Shopping in Qatar

The shopping in Qatar is incredible. Pretty much anything you can conceive of is here, with only a few obscure exceptions (boric acid based ant poison comes to mind, thanks for sending that, Mom!). Products and people from every corner of the globe find their way here. The choices are mind-boggling.

There are many options for how and where to shop. The traditional markets (souqs) are still thriving. We try to shop there whenever possible. The oldest in town is Souq Waqif. It is currently getting a major facelift, but it was a charmingly decrepit maze of narrow covered walkways, with shops containing darn near anything. The renovation strives to maintain this flavor, and it is being given a new “old” look, with rough stones and old style fixtures.

Souq Waqif is divided into sections based upon the products sold. For the most part, a vendor’s competitors are also his neighbors, so bargaining is fierce and furious. Probably the most interesting section is the spice souq. It’s easy to find, just follow your nose. The shops are full of huge, carefully groomed piles of brightly colored spices, some of which we hadn’t even heard of. They are sold by weight, and do a brisk business as Qatari cooking is heavy on spices.

“Hot” spices aren’t terribly popular among Qataris, Qatari dishes are rather very subtle and careful combinations of several spices, creating a great depth and complexity of flavor. The “basics” of Qatari spicing are cardamom (it’s in everything), cinnamon, cloves, bay leaves, dried lemon, and saffron (very cheap here). Many more are used too, but these form the basis of many dishes. Lots of curry is sold too, of different colors and heat, but mostly to the South Asian ex-pats, who incidentally outnumber the Qataris by a large margin. Cardamom has another use. If you break open a cardamom pod, and eat several of the small black seeds inside, it makes a great breath mint.

Hardware, toys, shoes, clothes, food, honey, housewares, and a million other things are also sold in Souq Waqif. The souq is getting stiff competition from the large retailers in the malls and western style shopping centers, and in certain market categories the competition is crushing the little guys. You can really see the toll among retailers of mass-produced goods from Asia, like toys for instance. They are getting smoked, and one sure-fire sign is that the quality level of their imported goods is usually poor. On the other hand, the big retailers can’t even touch certain traditional sectors. Traditional products include tailor made clothes, custom furniture and furnishings, tents, incense and oils, and generally anything hand or custom made. Basically the market is working itself out, and there will probably always be a Souq Waqif, just some of the goods on offer may change.

Another thing available at Souq Waqif that no Qatari home should be without is large pots. You think you have seen large pots? Check these out, they are up to six feet across and three deep. In practice though, the tiny three foot across version will do for most folks. An entire sheep can be boiled in these (and frequently is). Special gas burners are purchased to go with it. These come in pieces and have to be set up. The cooking is usually done outside, often at the “country homes” or farms that so many Qataris have. It’s not uncommon to have your 100 or so closest friends come over, so there really is a practical need for these. Also they are great for cooking meals at the masjids (mosques), you can whip up rice 100 kilos at a time in these babies.

Some of the best traditional food comes from Souq Waqif. A few of the grill restaurants there are legendary, and known to all Qataris, yet often they are so non-descript that a foreigner would miss them. Qatari friends are essential for navigating these. Another thing here, and everywhere else in town is the ubiquitous juice stall. For as little as 50 cents, you can have fresh fruit smoothies blended while you wait. Mango, orange, banana, guava, whatever, they’ve got it. They are invariably run by Indians, and as a result usually sell inexpensive Indian food as well.

Souq Waqif has been around for as long as Doha. The next step in the slow evolution towards mega-malls were large, usually air-conditioned buildings filled with small independent shops. The cloth souq is like this, and parts of the gold souq. These places don’t feel like a flea market, but neither are they corporate shopping experiences. Many have small fountains etc (Places with single digit rainfall in centimeters love fountains). The quality of manufactured goods in these places is usually better, but again it’s the traditional shops that have the real edge here. The cloth souq has some fabrics that defy description, and the tailors here are amazing.

The gold souq is fabulous. I used to be in the business, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like what I have seen here. The gold souq itself though is not where you find the super high-end creative stuff. The gold souq primarily carries just gold, or gold with semi-precious stones. The items are for the most part 22k gold and are sold by weight. They are manufactured in India and other places nearby, so the labor is cheap, and as a result the premium above the price of gold is very low. Qataris typically own a lot of gold, and it is an essential part of a woman’s dowry that she receives from her husband. Bridal jewelry is striking, massive, and very ornate. On the other end of the scale small trinkets may be purchased for $15 or $20.

The really high-end jewelry shops specialize in insanely large and creative jewelry. This is where you find your emphasis on precious stones. Palm Beach doesn’t even have stuff like this. The Gulf is probably one of the very few places on earth where there is a large concentration of people who don’t mind dropping huge sums of money for jewelry. Combine that with the fact that their tastes include large ornate pieces (western ladies would consider many of these “gaudy”) and you have a recipe for sponsoring a lot of creativity. If you are a jeweler, this is where you want to be. Security in these places isn’t remarkable, due to Qatar’s low crime rate.

Within the last few years, shopping malls have made their debut in Doha. I guess there’s about five or so now, with one huge four story monstrosity near the north end of the corniche (waterfront). The malls are highly popular, mostly due to their ambience and air-conditioning! They are actually crowded in the evenings and on week-ends. One mall here has an indoor roller coaster. Another has this bizarre whimsical series of playground type swimming pools, a hockey rink (lots of Canadian ex-pats here), and an enormous ice-slide that you sled down, which is amazingly popular in the summer. People love waiting in line for this because the whole room is freezing cold.

Businesses that appear to do well in the malls are electronics shops, furniture and houseware places, internet cafes, restaurants of all kinds, grocery stores (many of the huge western style groceries are in malls), and miscellaneous specialty shops. Clothes shops are another story. Some do great and some don’t. The places that assume that they can simply open up a branch in Qatar without tailoring their strategy to this market are the ones who don’t do well. People here do buy western clothes, but tastes are somewhat different than the west. Another major consideration is advertising.. The “standards of decency” here are pretty high, and people get offended easily by ads that are too revealing. A western model showing normal clothes isn’t a big deal, but ads that obviously trade on sex are frowned upon.

An example of this is found among the photos below. Westerners sometimes have a hard time grasping this, because we are so de-sensitized to this kind of advertising, but to the Qataris this is overtly obscene. Qatar has no laws against this kind of advertising (as long as the women aren’t actually nude), but the people themselves find it abhorrent. The Gulf as a whole is probably the most socially conservative region in the world. People here are more conservative than your great-grandparents by a wide margin (I don’t care how old you are, they are still more conservative than your great-grandparents!).

Here we see nineteenth century style swimming suits for both men and women. To a Qatari lady, showing a bit of ankle is considered quite racy, and showing the shape of the body is downright scandalous. Young people “date” much the way Americans did in the nineteenth century. A potential suitor may court a lady by first asking permission to do so from her father, then he may (or may not) be able to come and sit in her parlor (majlis) and speak with her, fully chaperoned of course by her family. Later, if they are an “item”, they may go out together with a chaperone. All of this wouldn’t sound so strange in say 1850, but to modern Americans it is an alien concept.

To people coming from Qatari culture, where to even be allowed to look at a woman’s face is considered a distinct privilege, western advertising seems unfathomably risqué. What I can’t figure out is the naivety of retailers who don’t understand this. Look at the photo below. The picture is obviously suggestive, more so by the posture and expression of the model than what is actually revealed, but the message is clear. Who in Qatar would allow their daughters to shop there? How many daughters would want to wear that label? What does it say about them? Qatar has the right approach to these questions though. They don’t ban things like Saudi (which would only make them more sought after), instead they ignore it and let the market work itself out. Most of the retailers who barged in here with big ideas about changing standards in Qatar have either packed up and left, or changed their strategy dramatically.

The follow up to this particular photo is as follows. I took the picture a while back, when the store was still fairly “new”. Now that some time has elapsed I have noticed big changes. The clothes are dramatically different. Instead of booty clothes they sell fashionable full-length skirts, and generally more modest attire. The booty dresses are still there, but they are de-emphasized. And the ads still feature western models, but without their tongues hanging out.

It’s not that there isn’t a market for sexy clothes here, it’s a huge business actually, but they have to be of the right kind, and sold in the right way. There are a lot of “Victoria’s Secret” type shops here (I mean c’mon, look at the birth rate for crying out loud!). The successful ones accurately reflect the Gulf psychology. They are enticing, but low key from the outside, and you have to get inside, in private, to see the good stuff. Stores in general don’t ban either gender, but these shops subtly but distinctly discourage males from entering, creating an atmosphere of comfort and safety for the women. When she makes her purchase, ideally the woman isn’t handed a bag with the name of the shop emblazoned on it in big bold letters for the whole world to see. In short, in order to do well in the Gulf, Victoria needs to keep her secret, well, a secret!

The picture below of the Souq Faleh area is typical of the older, downtown area. This is the area that was built up after souq Waqif, but before the western stores came in. This part of town is getting a big face lift too, but it will take awhile. This area is known for groceries. You can buy 100 kilo bags of rice (free delivery), take your goats and sheep here to be slaughtered, buy vegetables and fruit, live chickens, ducks and geese, or just about anything else that is edible.

The chicken souqs are great. They have a large area up front filled with birds, and you either select a healthy prospect and have the man catch it, or let him pick one for you. He then says a brief blessing, and lops off it’s head. Next he throws the body into a large metal bucket where it leaps around for a while. When the bucket is silent he withdraws the carcass, guts it, and throws it into what looks like a large clothes dryer. This is a machine that I had no idea existed before I came to Qatar. It is an automated chicken-plucker. There is some water inside, and they throw the chicken in there, and spin it around for a while at high speed. When it stops the chicken is plucked clean! At this point the guy will either cut your bird into pieces, or give it to you whole, with the giblets. They pack it up nice and you leave with a package that looks very much like what you would buy at any grocery store… except it’s still warm.