ON THE JOB: Muhammad Hannan fixes a watch at his repair shop in Mansoura.
By Umer Nangiana
Muhammad Hannan made a choice 15 years ago. He decided to leave his modest business back home in Bangladesh and embraced the opportunity of moving to Qatar. Today he is happy he made that decision.
Sitting behind a tiny wooden box at one of the traffic intersections in Mansoura, this watch repairman earns QR2,000 a month and he says he saves up good enough money to feed himself and his family back home.
Not an educated man himself, Hannan intends to educate his three children. He sends his two boys to good schools back home in Barishal, where they live with their mother in a joint family. He says he saves enough money at the end of every month to afford better education for his children.
“The people of Qatar have been really kind and helpful to me. I have made many good friends here and I am happy that I decided to move to this place. Now my two other brothers are also here and we are doing really good,” Hannan tells Community.
He was running a small watch repair shop back in his hometown before arriving in Qatar in the February of 2000. Seeing no prospects of business growth, he had made the decision to leave his family behind and come to a land he knew nothing about.
He did not know the language, the culture, the laws, and above all he did not know if he would be able to find work here.
“When I arrived here, I remember from the airport I went straight to Muaither. Upon seeing a police vehicle, I had run away. I thought I would get into trouble. At least, this is what the police back home used to do. I did not know that the police here were not like that,” Hannan recalls.
He has many anecdotes, some of them funny, from the first month of his arrival in Doha. As he did not know the language, he found it hard to communicate with the locals. Muaither was the locality where his spent his initial days.
“So I came across this Qatari one day and I told him I was ‘jadeed’ (new) here. Somebody had told me that ‘jadeed’ is the word for new in Arabic and I knew only this word,” Hannan laughs. “He (the Qatari) gave me QR100 then,” he remembers.
Hannan was so naive that he thought QR100 was equivalent of 100 in his country’s currency but realised his folly soon. “I first got to know when I went to a shop and bought something and the shopkeeper asked for only QR2. I asked if he was okay, how could this be only for QR2,” recalls the watch repairer, laughing at his own ignorance in the early days. Hannan says he still remembers that first QR100 had lasted for 22 days!
“I cannot forget that act of generosity from that Qatari man. He had given me money in the time of my need. I can never forget those first QR100,” says Hannan.
Soon, he found his feet and was able to set up a watch repair shop. Gradually, he saw his business doing well and he started saving money to send back home to his family as he was married when he had arrived in Doha.
His eldest son is in grade 10 now. He intends to send him and his other two children to good educational institutions. He says Qatar is the best country in the Gulf to live and work. “It is safe and secure here. The people here in general are good and my sponsor in particular is a very good man. I go to see my family once very year but I know he would not stop me from going more than once if I want to,” says Hannan.
He has never faced any problem living in Doha except that the house rents have gone up sharply in recent times, he adds. Hannan can repair all kinds of watches, specially the automatic ones. He says, at times, he even gets to repair expensive brands like Rolex and Rado.
With his experience, Hannan says, he is able to mend and fix most of the watches, however, if he thinks he would not be able to do it, he tells it to the customer before opening the watch, advising him to take it to the company.
In 15 years, Hannan says he has seen most of Qatar and Dafna as a developing township attracts him the most. However, Muaither remains his favourite place as he has memories attached with the place.
