Mideast tour: I have been sleeping in a tent in Qatar

Staying in a hotel in Kuwait spoiled us. We had showers connected to our very bedrooms! We had internet access and carpet and could go to the bathroom in the middle of the night without stumbling thirty yards or more across toasty-hot rocks and sand.

I haven't posted in thirty-six hours or so, but for good reason.

Here was my yesterday:

Our security detail gives us a 3am call time for a 7am flight to Bahrain. We meet in the lobby, settle our hotel bill, and are ushered into a dark SUV. For the first time, I notice our friendly security guy Steve using a mirror on a stick to check under our car for bombs.

We drive to the "military side" of Kuwait International Airport. That means driving through lots of concrete barriers to a big open tarmac with lots of security signs and one special sign warning not only against taking photographs, but also against "drawing or any graphical representation." No sketching!

There's a waiting room that, like the majority of buildings on base, is basically an air-conditioned, bathroomless trailer; a 130 degree walk is required to get to the latrines, which means you never see yourself in a mirror except when you're sweaty and pissed off. We wait. We are treated very nicely by the staff. We learn that we are going to Qatar, not Bahrain. We also learn that our 7am plane arrived at 3:30am, dropped off four passengers, thus making room for us -- and then promptly took off at 4am. No one knows why. We wait around for options. Lots of people call lots of people. Our security says, "Welcome to military organization."

Turns out we've missed the only flight to Qatar that morning. Since we all got up around 2am, we're exhausted; security takes us back to Camp Arafjan in Kuwait, where we check into the barracks, sign out sets of linens, and sleep on bunk beds in a giant open bay where the military women have strung blankets from bunk to bunk to create a bit of privacy.

We are woken up a few hours later and told we have a flight. We head back to the same airport (NO DRAWING!), get our luggage scanned, and are driven across the tarmac to a tiny, tiny plane. It's about 127 degrees out; standing directly next to an airplane with the engine on, it must be 150. My entire Jen is burning. I urgently need to get on the plane, or I will cry. I start hopping back and forth like I have to go to the bathroom, which is apparently what I do when I feel like I'm in a microwave, about to explode.

Our pilots introduce themselves. Our plane is a Lear jet! And we are the only passengers! How the hell much did the government spend to deliver some jokes to our troops in Qatar?

We fly across the Persian Gulf and land in Qatar. We've left behind our handlers in Kuwait, and we have no idea who will be meeting us or where we'll be going from there. A driver arrives and we're loaded onto an ancient buses -- perhaps those actually used to take the Beatles on tour in the early sixties and kept unrepaired for authenticity's sake. They are the same buses that cart in Indian laborers to the bases two dozen at a time, a result of the privatization of war and the fact that Kuwaitis (and Qataris), in the words of our security, "don't work." Nearly everyone in these countries who ever sells you something or cleans the bathrooms you use is Indian. The Kuwaitis and Qataris are, as a result of the grand accident of nature that gave them oil, repellently arrogant.

We're taken to the Immigration station at Al Udeid Airbase, where we have to leave our luggage outside and sit for a long time in a large open bay with chairs arranged in neat rows. A plane of airmen has just come in, some of them a bit sexy in their flight suits, and they are in line ahead of us. I notice a few large posters and wall hangings -- one of them even made of a bedsheet -- with messages like "MADISON JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL SUPPORTS OUR TROOPS," and scribbled signatures all around. I think how snide I've been in the past -- I may have been party to such a project in elementary school, and what an obvious and sentimental thing to make, and who would want it? I'd never put such a thing in my house. But in a cold, open metal bay, dust in the air, the whole base a speck in the middle of a painfully uninhabitable desert, a bedsheet full of children's signatures is the sweetest thing imaginable.

I fall asleep in a chair and am woken by an Air Force woman who informs me that I need to cover my arms: "It's Qatari law." I stumble outside to my suitcase for a jacket. When we finally sign our immigration paperwork, I see that among the items prohibited by Qatari law is "Pornography (including swimsuit, muscle, and fitness magazines)." I think of the chiseled abs of the model on the cover of the Muscle & Fitness Hers in my backpack. My luggage goes through Customs without incident. We're on Al Udeid Airbase.

We'd originally been told we wouldn't have to do shows on the same day as our travel, but sometime on that day before we boarded the Lear jet, someone asked "Hey, would you do a show tonight at 20:30?" Of course! we replied. Later I remarked that, if you'd told us we had to do a show on zero sleep after being jerked around on flights, we'd have complained; if you ask us, though, we immediately step up to the call of duty. We're easily swayed!

The show was our first indoor show. We arrived just in time -- the audience was already seated and applauded as we entered the auditorium and ran up the side stairs, carrying backpacks, to backstage. After the show, we just sat down on the edge of the stage to sign photos. It was informal and felt organic.

We were shown to our tent. After Kuwait, we were itching for a more "military" experience, but this was the worst night of sleep of my life.

More soon -- I've just done my second show in Qatar at As Sayliyah Army base, I've been blogging from backstage, and it's time for a meet & greet.