Underpants must be fitted into your fitting room

When I was in Doha last week a funny thing happened to me. I was in a department store and I was having a look around. I found myself in the menswear section and I saw the change room – on the door was a sign. The sign was written in both Arabic and English. It was obvious that it was written first in Arabic and then translated into English, for it read something like, “Underpants must be fitted into your fitting room”. Classic ESL signage – it was referring to the idea that you have to wear your undies when you are trying on a bathing suit. I thought, wow that’d make a funny picture, good for slide shows. So I pull out my camera, line up the shot and just as I’m about to click – the door opens. A very large Arab man, in full Lawrence of Arabia attire steps out and I have the camera pointed right at him. He looks me up and down and says something in angry Arabic (the best angry language out there, just surpassing German). He obviously thought that I was trying to get a shot of him, minus his dish-dash, perhaps in his appropriately fitted underpants. The color drained from my face and I start doing the little waves with both hands as if to say, “No, there has been some mistake, I wasn’t trying to take your naked photo sir.” That’s when the security guard happens to walk by. He looks at me, the angry man and my camera and says in stern broken English, “there are no pictures here!” all I could think was I’m about to be arrested for voyeurism in a country where they chop peoples hands off and give them lashes. This is not good. So in the pocket the camera goes with the speed of an intimidated gunslinger and I turn and walk away hoping that they don’t follow/arrest/beat-up/chop me in half. I guess they figured I was just a stupid tourist and let me go. The moral of the story? Take pictures of funny signs quickly and don’t get caught…

~Scott