The Souk

I put on my borrowed embassy abaya over my jeans and and tank, and fastened my headscarf under my chin and around my hair. Adam and I left his house and got into a motorpool car.

The car whisked us out of the diplomatic quarter and onto a highway. We sped past juice bars, fast food restaurants with funny logos (a hamburger with legs, mid-run!), and a veterinary clinic/pet supply store that inexplicably houses a dinosaur skeleton in its front window. Past a plastic surgery clinic, a government building shaped like a spaceship, and a giant store selling nothing but chandeliers.

The car pulled onto a sidestreet, and then another, and suddenly we were in the middle of a labyrinthine souk. Adam led me down one of the corridors, past ladies in various stages of conservative dress. Some dressed liberally, like me, with just abayas and hijabs; some with an additional piece of fabric draped over their noses and mouths (ninja-style!); some with completely covered faces and black gloves on their hands. Adam and I walked past vendors selling menswear (custom-made thobes), designer watches, very popular men's sandals (or as I like to call them, mandals), incense and incense holders, and diamond jewelry before ducking into a colorful carpet shop.

We told the man who owned the shop that we were looking for a large rug for our living room back in DC. As his colleague brought out a tray of mint tea in small glasses and offered them to us, the owner began pulling out rugs in varying colors and levels of ornateness. While describing the origins of each piece, they let us see the colors and then turned each one all the way around to show the other side. The colors changed like a parlor trick, looking suddenly darker or lighter.

After viewing many carpets and drinking two cups of delicious sweet mint tea each, we selected a rug, Adam haggled the price, and then there was much handshaking all around. We left the shop and returned to the spot where the car had dropped us off, in front of a chicken joint called Al Kookoo. As we waited for our car, Adam popped into Al Kookoo and emerged with a to-go cup of lemon mint juice, a heavenly concotion of sweet, fresh lemonade whipped up in a blender with a handful of mint leaves. We sipped the frothy treat, and when the armored sedan pulled up, we loaded in our new carpet, got in, shut the doors, and sped away.