Ex-pat struggles transform outlook
After a health scare, Marguerette Heding moves reluctantly to Qatar with her Kiwi architect husband Philip and teenage daughter Isabella. Struggling to deal with the ex-pat community, Marguerette strikes out on her own and is drawn into the fiercely protected society of Qatari women.
Privy to an all but closed society few ever get to see — particularly, a wine-loving, dog-owning, infidel — Marguerette is surprised to discover how empowered many Qatari women are.
She is also forced to confront her own personal challenges.
A chance meeting with Osama bin Laden’s daughter-in-law and first wife eventually leads her back to New Zealand.
Fascinating, shocking and humorous in equal measure, All Veils Are Off is a revealing account of Heding’s eight years living in Qatar.
What inspired you to write All Veils Are Off?
It was the positive responses I was getting from the emails I was sending to family and friends during my eight years of living in Qatar. Unbeknownst to me, these emails were being forwarded on to other people until I started getting a large following with complete strangers reaching out and suggesting I write a book; even though my family were saying this, somehow strangers saying it carried more weight.
You talk about the hand of Allah guiding you to Qatar — for better or worse? There was some divine, organising intelligence at work, whether it is labelled Allah, God, a Higher Power, which guided me to Qatar. The “signs” kept appearing: words relating to Islam constantly popping up in my crosswords; a strange feeling of butterflies and restlessness in my stomach; a mortifying incident on an international flight when my 13-year-old daughter Isabella freaked out, thinking some Arabic men had to be hijackers and my realisation that I didn’t want her to have this distorted view of Arabic people . . . In hindsight I would come to appreciate the “hand of Allah” guiding me to Qatar but at the beginning I was resentful about having to “submit” — annoyingly aware that Islam, the religion of Qatar, means to submit.
In your memoir, you talk a lot about the tricky ex-pat community and life in Qatar. How did you deal with the former and cope with the latter? You feel very vulnerable when you first move to a new country and start all over. Unfortunately, this vulnerability and eagerness to find friends can make you a victim to unscrupulous people; in my case, a borderline psychotic that derived a sick sort of pleasure in tormenting me. You are sort of forced by loneliness and circumstance to mix with people
you wouldn’t normally associate with back in your home country. But as my confidence grew — I soon discovered my “tribe” was out there, I just had to get out and find them and I did with the “Out and Abouters”, an intrepid group of ladies that explored Qatar. And then, remarkably with a group I was always told would be off limits — Qatari women.
What surprised you most about the Qatari women you spent time with? How empowered they were. For the most part these women were not downtrodden or powerless living an idle, bored life in a gilded cage. They were well-educated, smart businesswomen proud and protective of their culture and their faith.
Did you come back to New Zealand a changed person? Before moving to Qatar, I had fallen into the trap of living a fear-based existence. Having a child and then a health scare, had changed me and I worried more. This mirrored many of the ex-pats I met — struggling to settle because so many aspects of their lives were no longer under their control. The whole set-up in Qatar was about controlling the ex-pats . . . Naturally this created a lot of negativity and questionable behaviour such as heavy drinking, bullying and overt racism. But it also provided the opportunity for growth. I could see first-hand what living a fear-based existence can do to you and had the realisation that though you can’t always control the way life goes, you can control your attitude towards it. There is no doubt that my experiences in Qatar empowered me to deal with the past years of Covid and lockdowns and not being able to be with my parents in Australia when they both died.