White Tigers, or Day 19 in Doha

It is Friday, the Muslim day of prayer, so I decided to be my curious self and go to the Fanar, the Islamic Cultural Center right by the souq. It is notable for its size, but also for the spiral minaret (tower), one of only two in the world.

We got there while it was open, but the "guy who answers questions" wasn't there yet. So I looked at the exhibits explaining Islam, the Prophets and Messengers, the Five Covenants, and so on. I got the guts to go to the prayer room (or the actual mosque part) upstairs.

I'm glad I've been "trained" on mosque-going, since, unlike all the tourist-friendly mosques in Istanbul, this one had no warning signs in five different languages telling you to take off your shoes and cover your head.

The prayer room area was, like in Istanbul, a segregated area about the men's area. However, in Istanbul, since the mosques were one large room with the balcony overlooking it, I could go anywhere (including the main/men's section). Here, because it was much more of a functioning mosque, I went in the women's entrance and walked into the carpeted room.

It was much less ornate, more like a peaceful, library-esque feeling, with a few bookshelves along the wall, the typical striped carpet (to help them face Mecca), and a patterned screen that allowed us to look down to the men's section and the front of the room. I think that mosques are some of the most welcoming places of faith I've been in; churches and cathedrals would be next, then synagogues would probably be after that. I've never felt uncomfortable in any of them (which is a testament to all religions that I've experienced, thankfully) but there is something about taking off your shoes to walk on the ground that gives an extra fullness to the experience. Who is going to argue and fight when they are barefoot?

My cultural exchange continued when I met my partner for my Islamic Feminism class. He's an Egyptian male, the only other non-Qatari in the class and the only male. We finished our summary quickly, then turned to the more interesting subject, which was what our feminist beliefs were. He told me what he doesn't say in class, and, while I didn't necessarily agree with what he said, he clearly had thought about what was important in life for him and how a wife and mother would fit in to help make that happen.

And, of course, my final cultural exchange of the night was with other American students. Texas is like a foreign country, right? Though us exchange students from the main campuses are all westernized, people hold passports from Singapore to El Salvador. We ate at a Moroccan restaurant in the souq, where I had my first taste of camel! It was kofta, which I will say is a sausage-like form of it. It could have been better seasoned, but now I have camel leftovers in my fridge.

And, like many, many nights out here, it ended with a short clown car ride to Bandar, and some tea. One of the girls mentioned that her friend saw a pet cheetah stick its head out a car window like a dog. This led to all of us brainstorming what our best exotic pet would be. The three winners? Tito, the macaroni penguin; Pistachio, a chimp trained to fetch beer; and a white tiger. Or any white big cat. Because who would mess with a guy with an albino leopard chilling on his couch?

While we were there, a wedding party passed through, and, while some of the others found the honked and chanting annoying, I am always excited to see something new and different.