20 of 24 - Doha is a long way from Camborne Denzil

Empty nest syndrome doesn’t discriminate. Our children had long flown, and the settled routine of life had begun to grate—not unhappiness, just a slow itch of boredom. One day, driving down the motorway, we both felt it: a psychic click, a shifting of tectonic plates. We looked at each other and asked, “Did you feel that?”

Soon after that in early 2013, out of the blue, an email arrived from an old friend and colleague. He asked if I knew any safety person who might want to join him working in Doha. We ummed and ahhed, and decided to set the fates a challenge. If we could complete a crossword in a long-owned puzzle book, we’d go.

We chose a page number based on the salary I would earn in Doha. We worked through the clues, slowly, stubbornly. After an hour, we were stumped on the very last clue: gear item (anag) (8). Then, as if summoned, the solution revealed itself. Emigrate.

It hit us like a lump hammer. The word hummed with intent and upheaval—unequivocal, scary, final. Like the crossword leaned over and whispered, “Pack your bags, mate.”

But first I was invited to Doha to see what I would be up against. A flying visit to look at an infrastructure site. Deep unprotected excavations, spoil heaped on the edges, old and knackered machinery. My first question ? What on earth do you expect me to do with this? But I was intrigued and hooked and was up for the adventure.  

A few weeks later, it was all systems go. Full-on house clearing. We held a garage sale and sold or gave away every stick of furniture, ornament, and pot we owned. What didn’t sell went to the charity shop. All that remained was a bed/settee. The house stood empty, save for the suitcases and the Hoover.

We were about to leave our children and grandchild behind in England. But we knew this would be our last adventure. And we knew we’d be back.

Doha: The Big Tree

One interpretation of the word Doha is "The Big Tree"—though I hadn’t a clue why. Perhaps I’d find out when I got there. My father-in-law dropped me at Heathrow in time for the 3.05 flight. I arrived at 11.30 on Saturday night. By 9am Sunday, I was in a design meeting, blinking through jetlag and cultural whiplash.

Doha sprawled. It was opulent and mundane, hot and dusty, full-on in every way. I was bewildered by the Arabic place names, the unpronounceable people’s names, the acronyms that flew like confetti, and the absence of post-boxes. I couldn’t work the phone, couldn’t make coffee (only a saucepan to hand in my digs), and couldn’t get the office tea boy to grasp the concept of white tea. Despite asking for tea with milk, or tea and milk, or just milk tea, he consistently handed me black tea with a grin. I began to suspect it was a kind of initiation.

The mindset pervading in Doha was different. Everything was different. The heat was constant. The call to prayer echoed through the night. Arabic architecture jostled with western advertising. The landed gentry were as arrogant as anywhere else, which was oddly comforting.

I was housed temporarily with two Indian gentlemen. One evening, one of them asked to use my iPad to Skype his family. As he chatted away, my 80 year old mum Skyped my iPad. He of course answered. Mum was greeted by a hirsute stranger speaking broken English. Later on he told me my wife had interrupted his call but would Skype again soon. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or apologise.

When I stepped outside from an air-conditioned building, my spectacle frames clicked as they expanded in the heat. It was like being in a slow-motion science experiment.

I was told I’d be getting a temporary car. I hoped for a Sherman Tank as I’d been watching the traffic closely, and while most drivers used forward gears and stopped before exiting the vehicle, there was no convention about not frightening people. Roundabouts were racetracks. Junctions were dares. Spatial awareness was optional. Consequences seemed theoretical. But the locals knew the dance—they hooted, jostled, and swerved with a kind of fatalistic grace.

It made me think of the British Army in the 1830s, posted to Qatar in scratchy uniforms, square-bashing in 50-degree heat. It must have been a weird one. It was hard for me—and I’d sort of known what to expect.

Site Visit and Survival

My first visit to a Doha construction site began with a twenty-minute drive through the city—not me at the wheel, of course. We passed vast shopping malls, the massive American Embassy, palatial villas, and the usual haze of dust and traffic. The route wound through housing estates, each cluster of homes walled off and gated.

Then into the site compound: don the safety gear, step onto the sand. Safety, however, was more costume than culture. Deep excavations with no edge protection, heavy machinery reversing blindly, and workers perched on ledges with the casual grace of pigeons. At first, the heat didn’t trouble me. I was aware of it, yes—but it hadn’t yet made its move. Then, after thirty minutes, it struck. Prickling skin, wooziness. I made a slow-motion dash to the air-conditioned car. I told “my driver” to take me back to the main office, though I say “my driver” with the same unease one might feel wandering into a Graham Greene novel.

Back in the office, sipping black tea, I realised I’d arrived—not just in Doha, but in a work environment I hadn’t yet learned how to tame. The same Inshallah attitude I’d seen on the roads seemed to govern the construction sites. Workers strolled along unprotected heights as if gravity were optional. I briefly entertained the idea that this meant they were hyper-aware of risk and therefore extra cautious. I was wrong. Out here, people and vehicles alike bore dents—some fresh, some historic.

Dust everywhere

Cats roamed the streets. Skinny, streetwise, and slow-moving, they had the sinuous grace of African lions. They treated people with the same disdain cats do everywhere. One morning, I found paw prints on my windscreen and a polished patch on the bonnet—evidence of a feline nap in the dust that coated everything: cars, buildings, palm trees.

The seafront was different. The brilliant blue of the Arabian Gulf seemed to lift the dust. The Corniche curved around West Bay, from the Souk to the City Centre, where we eventually set up home. Our apartment block stood among the skyscrapers—26 floors of glass and stone.

One lunchtime, I stopped at a store and picked up cherries, cream cheese, and a bread roll. I sat in the car with the air-con and radio on. The roll, I discovered, had a layer of sweet icing inside. Garlic cheese and sweet icing aren’t a natural pairing but I went with it. The cherries were good. The radio played Arabic talk, and behind the presenter’s voice was a woodwind rendition of the Furry Dance. What are the chances?

Then came the windy weather. I hadn’t realised wind could be hot. I’d always associated it with cold ears. But in Doha, it rasped your cheeks and stirred up desert dust. From the 12th floor of HQ, the city vanished into an off-white blur. My boss accidently left his French doors open and his lounge was sandblasted.

With the car, I began exploring the streets of Doha. The Aspire Tower rose above the Landmark mall—a torch-shaped beacon, lit at night, visible by day from pretty much anywhere. I used it to navigate. One day off, I drove randomly, confident I could find my way back by spotting the tower. Within fifteen minutes, I was lost. The dust in the air was so thick, the tower had vanished. Still, you can’t go far wrong in Doha—when you hit the desert, turn around.

I had a better look around Doha when the dust settled - the waterfront was really breath-taking and something to behold after the dusty backstreets where I had been working. The sea was such a brilliant blue and West Bay so imposing - it really lifted my spirits.

At night, Doha transformed. Lights flashed up skyscrapers, along Al Waab Street, across the Emiri Palace and the Sheraton. Every building that thought anything of itself had invested in the art of light. Dhows offered night-time trips across West Bay to admire the city’s glow.

Qatar was undergoing a transformation: expressways, railways, sewers, stadium access, even public art installations. Ashghal’s infrastructure programme was, by some measures, the largest construction project in the world. And it attracted some right tossers. Not just me, I hasten to add. I’m thinking of the American Project Manager who made my life difficult from day one. He called a meeting to assert control, but by the end he was floundering in his own PowerPoint—undone by the very logic he’d tried to weaponise. I wore a grin for ninety minutes straight. 

I was involved in the implementation phases—roads, drainage, pedestrian access, traffic flow. Banihajer, once a utilitarian zone, was being reshaped into a streamlined artery of movement. Retrofitting sewage, greywater, and potable systems into pre-existing villas felt like threading needles in the dark. Elevation mismatches, pipe rerouting, and mysterious plumbing choices from decades past made each site a puzzle. Some villas had patchwork fixes that defied both gravity and logic.

The work was harder and more acrimonious than I’d anticipated. From the first hour of the first day, I was embroiled in wrangling, exaggeration, and stubbornness. A new site opened in Bani Hajer, and I was given a marked-up Google map showing the location of the site office. Getting to Bani Hajer wasn’t difficult, but the final leg was a fifteen-minute drive across unpaved desert, dodging potholes and earthmovers. I arrived late, joining a meeting already in full swing—thirty people speaking six languages at once. As Jethro might have said, “It’s an awful long way from Camborne, Denzil.”

Mashed Bangers and the Men Who Weren’t There

The British Café sat between a tyre shop and a shuttered pharmacy, its signage promising comfort food and colonial whimsy. Inside, the air was thick with aircon and the smell of instant gravy. Laminated menus offered “mashed bangers” in bold Comic Sans, alongside “proper chips” and “Victorian sponge (subject to availability).”

The staff were Filipino—gracious, efficient, and quietly proud. The waitress wore a Union Jack apron and asked if we wanted peas. Mushy or garden. It felt like a question from another century, delivered with the warmth of someone who’d served it a thousand times to a thousand homesick souls.

At the far end of the room, four large Americans occupied a corner table. Identical civilian clothes—beige trousers, navy polos, tactical watches. They spoke in low tones, heads close, forks moving in synchrony. No laughter, no phones, no eye contact. Just mashed bangers and a silence that didn’t belong to the café.

They weren’t military, not exactly. But they had the posture of men who’d been briefed. The kind of presence that made the ketchup bottle look like a prop. One of them glanced up, met my eye for half a second, then returned to his mash.

Outside, the sun baked the pavement. Inside, the gravy congealed slowly. We ate, paid, and left. The Americans stayed. Still there, still not there.