There are many sides to Doha. Five star hotels, poor worker conditions. High rise luxury apartments, tiny box-sized designated ‘maid’ rooms.
With all the abounding pomp and luxury, it’s easy to feel that the place lacks culture and authenticity. A cosmopolitan city, in which the nationals are dwarfed by non-residents who make up over 80% of the population, one could easily be remiss of knowing the real history of the place.
A few weekends ago, was therefore a pleasant change from my usual escapades, when I spent time visiting Bin Jelmood House, a museum whose aim is “to raise awareness and play a pivotal role in the global abolition of human exploitation”.
The museum is located in Msheireb Downton Doha, an urban regeneration project – apparently the first sustainable one of its kind – that seeks to revive traditional Qatari heritage and architecture while maintaining the highest of green standards. The project costs an eye-watering QAR20 billion and has so far produced… a ghost town. Although in fairness the area is being developed in a number of phases, which evidently have not yet reached completion (i.e. houses have been built but there’s nobody quite in).
An integral part of this regeneration project is that of the Msheireb Museums, set in four heritage houses and each showcasing different facets of Qatar’s history: the good – and in the case of Bin Jelmood – the bad and the ugly.
While the rest of the Msheireb project is still getting up to speed , it is a shame that such an important piece of heritage like the fully functional Bin Jelmood museum is not more highly publicised. Having said that, I suspect that its existence is a precarious one: visible enough to show that Qatar is playing its part to acknowledge and tackle human exploitation, hidden enough not to agitate the local silence [and disquiet] over historical (and indeed ongoing) wrongdoings.
This is why I was pleasantly surprised that such a place exists in the first place, especially given that the Middle East is a region in which reporting on internal social injustices is heavily frowned upon, if even allowed at all. (E.g. I once decided to Google ‘murder rates in Qatar’ – perhaps a slightly worrying item in my search history – but it’s amazing how little we hear about any negative domestic incidents…) Glad though I am that this museum exists and glad though I was to be there, my visit was quite a difficult one.
Of course I know all about slavery, racism and general injustices against Black people, but something about this museum trip really struck a chord within. It wasn’t the first time that I had seen dramatized slavery stories of people who looked like me, reading of the horrors they were subjected to, just because of their mere existence being deemed inferior and worth less than others, all based on nothing more than their appearance and skin colour. And yet, reading about and seeing these things at Bin Jelmood made me more emotional than I can remember can ever recall feeling about this topic.
This could be down to the fact that I have matured and am more in touch with understanding and caring about my history. Perhaps though, what made me so taken aback and particularly unsettled viewing all of this was my ignorance of these particular stories. The transatlantic slave trade and ensuing colonisation are well documented dark episodes in global history, with the after effects still very much present in our lives today. And so to find that on the other side of the continent, Black people were also being subjected to a similar fate was disheartening to say the least. It’s almost as if wherever you look in history, we almost always seem to be the downtrodden peoples. (Which is why it’s so important to tell our stories on our own terms and not as the subject of the Colonisers. As is popular said, slavery is a part of Black history, but Black history did not start with slavery.)
Although the Indian Ocean slave trade, capturing people from East Africa bound for manual labour work in the Arab world, does not seem as bad as the horrors of the West Africa to the Americas journey (a fact the museum was keen to repeatedly point out), this was still a slave trade that occurred. And perhaps, what is most disturbing of all is that existed and was very much present long until recent times.
Black Arabs?
Whenever I don my all black attire and most elaborate of butterfly abayas, I am very often mistaken for a local. However, I am soon found out to be a foreigner once my inability to speak like a Khaliji becomes apparent (despite all my years of studying Arabic, the local dialect is one I am still struggling to understand, much to my great frustration!) There are however, many other darker skinned inhabitants of this country whose belonging is based on more than their dressing habits. Whenever I would see these darker skinned Qataris I would often wonder how they had reached these shores (ironically, a thought not too dissimilar to the ‘where are you really from’ questions that irks many of us living in Diaspora).
Finally, at Bin Jelmood House I was able to find a response to my curiosities. The answer in particular coming in one of the last rooms of the museum where artist Fatima Shaddad recounts the her family’s history, specifically focussing on her father’s journey to Qatar by way of the Horn of Africa and the Emirates.
It is a harrowing watch and Fatima is visibly pained retelling the details, the worst of which for me coming when she told the for story of her grandmother who, defiant and refusing to give into slavery, ended up dying from the effects of having boiling water repeatedly thrown over her back while she was tied to the trunk of a tree – a sight that was witnessed by her young children.
This story occurred in the 20th century, less than 100 years ago.
Fast forward to the present day and following the abolition of slavery, many former slaves are seemingly fully integrated into local life and enjoy full benefits as a national. From the outside perspective at least, it does seem in many ways that a national of African descent is equally treated (considered?) as much as a Qatari as their other Arab originated countrymen. At times as a I stroll through the shopping malls I catch their eye, seeing if there’s any hint of an incoming black nod – if you know, you know – however, so far, it doesn’t seem to register. I wonder then, how do such people view themselves in the context of African and Black history. Do they even consider themselves as part of such peoples?
While I’m not a fan of labels, I suppose I would consider myself a pan-Africanist. When one takes into consideration shared struggles across our histories, Africans and all peoples stemming from the continent (which equates to the whole world if you believe some theories) are in my eyes all one people. While I may have never been to or have any family in the States, I still feel that looking at the situation of African-Americans over there is like looking in the mirror, or hearing the story of a long lost relative. Despite the distance and time that has passed, we are still inextricably linked and the sooner we realise it, the better.
The disconnect across East and West Africa is perhaps more pronounced than that between Black brethren across the Atlantic, and while culturally there may be more disparities, we still share many of the same experiences and history. Maybe with more education and knowledge about each other, we will be able to join forces and unity for a better progression of our peoples across the globe.
Maybe this topic is what one of my much-dreamed of, currently non-existent books will be about.
Ruminations of a Seeker 