Qatar

Doha, Qatar, the city that is home to Al Jazeera, feels like an Arabian-tinged Indianapolis, a million people, an estimated 75 percent of them foreign workers, inhabiting a propagating cluster of bright, faceless glass buildings, a place with an unhurried air befitting a country in which the average per capita income is around $88,000. In spite of the army of cockeyed cranes hovering over a spate of construction projects across the city—a building boom fueled by the $50 billion in oil and natural-gas income that flows to the country annually—Doha's lasting impression is one of mall-shopping and shisha clouds pillowing over café patios as men in thobes (white robes), pants, and ghutras (head scarves) take their satisfaction from gurgling water pipes.(Hooka's).