No one desires to be on the primary flight out of Qatar – missiles are flying above | News World

Metro’s money expert Rosie Murray-West is one in all 300,000 British nationals currently within the Middle East coming to terms with missile strikes across the region.

Here, she tells Metro how life currently is in Doha, Qatar, where she is staying with husband Paul, the clamour for flights back home, and the way it’s business as usual for Qataris.

‘I used to be on the Museum of Islamic Art when the primary alarm went off, a yellow warning in Arabic flashing on my phone accompanied by a shrill noise.

‘I couldn’t read it, however the red warning triangle made it obvious what it was, and I headed straight to the hotel we’d been staying in.

‘Two days later and it seems unbelievable you’d get so used to alarms so quickly. Within the conference centre we’re staying in they go off on everyone’s phones concurrently, asking everyone to steer clear of the windows.

‘They’re normally followed by several ‘thuds’ of missiles being intercepted, and a puff of smoke within the blue sky distant. Nothing has come near enough to here to make the windows rattle, but there was smoke on the horizon.

‘In our conference centre, the staff are sanguine, telling us that Qatar has probably the greatest air defence systems on the earth. One used to work in air defence, so we assume he knows what he’s talking about.

‘Outside, life goes on. It’s Ramadan, so the streets are sleepy within the morning but get busier towards sunset. I visited the local hypermarket today and it was filled with people buying food to interrupt their fast.

‘There was no feeling of panic or worry, with plenty of youngsters out with their parents of their best Ramadan clothes selecting sweets, dates and toys.

‘Large public ‘iftar’ meals to have fun sunset and the top of fasting have mostly been cancelled, with schools closed and the civil service working remotely so the Ramadan celebrations are mostly revolving around people’s homes.

‘Within the centre we’re staying it it feels curiously secure. Everyone seems to be, after all, preoccupied with getting home and there’s much talk concerning the Polish delegates who made it home overland via Riyadh last night.

‘Rumours abound that if Abu Dhabi opens its airspace, Qatar could be next. We currently have a flight booked for 01:50 within the morning (a second rebooking) however it seems unlikely it will occur.

‘Rebooking flights takes time, even whenever you think they probably won’t occur. I spent most of yesterday within the queue for British Airways’ live chat – 702 once I began, and once I finally spoke to someone, they’d booked us on a flight via Abu Dhabi without asking us that was cancelled ten minutes later.

‘One other two hours within the queue and I had a flight for the early hours of tomorrow morning that now looks to be cancelled too. It will help if the airline booking apps were up thus far, but Qatar Airways keeps changing its mind over whether or not we must always go to the airport.

‘There’s a certain fatalism that takes over at times like this – I’m sure we’ll get home in some unspecified time in the future, but no one desires to be the primary flight to take off when flights resume, given we’ve all seen the missiles within the sky.

‘It feels less scary, and more inconvenient in the mean time, and I’ve definitely spent more time learning about airline rebooking policies than I even have fascinated with what happens if the constructing is hit.

‘I’d spent three days before this seeing the museums and deserts of Qatar – on Saturday night we visited the desert and looked out from the inland sea towards Saudi, the UAE and Iran. To get there we drove past the gas plant that has just been hit by a drone. We ate within the Souk, and I watched families have fun within the square after the Iftar cannon was fired at sunset.

‘Qatar seemed so peaceful and prosperous – everyone I spoke to praised its safety, hospitality and high living standards. Today that seems less of a certainty and more of a desert mirage.’

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