On Christmas Day we left for an all-inclusive resort in Qatar, the closest place with guaranteed nice weather. A country without Christmas trees too, but every few meters you would find an abandoned football stadium. Our beach was next to the 974 stadium, built from containers, where the French Super Cup will be played next week. The intention was that everything would be taken apart after the much-despised winter World Cup of 2022 and reassembled somewhere else, in a poor country, but they have not yet got around to that. There is no further information here about the Gulf state, except that Deutsche Welle has recently no longer been visible in the hotel rooms. Instead, we amuse ourselves with RT, a Russian channel where they consistently warn about US expansionism. Incoming president Donald Trump would like to annex Mexico and Canada in addition to Greenland.
I used to be against all-inclusive holidays, but since Lucie (9), Leah (7) and Frida van Roosmalen (3) I am a big supporter. We don’t think in countries but in chains. We make memories that we quickly forget, we take turns immersing ourselves in the chlorine among the children, and the rest of the time we lie with our books. We read each other excerpts from ‘Mankind will hear from me’, a great book by Joris van Casteren. It is not wanting to do anything, but also not being able to do it. Everything is officially already there. The panic in the eyes when you indicate at the reception that you want to go to the real world for a while. Wasn’t it much easier to have the world brought into the room? The entertainment consists of large puppets walking between tables of people eating. They are characters from children’s series and films. A minion, Chase from Paw Patrol. The highlight was a big Teddy Bear who sat next to me when I was alone for a while and asked if I wanted to take a picture of us with my phone. There are no Qataris. The staff comes from all over, the guests mainly from Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and the United Kingdom. We are a small society, where it is everyone for himself and the swimming pool is for all of us.
After four days it always disappoints me, but after returning home I immediately miss the great nothing.
“You’re not thinking again, are you?”, Eva asked when I shot up from my beach bed.
Marcel van Roosmalen writes a column on Mondays and Thursdays.