‘Nobody wants to be on the first flight out of Qatar – missiles are being intercepted above’
Metro’s money expert Rosie Murray-West is one of 300,000 British nationals currently in the Middle East coming to terms with missile strikes across the region.
Here, she tells Metro how life currently is in Doha, Qatar, where she is staying with husband Paul, the clamour for flights back home, and how it’s business as usual for Qataris.
‘I was at the Museum of Islamic Art when the first alarm went off, a yellow warning in Arabic flashing on my phone accompanied by a shrill noise.
‘I couldn’t read it, but the red warning triangle made it obvious what it was, and I headed straight to the hotel we’d been staying in.
‘Two days later and it seems unbelievable you’d get so used to alarms so quickly. In the conference centre we’re staying in they go off on everyone’s phones simultaneously, asking everyone to stay away from the windows.
‘They’re usually followed by several ‘thuds’ of missiles being intercepted, and a puff of smoke in the blue sky far away. Nothing has come near enough to here to make the windows rattle, but there has been smoke on the horizon.
‘In our conference centre, the staff are sanguine, telling us that Qatar has one of the best air defence systems in the world. One used to work in air defence, so we assume he knows what he’s talking about.
‘Outside, life goes on. It’s Ramadan, so the streets are sleepy in the morning but get busier towards sunset. I visited the local hypermarket today and it was full of people buying food to break their fast.
‘There was no feeling of panic or worry, with plenty of children out with their parents in their best Ramadan clothes choosing sweets, dates and toys.
‘Large public ‘iftar’ meals to celebrate sunset and the end of fasting have mostly been cancelled, with schools closed and the civil service working remotely so the Ramadan celebrations are mostly revolving around people’s homes.
‘In the centre we’re staying it it feels curiously safe. Everyone is, of course, preoccupied with getting home and there’s much talk about the Polish delegates who made it home overland via Riyadh last night.
‘Rumours abound that if Abu Dhabi opens its airspace, Qatar might be next. We currently have a flight booked for 01:50 in the morning (a second rebooking) but it seems unlikely this will happen.
‘Rebooking flights takes time, even when you think they probably won’t happen. I spent most of yesterday in the queue for British Airways’ live chat – 702 when I started, and when I finally spoke to someone, they’d booked us on a flight via Abu Dhabi without asking us that was cancelled ten minutes later.
‘Another two hours in the queue and I had a flight for the early hours of tomorrow morning that now looks to be cancelled too. It would help if the airline booking apps were up to date, but Qatar Airways keeps changing its mind over whether or not we should go to the airport.
‘There’s a certain fatalism that takes over at times like this – I’m sure we’ll get home at some point, but nobody wants to be the first flight to take off when flights resume, given we’ve all seen the missiles in the sky.
‘It feels less scary, and more inconvenient at the moment, and I’ve definitely spent more time learning about airline rebooking policies than I have thinking about what happens if the building is hit.
‘I’d spent three days before this seeing the museums and deserts of Qatar – on Saturday night we visited the desert and looked out from the inland sea towards Saudi, the UAE and Iran. To get there we drove past the gas plant that has just been hit by a drone. We ate in the Souk, and I watched families celebrate in the square after the Iftar cannon was fired at sunset.
‘Qatar seemed so peaceful and prosperous – everyone I spoke to praised its safety, hospitality and high living standards. Today that seems less of a certainty and more of a desert mirage.’