ALL OVER, Qatar – It’s 10:15 a.m. on Thursday, and in a suburb roughly 20 minutes from downtown Doha, a quest begins. This isn’t just any quest; it’s a search for an ideal, a grand tradition of stuffed faces, high-speed human collisions, inevitable-and-unnecessary political debates and glorious afternoon naps.
I love Thanksgiving, and not for how it came to be, but for what happens on the final Thursday in November and for what it represents. For the stuffing, in two senses. For three NFL games played on the same day in the middle of the week. For family, gratitude, couches, desserts.
Upon waking, the mind flashes to the same place. I’m not home. Not with family. Miss my kids. And, short of some sort of transportive miracle, I won’t see them or watch any NFL football until after returning home. Not to worry. There’s plenty of fútbol, if not football, here; four games on Thursday alone, in fact. Hence the quest.
