New old Doha

I am in Doha, Qatar for two days. I just came back from a visit to the brand new “old suq” of Suq Waqif. It’s an anthropological experience of the first order, in how a country can and did re-imagine and reinvent its past, or rather bits and pieces of the past of many neighboring countries, re-package it, and present it to the world as its own — with success. I could not distinguish what was specifically Qatari, if anything, but then again the Arabian Gulf culture is a largely supra-national culture. The architecture is a mix of Oman’s and Bahrain’s, the Bedouin-pattern textiles are Syrian imports, the metal lamps are Egyptian, the glass patterns in the walls are Yemeni. The tricks works, up to a point, even for the trained eye. Just imagine the effect on the random tourist.