There are car dealers on both sides of the road – Rolls-Royce on the right, Ferrari on the left – leading to the bridge over to the Pearl in this new district of Doha. Located on a man-made island to the north of Qatar's capital, a mixture of big houses with private beaches, 50-floor luxury hotels and marinas for the ultra-rich, the Arab Riviera, as its promoters have dubbed it, is the emirate's most recent folly.
But the sale of alcoholic beverages was banned on the island at the end of last year and gloom has gripped many residents. The managers of top-notch restaurants and boutiques complain sales have dropped by about half.
"When we heard the news we thought it was the end of the world," says a waitress at the Mango Tree, a Thai restaurant where the bottles behind the bar have been replaced by water jugs. The foreigners who once turned up in droves on weekend evenings, filling the cafe terraces of this golden enclave, have taken refuge in the hotels at West Bay, the business quarter of Doha, where alcohol still flows freely.
"We'll die of boredom here," says the proprietor of a coffee stall. » | Benjamin Barthe | Guardian Weekly | Tuesday, February 21, 2012
