Blog posts about my experiences at Qatar Academy, before, during, and after my twelve-day incarceration in a Doha jail in May 2013 for allegedly insulting Islam.
Development aid industry is a failed industry. Sustainable development rests in the hand of the locals, not the big bilateral and multilateral development aid agencies. To be part of that I decided to turn down the job offer and to return to Nepal.
On February 12, 2013, feeling ready to return to Nepal, I turned down a job offer. All through my student life in Nepal as well as when studying, working, and traveling abroad, I had been doing a number of things in preparation for that eventuality to really fulfill a dream.
In February 2013, I had a job offer paying several thousand dollars a month. I either accepted it and continued on with my international teaching career or, as I had been contemplating for a while, turned it down and returned to Nepal to pursue a new career. I choose the latter.
The first month and a half back in Nepal following my ordeal in Qatar, I discovered a lot of people, both on social media and outside, who were interested in what I had to say and did. The attention, while flattering, made me quite uncomfortable, and at times embarrassed. But while on social media I gave the impression of doing decent enough job of moving on with my life, internally and also in my daily life, I was struggling greatly. With hardly any emotional and social support, I was having to deal with that on my own, by myself.
Returning to Nepal after twelve days in a Doha, Qatar, jail, I have made a number of interesting discoveries. One of them is the fact that I shouldn't travel to the Gulf at all and the other is that the charges of insulting Islam has, indeed, NOT been dropped.
Jailed for allegedly insulting Islam in Doha, Qatar, my cries for freedom were answered four years ago today (May 12, 2017). Then came (and I discovered) freedom cries (too).