Source: Radio New Zealand
Missiles are seen in the skies over Doha on March 3. MAHMUD HAMS/AFP
The family car is filled with petrol and packed with supplies and go bags for a hasty escape.
But for now, a New Zealand family living in Qatar’s capital, said they would stay where they were while loud booms could be heard in the distance.
Since Israel and the United States launched an attack on Iran on Saturday, a number of countries in the Middle East have been hit by missile strikes including Qatar.
“If you’re calm and prepared, that’s probably the best thing that we can do,” Kathryn Rush said her Doha home.
Motorists drive past a plume of smoke rising from a reported Iranian strike in the industrial district of Doha on March 1. MAHMUD HAMS / AFP
She and her husband were oil and gas lawyers, meaning Doha was somewhere with work in their field.
Rush and their two children, Nick who’s 11 and 9-year-old Emily, moved over from Wellington at the end of December.
But now things had changed.
“It’s very reminiscent of Covid,” Rush said.
“We’ve spent the first few months getting ourselves into dance classes and bits and pieces, football clubs and things like that.
“So all of that’s now on hold as everyone has to stay at home as much as they can, my husband is working from home, the kids are home-schooling,” she said.
“Things are happening, you don’t know if it’s going to happen to you or not, and you’re just waiting and try to stay positive in the meantime.”
Rush was trying to stay positive for her young children too.
“The booms, you hear the booms and some of those sound closer than others… so they can be relatively loud,” she said.
“I popped outside and my daughter was on a trampoline tonight just to say ‘oh, do you want to come inside, those were quite loud’ and she said ‘yeah and there were some flashes in the sky too but I want to do some more trampolining’.”
Rush felt it was important to acknowledge with her children what was happening, “but not to be freaked out by it”.
“My 11-year-old is quite smart and quite onto it and is relatively are of what’s going on, but he’s settled in really nicely to school here, he’s got friends from all sorts of different countries and I think they probably talk about it a little bit as well,” she said.
For now, Rush felt comparatively safe – their house was among about 100 in a compound and all were low-rise.
They’re also to the north of Doha’s centre and airport, in the opposite direction to the American base further south.
For now, it felt like an added layer of safety, she said.
“We’re in an older compound… and the villas are really sturdy… so I don’t feel that we’re in as much of a target zone as perhaps some of the other areas.”
New Zealand’s advice to citizens remained to shelter in place but Rush said they would strongly consider leaving if the advice was upgraded.
“It would probably have to get a lot worse, I think, before we’d feel like we desperately wanted to get out,” she said.
The only real option was to drive to Saudi Arabia.
“I feel safer on the ground at the moment than I would in the air.”
Rush was sleeping fully clothed in case she had to quickly move in the night.
She and her neighbours regularly check on each other, but she said it felt like there was not much to check during the ongoing waiting for whatever happened next.
“It feels a bit probably like a Covid lockdown, except for the sound of the occasional loud boom.
“The car is full of petrol and packed with effectively camping gear and the usual kind of go back scenarios like water and that kind of thing, sunscreen, so you know we are prepared – if we have to go we have to go – but where that would be going is a little uncertain.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
