S-Queue you!

Weekends in Doha seem to take on a surreal sort of aspect. I don’t know whether it’s the sand blowing into my apartment through every nook and cranny and covering everything that isn't wrapped in cellophane. Maybe it’s the suffocating humidity that precipitates at every opportunity making you feel like a wet sponge, a sponge covered in sand that is. Or maybe I'm just bored. Nevertheless, I was going stir crazy. I thought I would go wax my car. It was only 9am. The heat couldn’t be that bad. Anyway, I had just finished doing the hood and in the newly shined surface I saw a blood curdling sight. A face of a man, hideously contorted in distress, bloodshot eyes popping out of his head, sweat streaming profusely from every pore, sweat that flowed freely onto the meticulously polished metal. At that point, I decided that the rest of the car could wait, till December.

There are few pleasures in life, sex after a sustained abstinence, peeing after holding it in so long that it hurts, seeing your boss fall down the stairs. One I highly recommend is that you go out into the hot humidity that we all know and love and do something strenuous like walking or standing still or, god forbid, something idiotic like wax a car. Do this for a few minutes until you feel that you are melting. Till you feel that your shoes are filling up with the sweat that is slowly creeping down your body. Till you feel the itchiness that it brings. Till you feel that your body and underwear have created some biological bond and that one is trying to absorb and assimilate the other. Now, with your last few joules of energy, get back to the welcoming womb of your apartment/villa/box (did I say that you had to have the AC on high before this?) and be blasted with cold air. Ahhhhhhh. Ecstasy... I’m getting all excited just thinking about it.

Ok Ok... I was bored this weekend. So when a friend called to ask whether I was upto anything it was manna from heaven. Upto anything? Does that include breathing and lying motionless on the settee with the AC vent directed at my naked glistening body? (An image I advise you not to dwell on). I was gleeful of the possibility of some stimulating activity, something to invigorate the mind, a social setting, with smiling faces, the buzz of conversation, cocktails, snacks, tight dresses....WHOA BOY! What I didn’t envisage was a trip to Carrefour (a large supermarket chain for those not familiar with it.. a store that sells virtually everything).

That’s how sad my life has become. A day trip to the supermarket being the highlight of my weekend. I might aswell just shoot myself now right? Like some poor crippled horse at the race track. I can hear the crowd murmuring as I lose consciousness "his life was so sad", "it was only a matter of time", "I'm sure he’s in a happier place now”, “does he have relatives or can I take this frozen yoghurt and microwave meal?".. I digress... let me get back to the point. Yes, a trip down to Carrefour.

Apparently, I am not the only sad bastard in Doha because the place was absolutely packed. The covered parking was full and other cars had spewed out onto the waste ground next to the mall like little colored balls spilled from a giant ruptured beanbag. We were lucky, we managed to find a space close enough to the mall not to need a taxi to get to it. By the time we reached the doors, my underwear had dissolved and I swear I could feel my testicles rubbing against my knee. The rush of cold air as we walked in was my second ecstatic experience of the day, the third was my scrotum retracting to normal proportions. Anymore and I would be hooked.

As I imagined, the place was a seething mass of sweaty bodies. A hum of voices and the shuffling of feet. It reminded me of those emperor penguins huddling together to keep warm in the winter. Unfortunately, in these situations lurks a hideous phenomenon, one that preys when people group together like this, no escape, panic would cause chaos and this predator uses this to stalk its victims. What is this dreaded beast? That which brings grown men to their knees, makes pregnant women miscarry, dogs howl and geriatric colostomy bags burst. Body Odour... not your common or garden musty BO... no... This stuff is lethal, kill a man at ten paces. This week, I was its victim. I don’t know where it came from but it used the element of surprise. Before I knew it, it had me by the throat, gasping for air with eyes burning, I ran into Carrefour, knocking down an old woman and jumping over a small child in a pram. It took three security guards to prise the perfume bottle out of my hand; they made me pay for it because I had drunk more than half of it.

After what seemed like an eternity trudging around aisle after aisle, where my friend insists on trying everything before he buys it (incidentally, I think that underwear and toothbrushes should be excluded), we finally arrive at the checkouts.

There are around 50 counters in Carrefour but I think only 25 actually work because the queues were enormous. “Leave this to me” I tell my friend “I’m an expert”. With this, I take up position at the rear of a queue where after careful analysis of the contents of other shoppers’ baskets and the efficiency of the checkout girl, I consider this the most expedient.

A thing about queues. I studied queuing in England. The home of queues. A country where relationships are formed in queues. Where queuing is a national sport. Where people queue just for the fun of it. The internationally recognized protocol for queues is:

Join end of queue opposite service end.
As each customer is served, you slowly progress towards your turn.
New customers join the queue similarly at the end.
Eventually, you get your turn and leave.

During queuing, you are encouraged to make polite conversation with your neighbours, though this is not compulsory. But there is strictly no physical contact allowed.

This well oiled machine can operate indefinitely until no more customers are left or the service ends.

Well, I discovered that I have had it wrong all these years.

So I’m standing here in this queue, trying not to make contact with the customer in front’s Achilles with my trolley (don’t you just hate that?) by maintaining a healthy distance of two inches. Regrettably, it was two inches too much. Turning away momentarily, I failed to notice Mr. and Mrs. Fat with their ugly baby (which I incidentally thought was a pet chimpanzee at the time) had all slipped into the gap. Don’t ask me how, they just did. My friend, using his astuteness to sense my anger (probably saw the veins in my head pulsating) managed to calm me by saying they had a small child so we should just let it go.

No sooner had my vital signs returned to normal, when a woman, arms laden with all types of bread, calmly walked straight past us and past Mr. and Mrs. Fat and the chimp to take her place at the front. I couldn’t let it go. “EXCUSE ME!” I bellow “THE END OF THE QUEUE IS THAT WAY!” gesturing behind me like a hitchhiker on acid. She looked at me as if I had just shit in my hand and was offering her the steaming turd for examination, then turned away and completely ignored me. What was I supposed to do? Beat her to death with a French baguette? That’s such a terrible waste of food. So I bit my tongue, the taste of blood in my mouth somehow comforting as I imagined it coming from her jugular.

What happened next was comical if it wasn’t so annoying. Mr. Fat turns to me with a completely indignant look on his face with shrugged shoulders, as if to say “what ignorance, how can people do that?” Having had the opportunity to bitch slap the bread woman cruelly wrenched from me, I seized upon the opportunity to respond to this sorry excuse for a human being. “What the hell you looking upset about?” I rasped “you did the same thing to us not seconds ago”. He replies” yes, but I asked the person infront of me if I could join the queue”. I’m sorry, I might sound a little anal, but shouldn’t the question be “Can I join the queue in front of you?” not “Can I join the queue behind you?” Not wanting to start a debate about the finer points of queue protocols and etiquette with a fat man carrying a chimpanzee in Carrefour, I bit deeper into my tongue, clenched my fists till nails dug into flesh and ground the tops of my teeth flat.

I thought I had seen it all, but they say trouble comes in threes. Well number three had only a can of energy drink which he had half devoured. He did try his best. First just loitering aimlessly. Examining the chocolates at the checkout. Looking around. Not making eye contact with anyone.

Little did he know that he had picked the wrong queue. I had seen him. He was a lone male. Not a woman. No kids or chimps in tow. No apparent disabilities (unless you include attempted queue jumping). He was a legitimate target. God was compensating me for the previous trials.

He seized what he thought was his best opportunity, gliding effortlessly to insert a foot between us and the chimp family. “Oi!! What you doing?” I ask “don’t you see a queue?” At this point, he feigns temporary deafness, however, a gentle prod in his back as I repeat myself immediately restores his senses. “I only have this?” he replies, holding up his half finished can as if it would banish me into submission, the holy can of power horse, not only does it give you energy but makes others bow to your every wish. “So?” I ask “I don’t care if all you have is a peanut” I continued (don’t ask me why I said peanut but I was thinking on my feet here. I had to come up with something smaller than the can that you could buy in a supermarket. Yes… I know, I single peanut is absurd)

He tries to ignore me like the bread woman. He didn’t count on me being so angry that I could have bitten into his skull and sucked his brains out with a straw. The following conversation ensues

ME: “If you don’t get to the back of the queue nothing good will happen
HIM: “Are you threatening me?”
ME: “No. I’m telling you”
HIM: “I’m from ______. Nothing scares me” (I have left the country out to protect the innocent)
ME: “Then go ahead and see what happens”
HIM: “I’m not scared”
ME: “Go ahead then”
HIM: “I will blow myself up if I have to”
ME: “You should pay for that first”
HIM: “God bless the Israelis”

He then starts to sing some patriotic nationalistic song in Arabic.

He doesn’t jump the queue and I leave Carrefour with a content smile on my face. Content that I had just had (and won) a verbal wrestling match in a supermarket with the craziest man in Doha.

Future weekends will never be the same.

Where did I leave my tranquilizers?