Evening Sooking

So we went shopping yesterday. Did I buy stuff? You bet!

But first, we went to see glassworks. There's this little shop, we come in, there's glass all around. Little glasses, big glasses, jugs, vials, stoppers, bottles, vases, all kinds of transparent merchandise. Very nice. But we don't stop there. Immediately, my uncle leads us to another room, then another. I'm about to complain how I can't see anything if my eyeballs do not have enough time to rest on an object for at least a hundred milliseconds or so, when I see where we now are.

In front of me there's a kiln. It looks as if it's been there for a thousand years. You know the mud houses? Same architecture. But it is obvious it was as precisely made in its crudity as anything, and that it is very much functioning and functional. The only clues of the modern times were a huge bellows-substitute blower engine, the other one is an electric fan pointed at whoever is working the kiln at the moment.

The glassworkers seemed unfazed that we were there. Unless by fazed you mean showing us to a hundred-year-old bench sitting in a corner and bringing us four glasses of tea on a platter. They just continued to work as normal, and it was beautiful to watch. The dexterity with which they handled the tubular staves with bulbs of glowy glass on top was [insert your own word of admiration here, I'm fresh out]. The pitch proved effective: very soon we found ourselves in a car full of black-plastic-baggie-packed glass.

Black plastic baggies are the rule here. Who knows, maybe it's a matter of privacy? But I like being able to see what's in which bag I brought home. There are non-black baggies, like Stefanel's, for example, but the majority uses the black. Just like women here. As they carry, so do they wear.

After leaving the nice glassblowers, we went once more to the old city. A suq, to be exact. The one dedicated to food. (Like me, apparently. The others are starting to sweat about my striving to sample every snack stand we stroll by. I'll stick to it; so many sweet stuff here, it'd be a sin to skip them. Salties as well. I'll slim subsequently. This digression brought to you by the letter S.) The variety of foodstuffs around us made me intensely curious, especially since I could not satisfy it, since my Arabic does not extend to kinds of spices, and spice sellers do not generally have a college education, or actually any education containing classes of English, or French. For example, many spice stalls displayed various tea-brewing herbs and flowers. And many of those that did, had a bin in that very section filled with inch-cube pieces of wood. It did not have any special odour, and, it was wood! I remembered my dictionary back at the apartment, and tried to see at least how the bin was labeled, but the short name defeated me. I can read the letters in print, maybe even simple calligraphies (the non-tangled ones). But handwriting escapes me. And thus the little wooden knots remain a mystery.

But I did make myself proud when I bought a calligraphy pen. I went into a little bookstore and there were two boys there, and, of course, not one of them spoke any language I can communicate in. Except Arabic, apparently. And I managed to get them to give me something that was not on display. Quite a feat, I believe, even if I type so myself.

The stalls were varied and varicoloured. There were the aforementioned spice sellers, trinket traders, bean brokers, pastry sellers, olive vendors and butchers, all next to each other in one long and narrow street, bustling with people, carts and an occasional car, magically not bumping anyone or anything. While the eye was inevitably drawn to more exotic of the displays, one could not but wonder at the meat merchants. You know the stinking clouds surrounding our butcheries? I start holding my breath ten feet away, and I don't release it until i'm well past. Well, their meat-on-street does not smell. At all. And my uncle said it's not much worse in summer, either, when the temperatures rise over 40 degs see. Unbelieveable. But I believe him anyway.