Saturday morning Carly and I slept in and then had a beautiful breakfast, also included from the brunch the day before. We lounged in the pool as the pool boy periodically brought us fresh fruit on a stick. It was fun for me to be a guest instead of an employee. We didn’t wear sunscreen because Carly said there is so much dust in the air that the rays can’t get to you– people in Qatar actually get a Vitamin D deficiency because the sun can’t get through the dust.
We went to Education City to go see the library. It was hot and the streets were empty. We found the last parking spot near the library and went in to find it full of people. It’s a beautiful brand new library where the shelves of books are lit up. Carly had never been to the rare books section, and it was open!
There were also interactive screens that corrected common misconceptions and shared all the things that history tells us were discovered by the west, but were discovered in the East first. As the Hamilton quote says, “You have no control who lives, who dies, who tells your story.”
It was fun to walk around the books that had been around for so many years and think about what life was like when they were written.
We went back to the compound and had dinner with Ben, then the three of us ventured out to explore some neighborhoods.
This is the view of their compound from the inside:
And this is outside the walls:
Ben and Carly took me to the Pearl which is a neighborhood with more European architecture. It’s a man-made island. From above it looks like a Pearl, hence the name.
The Pearl was like a ghost town. There were so many tall buildings but I could feel the lack of people. It was so surprising to me how much I could feel the difference between an empty building and a full building when they look practically the same.
One section was designed to look like Venice with canals and everything.
There was an indoor mall and some shops and restaurants that opened to the outside. Some were open with a few patrons but most of them were closed.
There was one place where all of the ladies in their robes were all hanging out. Everything was very clean and new. It almost felt like we were the VIPs who were allowed to stay in the park after it had closed.
The Library and the Pearl