Some stereotypes do turn out to be true

Last Wednesday I had possibly the strangest day I've had in a long time. It was one odd occurance after another, and my internal schedule for the day was just completely thrown off. By far the strangest occurance within the strangest day was Andrew's arrest by the Qatari police. The story goes something like this:

Background: The Asian Games are coming to Doha, and a few days before the opening ceremony, the Asian Games torch ran all over the city, including through Education City. They closed two of the three security gates to E.C. for the entire afternoon, and the third was to be closed for approximately 15 minutes. People came from all over Qatar to watch the torch in Education City, probably because Her Highness Sheikha Mozah held a ceremony on campus to celebrate. Andrew had to teach an SAT prep class at 4, but we ran out quickly to get lunch, because it was 2:30 and neither of us had eaten yet, due to the aforementioned craziness of the day.

The Misunderstanding: As Andrew and I were pulling up to the Education City campus through the only open security gate, we noticed that they were only allowing people with Education City parking stickers in, they'd blocked the gate to the public. Most people were being forced to make the U-turn in front of the gate and go park somewhere else. The first security officer pointed us forward, the second told us to stop and then pointed to the U-Turn. The third security officer said "No, no... sticker" and pointed us ahead. Since we had already made the U-turn and both of the gates for the exit were open, Andrew and I thought that he was telling us to go through the exit into our parking garage.

The Arrest: As Andrew and I are pulling into the parking garage, we hear sirens entering behind us, and Andrew says he thinks he should get out of their way and pulls off to the side. The police SUV pulls up in front of him and two motorcycles block him in from behind. At this point Andrew says "is this for me?" Four police offers jump out of their cars and start yelling at us in Arabic, and when we don't react because we don't speak Arabic, they open the front door and pull Andrew out, slam him up against the car, and frisk him. They're still shouting in Arabic, Andrew keeps saying "What the fuck?" and I'm staying inside the car but shouting "No Arabic" and "La Arabe" (which means "no Arabic" in Arabic). So eventually they remember the word license, Andrew gives him his driver's license and they determine that there are no weapons on car or person. My first thought is that I need an Arabic speaker, but as soon as I picked up my phone they tell me (or I should say motion to me) to put it down. They manage to get Andrew to understand that they want him to follow them back to the gate guard stand. This all took place at an extremely high volume, but once in the car I finally got a chance to call Dave and told him to call one of our Arabic speaking staff and have him meet us at the gate.

As soon as we reached the gate, they pulled Andrew out of the car again, handcuffed him, and put him for awhile in the back of the cops' SUV, but then moved him inside the guard stand while we waited for Ahmed, our helpful CMU staffer. While waiting, I found the only English speaking policeman and had the following conversation:
Me: Excuse me, can you tell me what is going on with my friend?
Police: No ma'am, nothing wrong, just waiting for torch.
at this exact moment, a Qatari junior high student runs through the gate with the Asian Games torch.
Me: No, no... the police took my friend inside, can you tell me what's happening.
Police: Oh, what nationality your friend?
Me: He's American.
Police: Oh no, no have American
Me: He looks Chinese, but he's American
Police: Oh yes China man, he right there (points through open window at Andrew)
Me: Yes I can see him too, can tell me what they will do with him.
Police: Right there. (points again)
Me: Ok, never mind, shu'kran (thank you).

At this point Ahmed arrived. He's a very religious man, which is easy to see in this culture because of his beard and the way he wears his traditional dress, and as soon as the cops saw him it was like Andrew and I were completely different people. Ahmed asked me what happened, he translated it to them, they did the same with Andrew, they all came to the conclusion that it was a misunderstanding, but they couldn't let him go without telling their supervisor (who was with the Sheikha and obviously we weren't a priority at that point.) They allowed him a phone call to get his backup to teach the SAT prep class, and an hour later, they let him out. He has bruises and cuts on his wrist, but otherwise he's ok. I wish I had pictures, but I think the police would have put me in jail too if I had tried to take pictures of this rediculous scene.

The next day: Andrew had to go to the police station to pick up his license (with Ahmed, our CMU security guy, and Education City's head security officer). At this point we discovered it wasn't the police at all that we were dealing with, it was the Qatari version of the Secret Service.

And that was just the craziest part of the craziest day is a really crazy week. I slept most of the weekend.