Doha is a city on guard, on the lookout for a World Cup from which it is not very clear what it expects and who it expects.
Two days before the inauguration, the Qatari capital has a ghostly air.
It is 9.30 in the morning (7.30 in Spain) and on the Corniche promenade, one of the main arteries, there are no more souls than those of a long line of police officers intermingled with cleaning service personnel.
All shelter.
There is no more precious and scarce asset than a protective shade from the already scorching 30 degrees and the 40% humidity that already suffocates.
The bodies sweat like showers, at least those of a dozen, not more, of brave passers-by without uniform.
Those who wear it get soaked for nothing.
No one to watch, not even traffic to direct because everything is cut and fenced off.
And because in this capital, for the moment,
there is no foot traffic.
Except for the traffic, silence, silence.
On the streets, by day and by night.
In Doha you drive, you don't hang around.
Nothing to do with what is supposedly expected.
If so, a total needle change.
In reality, all of Doha is a fenced off compound, fences, fences and more fences.
The police checkpoint is seconded by the garbage collectors who insist on collecting the garbage that is not there, because there is no one who stains.
But it is what it touches.
Both of them, gendarmes and cleaners, assume that they will soon have homework.
In Doha everyone assumes.
Also the staff with a yellow vest that tells the pedestrian where to cross an avenue, as if the traffic lights were in another language.
They are so arbitrarily tuned and there are so few pedestrians that they are invited to cross with the stick figure in red to avoid waiting four and five minutes in full sun and with hot coals on the asphalt.
There are pedestrian guides just like there are sherpas that indicate where to exit and enter the subway or conveniently point out which escalator goes up and which one goes down.
There are staff, lots of staff, of all kinds, at all hours and everywhere.
They are all helmsmen.
It doesn't matter that in the Bay area —the one enabled for the fans, the
fake
and the originals— and that sequel to Manhattan that puts the financial and administrative core of the capital through the roof, there is no clientele to protect from traffic or serve as a guide for the subway train.
A meter ahead of the arrival of the World Cup in which the most scrupulous in the universe could snack on the ground.
A palace work, all resplendent.
Three lines is enough.
As happens abroad, in the absence of fans, whether or not they arrive en masse (the organization, optimistic, foresees a million), there are many more monitors, no matter what subject, than passengers.
The props are
not missing
soccer player, of course, with metal balls embedded between the grip bars.
They are supposed to be disassembled by no one after the World Cup.
After all, they will have more usefulness later than the seven stadiums of the afterlife built for the great football event.
In Qatar, when the Qatari league arrives, football is not that great.
There are World Cup motifs all over the city, no matter where you look.
Evocative graffiti on the ground, insinuating streetlights, little flags here and there..., on the asphalt and through the clouds.
The images of numerous soccer players fasten the infinite skyscrapers that surpass the celestial horizon.
Guardado, Neuer, Bale, Luis Suárez, Modric… And Pedri, endless image of the building of the Institute of Planning and Statistics.
It is common, of course, for cities to dress up for the World Cup, but there is something unique in Doha: there are not many, far from it, local claims.
The images of the Qatari soccer players are barely perceived in a more diffuse way on the steps of some metro stop.
It is not possible to think, for example, of a Buenos Aires dolled up with a Cristiano canvas.
Qatar as a football Switzerland.
Neutral even with his own.
Qatar 2022 is the monoculture of practically all the local television channels, although in the zapping of this Thursday one is left astonished when coming face to face with a Manresa-Barcelona of the ACB.
In the scenes referring to the World Cup, fake fans abound, those recruited from home to cheer on whoever it is, it doesn't matter if they don't know the colors of the flag or the most basic lineup.
standing scaffolding
Work and school activity has been placed in brackets.
The cranes are stationary on floors 45 or who knows if on a 50 or 60 floor. On this Friday morning, movement was only noticed in an apartment and office complex located on a main avenue behind the Qatar Energy offices.
Half a dozen buses from another era with their windows wide open let the workers in and out.
In the adjoining blocks, luxurious hotels like the ones they are building now, where security has been reinforced.
In those with a few less stars, too.
It is mandatory to go through a security arch while they check every package.
In the highest category, if you want to visit the bar or restaurant, the doorman on duty demands without hesitation your passport, which is immediately duly scanned.
Yes, it must be true.
Of course, in Doha, which seems like a city between parentheses with the planetary focus on the neck, there is no shortage of details that suggest that, indeed, this Sunday the most unusual World Cup in history begins.
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