MB Meets World

It pleased me that Qatar takes the opportunity to create beauty where there might otherwise be emptiness or ugliness. The prime example of this (Sammie says it is called “public art”) are walls and tunnels along the highway. My pictures aren’t great, as they were taken from moving cars, but I saw sections that had tiles depicting rugs, a part that looked like AstroTurf in various abstract shapes, and one that had horses and camels.

At a market in downtown Doha (called the Souq Waqif, translated as the “standing market”) there were so many beautiful fabrics.

I loved the pillows and rugs.

I loved the beauty of bulk foods and spices

Various places I saw beautiful lamps, sometimes in use, sometimes for sale, and sometimes relics of old mosques.

At the Museum of Islamic Art I found myself drawn to tiles and ceramics, all hand painted.

When exploring the Qatar National Library in Education City, there was a plaque that stated Allah’s first word to Abraham was, “Read.”  It also stated that Allah loves beauty and Allah is beautiful.  (Paraphrasing.) This was next to a beautiful, gold gilded Qu’ran: a beautiful book to read.  I learned in one of the museums that it is very common to see stunningly beautiful Qu’rans.  

The architecture here is largely white stone, designed to keep buildings cool in the hot summer months (I am here during the “cool” season and it was high 70s and into the 80s!). There were times, though, that I saw buildings painted pastel colors. The financial district consists of modern, metal and glass buildings. The buildings that comprise the National Museum of Qatar are so abstract. The Qatar National Library looks like a smooshed diamond on the outside and is bright and spacious on the inside.

I didn’t take many pictures of mosques, but it did strike me that they differed greatly in appearance. Here is one of my favorites, located near the Souq. The call to prayer can be heard several times a day.