“Are we going home now?” my three-year-old son asks. “I don’t want to go to another hotel… I want to go to the place with the blue carpets.” It’s strange to think of Qatar as home, but it has become such – especially for the children. This little one was a newborn when we spirited him away from his Toronto delivery room to Doha’s northern suburbs. “Yes sweetheart,” I reply, “we’re going to the place with the blue carpets.”
Our return begins in Medina, the City of the Prophet, which lies nestled in a valley with mountains on three sides. Thousands of pilgrims walk, run, limp, and wheel towards the white-marbled courtyard of the Prophet’s Mosque. They come from all walks of life – sturdy Iranian village women, their chadors emblazoned with flowers, Indonesian youth wearing neon green sarongs and peaked black hats, groups of elderly Turkish men with cheap vinyl bags distributedby their tour operator slung over their shoulders. In the distance the mountains of Uhud, where the early Muslims struggled for their very existence, rise up from the valley. The latticed walls of Baqi’ enclose their small mounded graves marked by ancient, weathered volcanic stones.
The car slips onto the new expressway that cuts across the desert towards Riyadh. Gazing across the expanse, I recall a story I wrote as a child about a pilot who crash landed in the Arabian Desert. The pictures that illustrated this story were straight out of Lawrence of Arabia – seas of yellow undulating dunes and a blazing orange sun overhead. I’m struck by how different this desert is from the one I imagined as a child. It is indeed vast. It is also hot, especially in the summer. But this desert lives and breathes. It changes color and form as you move through it.
The rocky outcrops of the Arabian-Nubian Shield dominate the Hejaz. It was here that ancient miners dug the wealth of King Solomon from Mahd al-Dhahab, the “Cradle of Gold”. These mountains give way to fields of twisted, black, volcanic rock, testament to the extinct volcanoes which gave the land its shape. Waves of mountains are divided by wide valleys with grass and scrub to feed the white, red, and black camel herds that range the area.
The car overtakes a vintage Ford Crown Victoria up the escarpment to the high plateau of Nejd. Here the land becomes more verdant – water from the wheel lines irrigates green shoots of wheat pushing up through the sand. Al-Qassim is the breadbasket of Arabia and farms abound. The contrast of brown and green and the scattered farm equipment remind me more of Nevada or Colorado than Arabia. The road then turns southeast towards the sprawling metropolis of Riyadh. The desert takes on a deep red hue. Scattered dunes topped by tufts of grass gradually give way to concrete once we reach Riyadh. Spindly acacia trees grace the highway medians.
Outside Riyadh, the desert changes again. The Eastern Province is sandy and stark. Bulldozers push sand drifts off the road like the plows push snow drifts in the Canadian prairies. Blowing sand creates shimmering snakes above the roadway. Whirlwinds form dust towers above the land as the sun begins to set. It is dark when we turn off the main highway and head towards the oasis of Al-Ahsa. I pull over to the side of the road. There is no sound but the wind, no light but the galaxies of stars overhead. The desert is a dark place. The fluorescent tubes in the distance are the only sign of humanity.
We cross the border into Qatar. The road is different here. It is lit. There are speed cameras. It feels more modern, more sterile. The desert here is flat and rocky, and you can smell the ocean in the air. My son wakes up from sleep long enough to ask, “Are we home yet daddy?” Thoughtfully I answer, “Yes, we’re home… the place with the blue carpets.”
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