A modest family house

a modest dwelling

I pass this villa most mornings. It is abandoned now, the boundary wall is breached and, like so many of its kind, it is waiting for the bulldozers to move in. It sits on the C-Ring Road, at White Palace Junction. For all I know, it might even be the White Palace.
For this much is certain. There was a time, not so long ago, when even a Qatari citizen would have been proud and contented to raise a family in a villa like this. Not huge, but spacious, not imposing, but proportioned, with its high ceilings and slender-columned verandah. A wrap-around garden for the children and adequate parking for a family car. It's only blemish is the painfully cramped maid's annexe, (that little lean-to appendage back-left), but that could easily be rebuilt to humane proportions.
Sadly, the era of moderation represented by villas such as this is over. It is now de rigeur to flaunt riches, with fleets of Land Cruisers parked in the grounds of bloated mansions. And to feed this appetite, the demolition continues apace. Soon, there will be nothing to remind us of healthier times.
Except, of course, the painfully cramped maids' annexes. Some things don't change.