Read Online From Souk to Souk by Robin Ratchford - Free Book Online Page A

service were deplaned like royalty, while the rest of us were ferried to the distant airport buildings in long buses. At the transit terminal, everyone except myself and a ruddy-faced man in his fifties poured off, pushing their way through the glass doors of the building like sales-shoppers desperate to be first to snatch the best bargains. A few minutes later we reached the arrivals hall, vast and almost empty, with rows of immigration officials wrapped in perfectly ironed Arab robes, the men in long white
dishdashas
, the women in flowing black
abayas
, patiently waiting at their booths for a passenger to turn up. A short while later, with a new stamp and visa in my passport and baggage collected, I was in a taxi heading towards my hotel, passing cranes, reinforced concrete skeletons and glittering realisations of architects’ dreams. Things were looking up.
    ***
    Apart from the country itself, my main point of interest in Qatar was Doha’s recently opened Museum of Islamic Art. I cannot pretend to be a specialist in the sphere, but the museum’s collection was already the subject of international acclaim and a ‘must see’ on any visit to the country. It was only a short walk from my hotel, but striding over high kerbs and negotiating my way across unfinished pavements was not what I had expected. I picked my way towards the sea front, doing my best to stay in whatever shade there was to avoid the glare of the Arabian sun. As I rounded a corner, the museum came into sight, a stack of cream-coloured boxes rising out of the waters of Doha Port. I.M. Pei, the Chinese-American architect of Louvre pyramid fame who designed the place, wisely insisted that his creation stand on its own island to set it apart from other buildings. Walking slowly up the causeway to what appeared to be a virtually windowless structure, a double row of well-tended palm trees standing on either side, it was easy to imagine one had been transported back in time to some ancient civilisation with the path leading to the palace of its munificent leader. As I got nearer, lines of round Islamic arches came into view, softening the building’s cubist style and hinting at the nature of the treasures within.
    Inside, in darkened rooms, behind glass, glistened wonders of gold; wonders of gold among swirls of calligraphy, folds of silk, carvings of ivory and sets of ceramics. Here were the finest examples of centuries of Islamic art from lands as diverse as Spain and Turkey, China and Iran, countries in many ways different, yet bound together by the common thread passing through Mecca. It would have been easy to create a collection so vast as to overwhelm the visitor by its sheer size, to produce a sensation of smallness when confronted with such wonders, to mirror the very meaning of the name of the revered religion itself: submission. Yet the museum in Doha has taken a different approach, choosing instead to display a modest amount of exhibits of exceptional quality. I meandered from room to room, listening to the audio guide, transported to other worlds by the chocolate voice and the riches around me. Together with the black walls of the galleries, the clean lines and understated decor of the building – a rare feature in this part of the world – discreetly accentuated the intricacy and detail of the objects on display. Stopping to marvel at a jewel-encrusted falcon, countless precious stones set into its golden form, I imagined it could have been lifted straight from a fairy tale about a powerful caliph offering the hand of his daughter in marriage to anyone who could make a fantastic creature of this kind. As a child, I used to devour such stories, running headlong into the colourful worlds of heroes and adventure they described. That the seventeenth-century artefact was actually from India only added to the exoticism, rulers in these legends often filling their palaces with fabulous treasures from far and wide. Like