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

latter-day characters from one of Scheherazade’s tales, the country’s ruling Al-Thani family have spent fortunes on amassing the museum’s collection, as if magically transforming the thick black liquid and invisible gas brought forth from beneath the Qatari earth into an Aladdin’s cave of magnificent art.
    As I was admiring the glistening raptor, I became aware that a man standing at my side was looking at me and saying something.
    â€˜I’m sorry?’ I said, pulling the headphones of the audio guide away from my ears.
    â€˜It’s fabulous, isn’t it?’ he smiled. ‘The craftsmanship: it’s exquisite.’ With his short dark hair and swarthy features he looked Middle Eastern, but there was something about him that made me think he was not an Arab: perhaps it was the bulbous nose or the small chin. I reckoned he was in his late thirties, but with the subdued lighting it was hard to be certain.
    â€˜Yes, I was just admiring it,’ I agreed. ‘In fact, the whole place is pretty spectacular.’
    â€˜You like Islamic art?
    â€˜I don’t have a special interest in it, if that is what you mean,’ I shrugged, ‘but it would be difficult not to be impressed by the things in here.’
    â€˜Is this your first visit?’ He cocked his head slightly to one side, the light from the display case showing up his heavy stubble.
    â€˜Yes,’ I nodded, ‘first time in the museum, and in the country. What about you? Are you from here?’
    â€˜No,’ he laughed quietly. ‘I’m not. Can’t you tell? You wouldn’t find a Qatari walking around Doha dressed like this! I’m Lebanese.’
    Indeed, his striped shirt and sandy-coloured chinos were not typical Arab attire. We moved away from the glass case with the falcon so a young Arab couple could get a better view.
    â€˜You are on holiday here?’
    â€˜Sort of: more passing through. I’ve always wondered what Qatar was like and thought I would stop off to see. And you?’
    â€˜I work here. Not all the time, but I come quite often.’
    â€˜I see,’ I said, wandering over to a display case where a collection of ornate rings was laid out, each one a tiny work of art. The man drifted after me and then stood by my side looking at the jewellery.
    â€˜They are so beautiful.’
    He ran his fingers over the glass, as if trying to make some form of spiritual contact with the centuries-old jewels on the other side. The simple band of gold round his wedding finger came a poor second to the filigree and craftsmanship that lay just beyond reach. He seemed to become lost in his thoughts as he stared at the masterpieces glowing gently under the perfectly positioned spotlights.
    I slipped away into the shadows and onwards to the next room where I stopped to study a pair of blue and white
Albarelli
– porcelain jars for storing medicines. In warm tones, the voice on my audio guide recounted how cylindrical pots like these from Damascus were in use in the Levant long before they were adopted in Europe and given an Italian name. As I turned away, an elderly tourist with a dowager’s stoop gave a brief smile as she shuffled by, milky eyes making her look like a figure from a past era revisiting the present. Knobbly fingers clutched a guidebook and what looked like a pile of scrawled notes that had been dropped and hastily gathered back together. Only her casual clothes and Birkenstock-style sandals gave any indication that she belonged to the here and now.
    I moved on, exploring one angular chamber after the other, walking over geometric shapes cast on the floor by the miniature spotlights that shone through the glass cabinets. I stopped in front of a show case to admire a bluish-green glass bowl, traces of gold round its rim. After surviving many turbulent centuries, the fragile dish from Egypt had finally found refuge, a place to rest and bask in the adoration of