We started the morning with a trip to the farmer’s market that was key to Afsha’s businesswoman origin story. She was welcomed there by people as the triumphant queen returning to greet old collaborators. People shared what an influence she was at the market and how she’s pushed women into trying their hand at a home-based food business and so on. She’s a feminist icon? We already know this. 😇 It is amazing to hear it reinforced, all the same. Cherry on the cake for me was when she initially started to hand wave it away, but when someone said, “She really pushed me to come out and do this business”, she nodded and said “Yes, I actually did”. Every single instance of women work hard at their inner world, heal their mother wounds, and take up space in the world is worth shedding a tear over. We know that our parents aren’t setting out to break or hurt us. That’s just life. Living also means working on those hurts and pains, replacing them with a personal cheering squad. Afsha has done just that. It was beautiful to see her being called a “feminist flame” by the husband of 16+ years.

Our next Saturday morning stop was the Qatar National Library. National treasure is what this is. I love libraries for their own sakes. One thing I really enjoy about them is the built in serendipity. I grew up inside one and credit it with most of the capacity for curiosity my brother and I possess. You know you will meet within its categorised perfection, new books that will light up new paths. To call this library a beauty is to fail at words. Designed by Rem Koolhaas and OMA, it felt like a place to bring people and books and AV content and exhibition spaces into close proximity inside a sunlit space, so knowledge can cook organically. One is learning almost without realising it.

The heritage section in a sunken area evokes a different feeling. Here is a sensation of going into the recesses of the past to access history, with suitably darker panels, high walls, a labyrinthine setup with rare books and vellum and octets set about behind glass shelves. I had my first encounter of the close kind with an actual map from the 1700s that had a dragon at the farthest east.

Between the library and Education City with its beautiful buildings that house Georgetown, Texas A&M, Northwestern and more, the sight of students milling about, using the library and walking around with books sparked a yearning to be young again and get a do-over. Not a yearning I am often familiar with and so that feeling gave me a jolt.

From seeing references to Catara in maps dating a few hundred years ago, to Katara, the contemporary cultural centre in the evening, the day felt like a conceptual full circle. Afsha walked me through the kinds of activities one tends to see at the venue, all the lovely restaurants (including a cafe called “There there”. Can there be a better named spot for a spot of comfort?), the ongoing horse show with VVIP and VIP entrances, the amphitheatre and more. There was an impossibly green looking hill with a canopy of trees. Yet another instance of using available centre of town space intentionally and beautifully. Being a rich state is great. Having the vision to do something public spirited that goes beyond posturing – that there takes class and style.