Postcard from Qatar – the Noxious Weed

In truth, this isn’t really a postcard from Qatar, but when I think of the subject of this blog, Doha Airport instantly comes to mind.

You see, I have a dark secret, unknown to those who know me in a business context, but all too well known to my friends. I’m partial to the odd cigarette. Yes, I know it’s stupid, even more so because I gave up twice for years at a time, and yet returned to the addiction like an old friend. But what’s good enough for Barack Obama’s good enough for me, I say to myself.

The other night I had friends over from Dhahran. We were talking, between my visits to the balcony, about smoking. I mentioned that I’m one of these strange people who can take a 12-hour flight without remotely missing the weed, only to become close to psychotic when the plane lands.

I was describing how sometimes when walking through Heathrow and Gatwick my nicotine-deprived delirium sends me into a rage about all the announcements that bombard you when you go through immigration – go here, do this, don’t do that – and how I actually talk back to the announcements, cursing the announcer, the nanny state, the rules the signs and the electronic sheepdogs that herd me through the airport with the arriving masses. Only when I make it outside to the pavement for the first cigarette, followed rapidly by the second, does the incredible hulk disappear and my normal personality re-assert itself.

Someone mentioned that I should write a guide to the smoking areas in Middle East airports, since I visit them often enough. Not a bad idea, I thought – I bet nobody’s done that before. Then I thought that nobody would want to know about the dark smelly holes stashed away in inconvenient parts of the shiny new(ish) airports in the region.

But Doha does take the prize for the Middle East’s most obnoxious smoking rooms. Cramped, poorly air-conditioned rooms where you can hardly see one end from the other. An endless stream of visitors whose desperation for a drag overcomes their revulsion at the most toxic atmosphere after the upper slopes of Mount Eyjafjallajökull. Ten lungfuls from the cigarette, twenty lungfuls of the blue smog, and get the hell out of there. Two for the price of one! Truly the squalid side of the noxious weed.

One the other side, there’s the joy of the cigar lounge in one Middle East capital not known for its overt pursuit of pleasure. Cuban cigars, comfortable armchairs, the best coffee in the city, and a clientele of cigar connoisseurs who cross the local-expatriate divide.

Official attitudes towards smoking are slowly falling into line with western practice. Yet as always, implementation lags behind intention. In the baggage hall of one major international airport you can see desperate men hiding behind pillars having the all-important first drag. In the departure lounge of the same airport coffee bars with no smoking signs all around play host to groups of people puffing away with impunity, topping up their nicotine levels in preparation for the ordeal to come.

In Bahrain, the really posh hotels like the Ritz Carlton have banned smoking altogether. In Dubai, thanks to lobbying by the wife of the ruler, smoking bans are as strict as those in the UK or the US. Saudi Arabia hasn’t quite got there yet, and you can still find smoking areas of restaurants and hotel lobbies. But within five years, we’ll all be out in on the pavement like our brothers and sisters in London, Los Angeles and Paris.

Meanwhile those of us still addicted and alive will continue to pass though the airports of the region, diverting four hundred yards down the corridor, past gate 132, second on the left, next door to the lavatories to rooms with gray-faced smokers spilling out into the concourse, eyeing each other with the furtive solidarity of inmates in shared prison of habit. Not a joyous scene.

Now what am I going to do about this? Read Alen Carr’s book yet again? Get hypnotized? Go cold turkey? Sure. Next week inshallah……

Steve Royston – May 2010