sign out front letting us know what time the sun sets on Friday; I love that when I go to play with Zoe in the JCC I am surrounded by other moms talking to their babies in Japanese, Portuguese and Russian. I do not want American culture to become more homogenous, and am outraged by the xenophobic undercurrent in American politics that leads to things like the backlash against the "ground zero mosque." But at the same time, it makes me a little sad to think that people who might genuinely enjoy each other's company never become friends because they can't overcome the hurdle of cultural differences.

I am very curious to read Part 2 of Mohana's thoughts on not having Qatari friends!

Comments

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

I really don't think transience is the reason. I've lived in Dubai for almost my entire life. (Okay, so that's not Qatar, but it's about as close as you can get.) I went to a university that is probably comparable to CMU-Q in that it had expats and nationals. And university is a place where just about everyone meets new people, even if a number of their friends from high school are still around. I made plenty of friends, many but not all of them of the same nationality as myself, and several of them transient visiting students. But I can't say any nationals became good friends of mine, as opposed to acquaintances. On the other hand, as a graduate student in the United States, while I made plenty of friends who were foreign students like myself, a large majority of my friends were Americans. Admittedly, the comparison is not entirely apples to apples. I speak English as a first language and was surrounded by American culture growing up, making it relatively easy to fit in. But based on what little information I have come across, this is one of hardest regions anywhere for an expatriate to make friends among the local population.

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

I thought you might have something more than me to contribute on this issue. :-)

Why do you think that region is one of the hardest in this regard? Do you think it's because Khaleeji culture is so family-centered that people have built-in support networks and have no need of outsiders? Do you think it's because Khaleeji people look down on people of your ethnicity? What's going on?

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Do you think it's because Khaleeji people look down on people of your ethnicity?
That probably comes into it, but I don't think it's the major reason. There isn't too much mixing between nationals and people of any other nationality, including Americans, Europeans, and other Arab nationals, all of whom are far less likely to experience racism than people of my ethnicity. Doug makes a valid point about activities below, but that still wouldn't explain university experiences, where a common activity could be as simple as sitting down between classes in the student lounge. The first semester I joined university, one observant article in the student newspaper pointed out how students could easily be seen cooperating on projects in the library, but the cafeteria tables were segregated by nationality. Students of various nationalities were meeting, but clearly didn't want to hang out together for fun. And my own observation was that the gap between nationals and expatriates was far larger than the non-trivial one between various national groups.

Even with the activities, you could conceivably meet a national at a (gender-segregated) beach, while sitting down in a coffee shop, while shopping at a boutique, on a desert safari, or in line at the phone company. Most of all, if nationals were eager to meet more expatriates (and to be fair, vice versa), any contact that did develop would quickly expand both sides met each other's friends. As you already know, this just doesn't seem to happen very much.

It is fair for Doug to bring up the number of nationals and foreigners. But if mixing were perfect, you'd still expect 1 in 10 of your friends to be a citizen either in Doha or in Dubai. Say you have little in common with members of the working class on account of income levels and how little you have in common. That would then rise to 1 in 5 or more. Is this even remotely near the actual figure? I think most expatriates here don't so much have one token national friend as they do one token friend who has a national friend.

What's going on?
My suspicion is that government policies have had a major effect here. You're an expatriate who wants to become a citizen? Too bad. You want to marry one? You may need special permission. In the UAE, the government also gives financial incentives to citizens to encourage endogamy. Expatriates are made aware of their impermanence, for instance through short-term visas and by being disallowed from buying land in most (and until recently, all) of the country, which further discourages them from laying down roots. There is a lot of official discourse about how local culture is being threatened by an onslaught of foreigners, and almost none about the cultural benefits of welcoming people from around the world. Even the economic message is mixed; the government clearly wants foreigners to come in and build things up, but ownership rights are restricted.

There is also a spatial element. In the UAE (and Kuwait, from what I hear, and probably elsewhere), expatriates largely live in the center of cities, oftentimes in apartments. Citizens keep moving further into the periphery as these cities grow. Even when you do have citizens for neighbors - and Abu Dhabi, for instance, has suburbs where expatriates simply cannot live except as domestic workers - they are behind the high walls of their villa compound. Low participation in the private sector means even formal interactions on a day-to-day basis are limited. This phenomenon is probably largely cultural, but is supported by governments. The latter often build houses for citizens, but these inevitably end up far from expatriate-dominated downtown apartment blocks.

Sadly, as all of this has developed, both sides have developed serious prejudices regarding the other. You've talked about controversies on Qatar Living before, but I haven't spent time browsing its pages. I can tell you that half the threads on the UAE Community Blog turn into ugly slugfests between nationals and expatriates, who feel at liberty to make hurtful comments about one another, given the relative anonymity of the Internet. Any sort of criticism immediately polarizes almost everyone along the same lines. There is precious little good will on display.

[(Anonymous)]

If all things were equal, 1 in 10 of my friends when I lived in Qatar would have been Qatari. On average. But things aren't equal. Among other things, it wouldn't even be 1 in 10 because of age demographics. Transient workers aren't children or the elderly, but some real percent of Qataris are. Not to mention religious reasons.

Also, if I made only a few friends, then the 1 in 10 figure would not be a good predictor.

As for a solution in Qatar, if you want people to mingle, you need to create circumstances where they can. That means work, leisure, or living. To some degree, Education City accomplishes the first. The third is rather lacking, and to my knowledge, the second is extremely limited.

*doug*

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

I think most expatriates here don't so much have one token national friend as they do one token friend who has a national friend.

Lol, that's so true. I have one of those. :-)

It is fair for Doug to bring up the number of nationals and foreigners. But if mixing were perfect, you'd still expect 1 in 10 of your friends to be a citizen either in Doha or in Dubai.

I thought what he was getting at is that the demographic proportions changes the dynamics. He now lives in Japan and is, AFAIK, the only Westerner in his village. He has American friends in nearby towns, but if he didn't make friends with Japanese people he'd be pretty lonely. When we were in Qatar, in contrast, we might go days without even speaking with a Qatari. It was very easy to make all the friends you needed without putting in the considerable effort that Mohana has to meet and befriend Qataris.

Numbers

[(Anonymous)]

To begin with, we should consider the numbers of Qataris vs the numbers of foreigners. I believe there are relatively few Qataris compared with many other countries, and certainly that has a large impact.

After that, I think it would be illustrative to think about what demographics you are worried about. No doubt different groups of people have different reasons.

Segregated living conditions means expat university employees are unlikely to meet Qatari neighbors. Indeed, university employees' main exposure is at university events.

Live-in maids sure do live in, but they work long hours. And who do they know, anyway? Are those people that they wanna chill with on their day off?

How much of an impact does income have? To some degree, if you make very little money, there are certain classes of activities you won't do because you can't afford to do them, or at least not often, so you can't make friends with people doing them.

More specifically, when I lived in Qatar, and also thinking back on it later, I wondered, "What could I do activity-wise that would give me a chance to meet more Qataris?" For example... Join a soccer club? Go to the bar? Hang out at the mall? Learn to boat? Go scuba diving? Take a cruise on the sand dunes? Participate in the local parade? Visit the art museum? Join a drum circle? Walk around the park and find a game of ultimate frisbee? I don't know what would be good. But what I do know is, in Qatar, I couldn't think of any such activities that would involve me interacting with Qataris (among other people). Surely some exist, but to the degree that they're hard to find, it is inevitable that expats won't make Qatari friends. (Similarly, if those activities don't exist for Qataris, that would make it difficult for Qataris to make Qatari friends, but to a lesser degree).

Which is to say, as far as I could see, there were very few community activities. You can't build a community if you don't have community activities -- this is axiomatic. Unfortunately, I don't know of anyone or any group that's making affirmative steps to change this.

As for phraseology, perhaps we need to stop saying "Qatari society" when we mean "Qatari citizen society". There are a ton of immigrants and expats in Qatar, and they form much of the society found there. So in reality, Marjorie, it's not that you didn't join in Qatari society -- it's that you were part of it, but not part of the citizen half (third, quarter, whatever).

What's this thing about overcoming the hurdle of cultural differences? You lost me there.

*doug*

Re: Numbers

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

The activities point is a really good one that I had not particularly considered. I attributed my lack of Qatari friend-making opportunities to not working or living in close quarters with Qataris. It didn't occur to me that there was also basically no leisure activity I could join that would bring me into contact with Qataris, either. Unless you count people-watching at the mall. :-)

You're also right about Qatari citizen society. Citizens are getting close to 10% of the population now, I think.

Re: overcoming the hurdle of cultural differences, OK that was a little overwrought. Here's what I mean. I understand why this kind of self-segregation happens, and I no longer think it's necessarily a terrible thing. People like to spend time with people they have things in common with; that's just a fact of life, and perhaps it's naive to think life should look like a well-integrated college brochure. On the other hand, I'm not happy to just throw my hands in the air and say "It's fine for the Korean students never to get to know non-Korean students." if your society is set up so that people really only socialize with people of their own ethnicity, then you're setting up a big hurdle for, say, the Ultimate-Frisbee-loving Qataris to get to play with the Ultimate-Frisbee-loving Americans.

So that's not, in retrospect, really a hurdle of cultural DIFFERENCES as much as a hurdle of this self-segregation.

Hmmm, Home-Team

[shmuelisms.livejournal.com]

I think I can rightly take pride in that Israel, probably IS the melting-pot of the world. If in 1948 there were 650,000 Jews here, there are now about 5.8 million. Presently 67% of us Jews were born here. Previously the percentages were reversed with, at times, as much as 80% of the Jewish population being immigrants. While we all share a "religion", the definition/practice of that is pretty loose, and the cultural aspects of the different groups coming together are as varied as you can get.

Obviously, the vast majority of us are NON-transient, but a certain percentage do NOT in fact manage to integrate themselves to a sufficient degree, and return to their country of origin or move on.

My parents, born in the USA, moved here as University students. I was born here. So I'm "sitting" on the line. My long-term observation supports yours - that people DO tend self-segregate, mostly for comfort's sake. The degree that they actually manage to do so, is dependent on the relative size of their group. If they are large enough to be self-sustaining, they'll be more insular. As a child/teen the number of immigrants from the USSR here was very small. So while they stuck together, they were also very much assimilated. With the collapse of the Iron Curtain, over a million people from the FSU moved here. These days we have Russian theaters and fly-in big-name performers directly from Russia! A majority of the Anglos live in rather insular very specific enclaves (some to the extent of creating complete private school-systems taught in English). The French and Spanish speakers are much smaller groups, and so better integrated.

Even WITH what you would think would be "shared" activities, like a simple game of basketball, there are STILL unseen cultural barriers. We Israelis are both very direct and touchy-feely, much less concerned with "personal space". As someone sitting on this particular prickly fence, I can tell you that just *explaining* each side to the other is HARD, let alone asking people to cross that line themselves.

I've seen many types of reaction from immigrants coming to face with the "cultural shock". Sometimes they take a deep breath and dive right in. I know people that I'd never have guessed were themselves non-native. Others recoil and close themselves off all the more. Unless they go all out, this usually has the opposite effect on their kids, who don't really have much choice but to integrate. I have seen families torn apart this way as the parts are hurt by the kids "going native". But as a general rule, they DO adapt very well. So integration DOES almost always happen, it just might take an entire generation.

Doha News

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you for this awesome and thoughtful post! Can you please leave a comment on our Doha News thread so people come back to it? I'll also tweet it.

Thanks again!
Shabina

[dubaiwalla.livejournal.com]

Out of curiosity, why did you choose to make this post as toorsdenote and not as qatar?

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

I was undecided for a while. But my intention was really to retire the qatar account when I left Qatar, not to reserve it for Qatar-related things. This is my blog now.

I been in Australia for 4 years. No oz friends. Not even one

[(Anonymous)]

I'm a Qatari, and I been in Australia for 4 years. No oz friends. Not even one.
All my friends are originally from arab countries, south-Africa, portugal, US, Chinese , Japanese, indonesians, etc

The people in each country are busy with their businesses and got used to a type of living,
For example: qataries spend their free time in (Majlis or diwanya) and foreigners didnt used to stay in such close places ..

And in Australia, people tend to go home after work and just stay home. For me it is different. I can't go home stay there very early. So we used to gather with our multiculture friends in one house and spend sometime till late.

It is a bit hard to make people change to cope with your life or change yours to cope with them.
& it takes long time if it does.

Thx for you all
Jassim

Re: I been in Australia for 4 years. No oz friends. Not even one

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

Oh, interesting. I hadn't thought much about what life is like for Qataris who settle elsewhere.

I think you're right that how different cultures spend leisure time matters a lot. It's the flip side of what Doug said above; we Westerners in Qatar felt that we were doing all sorts of activities after work, while the Qataris disappeared behind those formidable walls of their homes and were never seen again. :-) Are the majalis where you spent time public places, or specific to a certain family or neighborhood?

Re: I been in Australia for 4 years. No oz friends. Not even one

[(Anonymous)]

I suppose it may be possible to befriend people with families, if you give it a go?

*doug*

Forgot to tell you

[(Anonymous)]

I'm jassim again. :)
I also forgot to let you know that I have many non-Qatari friends in Qatar
Oz, NZ, Indians , Pakistanese , Iranians. Lebanese, Egyptians etc...
And they are good friends of mine.
Thx again

[chrisamaphone]

i don't have anything to add, but i appreciate this post and the comments -- turning a lot of this over in the context of my own culture shock.

but i don't exactly expect to make native friends here, what with the language barrier and the fact that even in the U.S. it typically takes me about a year in a new place to make any friends.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting. This is on my mind a lot, since NYC is a microcosm of the world, including its tendencies to clump into separate homogenous parts. :-)

I made more German friends in Amsterdam than in Germany, despite having lived in both countries. In Germany I got an invitation to dinner from a Dutch couple, which I never did in the Netherlands.

Assuming there is no language barrier, I think that the easiest countries in which to break in the Americas... perhaps especially the US and Canada, where there is a large flux of people moving between cities.

I think Latin America tends to be pretty easy too, since local people have no sense of privateness + a positive view of foreigners.

Why do we gravitate towards ourselves?

[mohana rajakumar (from livejournal.com)]

This is such a thoughtful post Marjorie, I don't think I can add anything.

Except that we often enter into situations that have very complex origins - racial groups not mixing for example - and bring to it a limited frame of understanding. You've elided this tendency by reflecting on your study abroad and other experiences where people exhibited similar behavior.

Those memories make me wonder if it isn't basic human laziness that is our common denominator, rather than love? Sad, but may be true.

People forget that in the Ellis Island days, America was not big on the "melting" either; Irish, Italian, Chinese, Japanese and immigrants all over the world had some not very nice nick names until diversity became a buzz word.

I am ruminating on Part 2 via yours and the comments of others... stay tuned!

Re: Why do we gravitate towards ourselves?

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know that your average American thinks America was a beautiful and elegant melting pot back in the day, or now. After all, one need only consider treatment of native Americans or slavery to see otherwise, let alone the shady vocabulary you mention.

It would be unfortunate if you were to stereotype Americans' views of American history wildly inaccurately. Do be cautious about such matters.

kthxbye

Re: Why do we gravitate towards ourselves?

[(Anonymous)]

Also, I should add that it would be doubly unfortunate if you were to then say how you've lived in America for a long time and are informed on these issues, when the opposite seems far more likely. I recommend you avoid this eventuality.

kthxbye

The other side to this issue!

[(Anonymous)]

I am just a bit curious if anyone here had for just a moment considered the other side to this issue. No, I don’t mean Qataris living outside; rather, I am referring to Qataris in Qatar who have tried to befriend expats, especially westerns, only to be turned down by them!

I went to a school whose staff was mostly from North America, and so, I know many expats. I finished school a few years back but I stayed in touch with many of the people I know via e-mail and Facebook, and every once in a while I would visit the school too.

Starting from sometime last year, I have extended invites to the people I knew from the school to come visit my family’s beach house during the weekend. Do you know how many of them accepted? 0! I extended a similar invite to come meet my mother, and only 2 ladies showed interest in doing so. One of them did visit, she said she enjoyed it, she said she’d come visit again soon. It’s now been over 3-4 months since she did!

Here is the simple truth: friendship is built on a common ground between 2 or more people. This is why it’s easier for people of the same gender/ culture/ ethnic/ interest to become friends. I suspect that my friend who came to visit found it to be difficult to be in an environment where she didn’t speak the same language as everyone else’s and needing someone to translate for her couldn’t have been any fun.

The truth of the matter is that while we Qataris are friendly, we are also very careful to not to intrude on the privacy of others. Moreover, when dealing with expats, especially westerners, we often find ourselves being asked too many probing questions about ourselves & our culture that we ourselves don’t know the answer to or just don’t know how to explain to you properly. It’s like situation where someone befriends a gay man, and asks questions like “So, are you the man or woman?” “How do you guys do it?”

I hope that made sense.

Qatari

Re: The other side to this issue!

[toorsdenote.livejournal.com]

Hey, I just realized that I've quoted your response to me to two different people in the last week, but I never actually responded to you.

Honestly, I never thought about that side of things. If any Qataris made friendship overtures toward me, I missed them, so I never really thought about the Qataris who do make such overtures.

Your analogy about gay people was so enlightening to me. Sometimes people really do ask boorish questions. I once witnessed an American man asking a divorced Qatari woman (who, granted, he knew very well) how much her lack of virginity would impact her marriageability. Can you imagine??? I'm sure some of my questions and observations also seem very boorish to a cultural insider.