Happy Anniversary to Us! (Or, "It Rained in Doha!")

Since dates and weekends are fluid concepts over here, we celebrated our one-year anniversary twice. Saturday night was a Baroque festival concert at the Katara Opera House. It has been, shamefully, a full year since I've been to any real classical concert, which shouldn't surprise anyone who has been to Ridgecrest. It was a gem of a concert with a phenomenal pianist at the Kennedy Center, all part of my Washington Farewell Tour. Then I moved to the Middle East.

Please to note the Emir's special box in the back there.

Doha, though, both did and did not disappoint. The disappointing part was how it took, oh my goodness, 1 hour and 20 minutes to get there. It was supposed to be less than 30 minutes. I can't even. But Doha traffic (/construction) is for another blog, one which I recommend no one read. The rest of it, though, was as good as I've seen anywhere, and somehow, somehow, we had only missed 5 minutes or so. I don't think you measure an orchestra by its performance of Baroque, so I can't say too terribly much, but it was flawless and a delight to hear and see. The musicians were on the young side, which isn't surprising - Qatar is still in the developing world of culture. (There, I said it. And by that I don't mean that the developing world has less culture than the developed world; Morocco, for, you know, instance, has a phenomenally developed culture. I mean that...well, Qatar is working on it.) 

One more note on the concert and I promise I'll move on: Matteo El Khodr was one of the featured soloists, which is interesting because a) he's a Lebanese opera singer, which cannot be all that common, and b) more interestingly, he's a countertenor. I've never heard one live; shoot, I've heard very few recordings. I read that there are 63 countertenors in the world; whether that's accurate or not, it can't be wildly off. Very interesting experience.

This is what greeted us when we left the Bach and Handel concert. Just in case you had thought you were in Europe.

Anniversary Part 2 (today, actually on our anniversary) was very nearly thwarted at several points. We normally go to mass at Georgetown at 5 p.m. on Sunday evenings, after which we sometimes kill time in the library while the rush hour traffic reduces from "intolerable" to a milder form of obnoxious. This evening...I don't know what Rosko finds to read, but it was almost 8 by the time we left. We arrived at the Yemeni restaurant after a few battles with parking, only to be told that they had, I think, three dishes left for the evening. Disappointing, but, I mean, Yemen's 

got enough on their hands; they don't need my whining on top of it all.

I should back up, because it's probably not immediately obvious why we wanted Yemeni food for our anniversary. We had been there once with friends and it was delicious and not overpriced. Both of these things are, I think, rare in Doha. Fancy? Yes. Impressively priced even for petrol-financed expats? You betcha. But not usually delicious. 

Mid-hookah, before rain. (That, or Rosko is a dragon.)

There being no room, or at least food, at the Yemeni Inn, we headed to the Moroccan restaurant, where we enjoyed the view, smoke and two bites of food on a rooftop terrace before, yes, it started to rain. Hard. This is, I think, the fourth time I've experienced rain in the entirety of 2014, and it was as we were getting our meals delivered on our already-nearly-frustrated anniversary outing. (This is not to say that we weren't thrilled with the rain anyway. I took it as our little anniversary present from the heavens.) Our waiter was a phenomenal sport, though, and transferred everything indoors, then at last back outdoors so Rosko could enjoy his hookah while I read some Waugh and watched the people walk through puddles.

And that is how we bid farewell to our first year of marriage. Two of us in the rain in the Gulf, one of us in heaven, and Moroccan spices on our fingers.