Dr Cara Doherty, who was here last week on honeymoon
to familiarise her husband with Doha, where she grew up,
tells Anand Holla she roots for Qatar with pride thanks
to its culture of inclusivity and welcoming embrace

At a sunshiny corner of the stately tea lounge at Four Seasons Hotel Doha, Dr Cara Doherty and husband Christopher Lang take in relaxing views of the sea while helping themselves to some cookies and tea.
Seemingly immersed in the rosy afterglow of their honeymoon, the young couple says it was easy to choose Doha as their destination. “We had already been to most of the usual vacation places. We came here to just relax and enjoy,” Christopher says.
For Cara, though, the reason ran thicker, and deeper, into a glorious past. “For me, it feels like home,” she says, looking out into the morning sun and the sea, “I wanted to revisit my favourite places. When I come to Qatar, I instantly relax. My blood pressure drops and I sleep much better,” she says, smiling.
Cara grew up in Qatar till her adolescence. Even after, she kept coming back regularly, and now is happy to familiarise her husband with it. “I am very proud about Qatar. I always rave about it to people in England,” she says.
Born in Glasgow, Cara came to Doha when she was all of eight months old. “My parents were a bit nervous because around 10 years before that, when they had gone to Dubai, the plane stopped here,” she says, “And it was just an endless desert, then.”
Cara’s father Charles was a civil engineer, who worked for a British company and later switched to Qatar Petroleum (QP).
“I had an amazing childhood,” she says, recalling growing up in an apartment and later a villa in Al Hilal, “I went to Doha English Speaking School, and later, one year to Doha College, before I left for a boarding school in the UK at age 13.”
Those were great times for Cara. “Every weekend, we would go to the desert, or the beaches at Dukhan or Umm Saeed. We would do trips to the sand dunes, frequent beach clubs, or go to Al Zubara fort. Then, when dad moved to QP, every Friday, we would head out to the sailing club at Ras Abu Abboud. Friday was the best day of the week because it meant family time,” she recalls.
Among the fondest memories, says Cara, were “making barbecues on the beach on a Friday after a day of sailing, and watching the sunset on the beach with a dozen other families around.”
During the Gulf War, in 1991, Cara and her mother Mary had to return home to Scotland as “all the British expat women and children were being evacuated.”
Cara says, “So, we went back to Scotland and it was just so boring. I would look at the kids there and wouldn’t know what to do,” she says, laughing, “That’s because, in Qatar, I was used to going outside and playing, enjoying the sunshine, playing tennis, going to dance classes — ballet, tap and jazz. In Scotland, nobody played outside and it was raining all the time.”
In those few interim months that Cara spent there, she hated it so much that she “even ran away from the school there.” “And I was so much happier to be back here,” she says, beaming.
Among her friends at school, here, was a member of the Royal family. “We were good friends,” Cara reminisces, “She would come to pick me up from home, with the three landcruisers and the bodyguards around. Since the royal family is so lovely, relaxed and welcoming, our friendship wasn’t made into a big deal.”
While her parents continued to live in Qatar, Cara continued college in England, making trips to Doha during holidays, twice or thrice a year. “At the university there, people were very interested in where I lived. So I had a few friends come down here and stay with me.”
Through her teens, the transforming urban landscapes of Qatar continued to surprise and excite Cara. “I remember the change was very sudden,” she says.
“Back in the day, we didn’t have shopping malls — only the Souq Waqif, which was lovely. Some expats probably miss out on that experience of being properly down with the local people and culture, and all the banter you have with the shopkeepers, or take in the charm of the old buildings and mosques. My mum and I loved that,” says Cara.
On one fine holiday, Cara’s mother told her about Qatar getting its first mall — The Mall. “There was just one shop inside it, but to be in a mall that had air-conditioning and a café, felt amazing. It was a great new experience.”
Then, on one of her subsequent Doha trips, the City Centre mall had sprung up. “We would go for lunch there and there was only Carrefour and a couple of cafés. As you would have your lunch, you could look out and all you would see would be vast stretches of desert. Only Ritz-Carlton stood in the distance, and of course, the only other landmark in West Bay was the Sheraton Hotel,” she says.
“Every winter, summer or spring, I would return to find a new tower or a mall. First, there would be two buildings, then five, and then 50, and now there are so many that you can’t see anything,” she says, laughing.
But did she like this changing urban topography?
“I know Dubai quite well as my friend lived there. There, the atmosphere was completely different. In Qatar, I saw that they were developing (the urban-scape) in a very controlled, planned way, and were constantly learning from the lessons that Dubai learnt the hard way,” Cara reasons.
Dubai, she feels, geared it far too much towards the tourists and the outsiders, unlike in Qatar, where they are being “a lot more culturally sensitive” when building new properties and facilities. “In Qatar, they pre-plan what they want to do, have a vision and then they just go for it,” she points out.
Once Cara finished university and started working as a doctor, she had fewer holidays. Her Qatar vacations thinned. Two years ago, her father retired, and she hadn’t come here since, until last week. However, about four years ago, soon after she and Christopher — who she met at University — started out in their relationship, they came to Doha for a holiday.
“I think he got to understand me much better when he saw where I was brought up and the culture I was brought up in,” Cara says.
Christopher remembers it being a lovely holiday. “Even from then till now, Qatar has changed a lot,” he says, “We had gone to The Pearl, which they were still building. There was maybe one restaurant open and two were about to open, and I was struck by these 50 giant cranes building skyscrapers. I just felt an amazing energy about the place. Coming back now, four years later, I see it’s all built up. It’s crazy.”
Having known Qatar so closely, the couple feels unsettled to read the Western media’s distorted perspective on Qatar, back in England. “It upsets me a lot,” says Cara.
Early on in their relationship, when Christopher asked Cara where she is from, it took her five minutes to answer, he says. “She was like, well, I was born in Glasgow. I am not Scottish. I have Scottish heritage but definitely not English… British perhaps, but I feel Qatari,” he recalls, throwing a glance at her, “You can see the influence of the Middle East and Qatar in her personality and outlook. It’s not an entrenched Western view; it’s much more worldly wise.”
“I feel extremely lucky and extremely blessed to have grown up here, and to have that Arab influence,” Cara says, her eyes twinkling, “The Arab culture is so inclusive, so welcoming, which is quite a contrast to the English culture which is rather standoffish. Arabs want you to enjoy their country and experience everything they can offer.”
Only the other day when they were relaxing at the beach, an Arab gentleman walked up to them to offer sweets. “He wanted us to taste them because his wife had made them,” Cara says.
Of all the goodness she has imbibed from the Qatari culture, Cara places family orientation on top. “That’s because it’s being lost now in the UK, whereas family is very important here. Self-respect as a woman, which wax and wanes in the UK, is something I have gained from this culture,” she says.
During this trip, the couple visited some of Cara’s favourite haunts such as Souq Asiri and Souq Waqif. “I love how they have done up the Souq to give it an authentic look, unlike the souqs in Dubai, some of which look like Disneyworld,” she says.
For Cara, one of the enduring visuals from this holiday would be what she saw at the Souq the other night. “We saw two unaccompanied Arab woman smoking a sheesha. That wouldn’t have happened a few years ago,” she says.
And how could their trip have ended without dining at the Chingari restaurant in Radisson Blu? “It’s my favourite restaurant in the whole world. It serves such amazing Indian food,” Cara says.
As they unwind and sip some more tea through their last few hours in Qatar, the newly married couple looks completely at home. It’s understandable, too. As Cara says, “My skin may not show it. But in my heart, I’m a Qatari.”