a flat screen planted in the sand

  During the less hot months, the Qataris like to meet in camps, sometimes luxurious, in the middle of the desert.  On Sunday, November 20, during the opening match of the World Cup, Qatar-Ecuador, they did not deviate from this tradition.

  Benches arranged in a U under a grove of palm trees, a circle of large stones to delimit the hearth and a flat screen 2 meters wide, connected to a satellite antenna: it is from this camp, both rudimentary and luxurious,  erected in a stony plain in the north of Qatar, that Abdallah Al-Thani, a thirty-year-old member of the reigning family of the emirate, will follow the matches of the World Cup.

  Like many inhabitants of the country, this young entrepreneur, owner of a company importing sports equipment, would not have departed for anything from the tradition that, during the cooler months of the year  , Qataris rush into the desert.  Some only spend the weekend there, others settle there for whole weeks.

  A way for these Arabs of the Gulf, passed in three generations from the camel to the Porsche and from the mud houses to the marble palaces, to maintain their nomadic roots.  "Pitching a tent, fueling a fire, sleeping in the desert, it's part of my DNA," says Abdallah.  The country is young, Bedouin blood still flows through our veins.  "We have a proverb back home," said Salem Al-Kuwari, a cousin of Abdallah.  Those who do not know their past have no future.  »