Today I wanted to go to the plant markets, or souq, to buy plants for my balcony. It's an adventure buying plants in a new country, and in this case, hoping you will buy ones that will survive and flourish in the desert heat and wind.
I was lucky enough to have Alia with me, my Lebanese friend, who lived in Kuwait for 30 years. I love being with Alia - she is just such an interesting person, and she indulges and attempts to answer all of my naive questions about life in the Middle East, and Kuwait in particular. We had a very interesting conversation about the Iraq invasion today - I wanted to know what it was actually like to experience an 'invasion' - how is a city invaded, and was there any warning. Apparently there was no warning. She and her husband were in Switzerland when Saddam's army invaded, suddenly in one night, and they heard about it on the news. They came back to Kuwait to pack up their furniture, and then managed to drive out across the border into Iraq and through to Lebanon. I haven't got to the bottom of this story yet, and I hope I can write a post in this blog about it - perhaps an interview.
Anyway, Alia came with me to the plant shop - there are many different shops, and I didn't want to spend ages umming and ahhing about what to get and the price - I knew I wanted colourful hardy plants that would handle the heat, and I also wanted some plants that had a nice scent. I suppose there are some shops better than others, and I also suppose I will discover this in time. This time, we went to one place, and I bought 2 tangerine bushes, jasmine, 3 bougainvillea, 2 beautiful spiky ferns, a Lebanese jasmine and an Egyptian jasmine, and a large tree that apparently flowers bright red flowers - can't remember what it's called. I spent 100 KD, which was my budget, and the plants were delivered that evening for 7 KD. I also bought 2 bags of German soil to do any repotting.
Then Alia and I went to the Iranian market - Alia loves Iranian things - she lived there for 10 years and speaks Farsi - so we went to a carpet shop, and we looked a two gorgeous carpets - Alia talked to the young salesman there, in Farsi, and was able to go into great detail about the carpets -where they were from, the design, the materials, the quality and finally the price. She told me that Westerners usually like the red colours - I know I do - but there are so many other styles and colours. She said it's best to avoid the turqoise colours, because they are dyed with an oxide that tends to burn and therefore weaken the fibres. The man said that he very rarely has someone in his shop who knows so much about carpets - usually customers just want to know the price and the age of the carpets - and he obviously relished having Alia there.
We will most definitely take Alia and her husband Mohamed carpet shopping with us when we are ready to spend some real money - probably $3,000 to $4000 - on a really wonderful carpet, and I'm sure the process of buying will be as enjoyable as the carpet itself. I feel honoured and fortunate to be making such a generous, interesting new friends in Kuwait. The world is full of interesting people!
Finally, here are a couple of items from the newspaper. Eid al-Adha is coming up, and people are buying up the sheep for slaughter. Eid al-Adha is the festival that commemorates when Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son to show his love for God. God intervened at the last minute, just as Abraham was about to kill his son, and a lamb was killed instead - I think that's how it goes, anyway. You can read the story on my dad's website - www.theyahwehstories.com.
So it means that on a certain day, Muslims sacrifice a sheep. I asked Alia where they do this - she said usually in a special place somewhere, but some families do it in their homes, and suggested that we might keep Lenny at home on this day, because it could be a bit distressing. I'm not sure which day it is exactly - must remember to ask. The sheep is slaughtered, and divided into thirds - one for family, one for friends and one for the poor. Apparently Kuwait sheep are the most popular, and Australian sheep the least, and therefore the cheapest.
Comments