Sunday
Sick. Sad. Drained. Coughing up screeds of green phlegm. The morning after England’s defeat by France coincides with a heavy case of Doha flu. This has been a place of coughs and chills. Doctors say Doha has basically never had this many people in it and people = germs. Descriptions from sufferers range from being run over by a truck to my own strain, which feels like being expertly beaten up by special service agents using bludgeons, snooker cues and socks full of wet sand. My flatmate Jonathan Wilson asks a woman in the lobby for help finding a doctor. She marches upstairs, squeezes my arm and says firmly, yes, you have a fever, you will be fine, drink one cup of coffee. OK, thanks. So … you’re a doctor? “No,” she says. “But I am Indian.”
