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EDITOR'S NOTE
The
Saudi-American Forum is very pleased to present "Honey and
Onions" by Frances Meade. This delightful memoir of
the early days of Americans working and living in the Kingdom -
in ten chapters - will be
presented one chapter per week.
We
hope you enjoy it and you will join
in a discussion of the book [Click
here].
Previous
Chapters:
CHAPTER FOUR
It's been a busy shopping morning on a very hot day, but the
air-conditioned mall at Akariya is truly an oasis of consumer
delight. It's prayer time now, and I'll be on my way home
without having done the grocery shopping, but Safeway will be
open again in half an hour, and I can come back after lunch at
my leisure.
To
visit the souk, the central market, was to go straight to the
heart of Riyadh; the one place, where as a foreigner, one felt
as much a part of the city as any of its permanent residents;
where there were only merchants and customers going about the
necessary business of daily life.
I shall always remember my introduction.
I
remain grateful to this day to my first guide, the wife of a
British advisor to the Saudi National Guard.
They were old Middle East hands, and she was quite
accustomed among other things to playing hostess to passing
Bedouin who came to visit her husband who had ridden with Glubb
Pasha in the Arab Legion and had been known to the tribes for
many years. Their
villa was near the Camel's Eye, a barren rock except at sunset
when it swarmed with people gathered for maghreb
prayer. At its
base, was a semi-permanent Bedouin encampment.
My friend could often be found in an outside kitchen at
her home stirring up huge pots of rice and meat for Bedouin
visitors, while indoors, her own cook was preparing dinner for
the family. I am still in
awe of her.
I had
shopped carefully in the States for appropriate souk attire
according to the company handbook's
instructions so I decked myself out in a skirt well below
the knee, a blouse with modest neckline and sleeves at least
elbow length -- the black cloak known as the abaya that
enveloped all Saudi women was not worn by foreigners -- and I
was all set for another adventure.
At
the time, I did not realize how fortunate I was in my companion,
but I soon found out. She
swept through the souk dispensing Arabic greetings like alms and
was in turn greeted by all the shopkeepers.
I trotted along at her heels innocent of the fact that my
presence was being noted and that she was effectively bestowing
her sponsorship on me; all who knew her would know and remember
me henceforth as her protégée, and I could expect to be
treated accordingly. I fear that I never lived up to her,
however, since I turned out to be a lily-livered bargainer on my
own, out of her class completely.
But
that day, I saw the souk through her eyes -- marveling at the
range of goods, both practical and picturesque, the sounds, the
smells, the exuberance of the shoppers and shopkeepers in their
ancient game of offer and counter offer. It was a comprehensive
tour, covering all of the Dira area, the center
of the city.
On
the northwest side of the square, was the wholesale souk with
huge sacks of rice and other staples piled high throughout the
depths of its dimly lit passageways and storehouses.
Just inside the entrance, stood a great wooden scale, the
arbiter of any dispute that might arise in the course of
wholesale commerce.
Kilted
Yemeni porters, backs bowed under massive loads roped to their
foreheads, padded
along the earthen passages on short mountain-muscled legs toward
the trucks backed up in the street.
These tough little men could carry hundreds of pounds
suspended from their braided brow bands; on one memorable
occasion, I watched one of them literally run up a short flight
of stairs carrying a refrigerator in this fashion. They were the
workhorses of the souk, and on this first visit, I relished the
chaos as the Yemeni were directed to the appropriate vehicles by
loud exhortations from gesticulating buyers.
In time, I noticed them less and less as they became part
of my daily life -- in fact, I cannot remember when, how or why
they disappeared -- but for many years they were a vital
element of the Riyadh scene.
The
wonderful aroma of the adjacent spice souk drew us in, and I was
initiated into the mysteries of all the colorful and fragrant
bins filled with the fabled spices of the East that I had read
about for years. But dried lemon? Whole
cardamon? What did
one do with these strange condiments?
They went far beyond the boundaries of my rudimentary
culinary skills, and it took me years and a cook to learn their
names much less their uses, but their scents are as evocative as
snapshots in bringing back memories of the early days.
The
next stalls held bins of dull, colorless and surprisingly
expensive lumps with no odor at all which turned out to be, good
heavens, frankincense and myrrh. They really did exist outside
of books, but the look belied the legend.
Not until I had experienced them in actual use did I
appreciate the value of these and the other aromatics that play
an important role in Saudi aesthetic tastes.
It is unthinkable that any important Saudi occasion would
be properly celebrated without clouds of incense wafted toward
the guests to be swept under hair and skirts in the case of the
ladies and beneath the head coverings of the men.
At
the vegetable souk, we were joined by a young Yemeni boy
obviously known to my mentor. They exchanged greetings as he
fell into step and accompanied us for the rest of the morning. She
explained to me that he was her basket boy, in much the same way
that the Yemeni who had greeted us at the airport was Dick's
baggage boy. The
souk boys tended to be younger than the airport porters, but the
system was the same as I discovered when I made my solo debut in
the souk, whoever saw me first became mine forever -- or I
became his -- and there was no poaching by the rest of the
fraternity. In my
case, it turned out to be a sleepy-eyed youth named Yahya who
became my escort. Like
all the others he carried a round straw mat about three feet in
diameter with a handle on either side which, when clasped
together, transformed it into a large basket very like a log
carrier for the transport of my purchases.
But
today, I was simply an attachment to my leader and didn't merit
a boy of my own. Just
as well, since I was learning how to deal with them from an
expert in great lady behavior.
The
expected reimbursement for an hour in the souk was 10 qursh -- the riyal was not a decimal currency at that time, and
there were 20 qursh to
the riyal and four and a half riyals to the dollar -- so, an
average morning's work netted them the equivalent of less than
fifty cents, and on this wage, they remained a generally
cheerful lot.
I
cruised along, all eyes and ears, marveling at my companion's
ease with the bargaining process and the astounding triumphs of
persuasion that she racked up as we went along.
She never bought anything at more than half the offered
price and never had to leave anything behind.
I wondered if I would ever match her style.
I never did, and to this day, I can lose my cool at the
crucial moment and easily be impaled upon the barb of the
seller's determination. My
lack of haggling skills were made up for by my daughters who had
fewer inhibitions and managed successfully to bargain with the
best. I'm still
trying.
The
vegetable souk convinced me that I was going to have to come up
with some very interesting recipes in order to create variations
on the recurring themes of tomato, potato, carrot, and the
ubiquitous green squash known as marrows. There were beautiful
melons and grapes from Qassim, but salad makings were sadly
lacking, and on future Stateside vacations, we often got sick
from gorging ourselves on fresh greens, which our digestive
systems had forgotten how to deal with.
The measure of this deprivation is the fact that many
years later, I went to work for the United States government for
the express purpose of obtaining lettuce from the commissary.
My
experience of the poultry souk committed me to the purchase of
any kind of protein that did not require having its neck wrung
and carcass plucked. A
sense of adventure could go a long way, but I couldn't look a
chicken in the eye knowing that it was about to be decapitated
for my dinner table and, coward that I was, I averted my eyes
from my companion's purchases until they were safely stowed in
the souk boy's basket.
The
slaughterhouse did nothing to encourage further menu planning,
and I was beginning to get a bit queasy until we went outside
and around behind it, and there was the souk of my dreams.
The harim
souk, as it was known, was unique in that all the vendors were
women. It occupied
two narrow dirt paths winding into the old neighborhood of mud
houses, and the ladies sat either inside open stalls in the old
buildings or under magnificent black Bedouin tents displaying an
amazing variety of wares. Dresses
and jewelry dominated the scene, but looking beyond, one could
find lovely little palm leaf fans and baskets as well as strings
of fat patchwork pads that made perfect potholders. There were
cosmetics, henna and kohl and all the traditional containers and
applicators, but above all, there were the ladies.
Black-veiled,
they sat surrounded by their treasures, eyes sparkling above
their masks, laughing and calling to us and offering tea.
This was truly the social center of the souk, and they
seemed overjoyed to find another strange foreigner in their
midst, particularly one whose obvious delight was a pretty fair
indication that she was going to turn out to be one of their
best customers. I
longed for the day when I would be able to do more than sit and
smile, for here was the key to life in Riyadh, women who might
share with me some of the fellowship that would never be
possible with the men.
I
couldn't take in more than impressions; individual items melted
into the mass of color and texture spread out in such profusion. It took time and many visits and a good deal of Arabic before
I came to appreciate the wonderful tradition of Bedouin
adornment and what it represented, but without any understanding
at all, it was love at first sight.
I soon started what has turned out to be a collection
that cannot be replaced although it didn't occur to me then that
I was conserving something that was already disappearing.
Arabia, its places and its people, seemed to me to be
fixed in time, to remain forever as I first saw it.
Fortunately, my interest made up for my lack of
foresight, and a small part of old Riyadh is still mine in the
things that I acquired during many happy hours with the ladies
of the harim souk.
I
hated to leave, but courtesy demanded that I follow my guide as
we made a quick circuit around the south of the square, pausing
briefly at the stalls where the money changers sat cross-legged,
various currencies clipped with clothes pins to a cord above
their heads and the most popular denominations displayed between
their toes.
That
brought up the subject of money, and to my joy, I discovered
that just like the queen of England, I need not carry it; I had
only to take my purchases and send the driver later.
What a great way of life I had stumbled into.
I had always known there had to be something more
imaginative than the supermarket, and here it was.
On we
went past the Governor's Palace and the Palace of Justice.
Had we turned right, we would have come to the old gold
souk, a labyrinth of dirt paths festooned with gold -- at 35
dollars an ounce -- but we turned left across the square to the
mosque, and the warren of stalls and passageways huddled against
its eastern wall. Here
was a grand conglomeration of everything from stacks of
brass-studded Kuwaiti chests to coffee pots, camel saddles,
spice boxes, used furniture and carpets, and the wondrous stall
of Aboud, who kept in old biscuit tins magnificent secondhand
jewelry and watches, castoffs from various members of the royal
family in old biscuit tins.
He
was much too much for me; I simply couldn't believe that the
huge emeralds and diamonds he offered for sale could possibly be
the real thing. How
naive I was compared to my more sophisticated contemporaries
whose purchases were later sold abroad for many times the price
negotiated with Aboud. He operated in an atmosphere of absolute
openness and trust and customers often bought something from him
on condition that they first take it to Beirut for appraisal.
That's
the way the souk operated.
A final price agreed upon was a contract to purchase, but
there was no restriction on returns.
If one tired of the size or design of a particular
Kuwaiti chest, no problem, there was a brisk business in
trade-ins. And in
the same vein, once you bought the first chest, that price was
your price and you could count on subsequent purchases for the
same amount with only a token haggle.
I
came home dazzled by that first excursion and determined to
become as accomplished a shopper as the intrepid lady who had
shown me the way. But
shopping was not really the main purpose of going to the souk,
not for me nor for many of my friends.
To us, it was a daily diversion, a hobby, a way to expand
our knowledge and experience of the country and its people.
The
souk was frequented by a true cross-section of the population.
No matter what was needed by rich or poor, that's where
it had to be obtained, and that's where everybody went.
Looking at the magnificent buildings that have replaced
it, it's hard to reconcile them with the sights and smells of
the old. It became
an addiction -- the day wasn't complete without a quick trip
down to Dira.
My
own souk routine was quickly established.
Any day, any time, Yahya was either waiting for me or
magically appeared within a minute or so of my arrival.
I was always amazed at the flawless operation of the souk
grapevine and how quickly he materialized at my side.
Quite
often, if I had come for some specific item, the first
shopkeeper of whom I inquired would sit me down, hand me a glass
of tea and dispatch Yahya with instructions for locating what I
wanted and bringing it back to me.
If I was browsing at random, the two of us would walk
along together. Even
though Yahya appeared to be asleep on his feet, in addition to
carrying my purchases, he was tireless in his efforts to help me
find what I needed.
It
was a wonderfully companionable procedure, and I learned much
from Yahya and the merchants, not only in Arabic vocabulary, a
genuine necessity, but
in the ways and customs of the souk.
Customers became guests after a certain period of time,
and the ubiquitous glass of tea poured from an enamel pot was an
unfailing gesture of hospitality.
Many years later, long after the basket boys and their
estimable services had vanished, I accompanied my visiting
mother-in-law to the present antique souk, which she was most
anxious to see. The shopkeepers were horrified that a lady of
her age should have been brought all the way downtown to do her
own shopping. A
chair was produced for her, and she was settled with her tea
while various items were brought to her for her approval.
I
couldn't help but feel that on that occasion my tea must have
been offered grudgingly since it was obvious that they
considered me something less than a dutiful daughter-in-law, but
courtesy overcame disapproval.
In Saudi Arabia, it always does.
Although
the Dira area was the most popular, we also frequented the Batha
area. The market
there, the terminus for the trucks that ran between Riyadh and
Kuwait, was known as the Kuwaiti souk.
If you needed to hire a truck for any purpose, that's
where you had to go. These
were purely commercial vehicles in the sixties, but in earlier
years, they had also served as transportation from one city to
the other.
I
imagine that the coffee houses that proliferated in the area had
their genesis as handy places to conduct the business of travel
and commerce. A large number of them were outdoor
establishments, some on the roof tops, all featuring high woven
benches on which the customers lounged, drinking coffee and
smoking water pipes.
The
open canal that gave Batha its name ran down the middle of the
roadway effectively dividing the downtown area in two.
East of Batha were the tent and pottery souks, and
heading south, you turned left at the only petrol station to go
to the camel souk to watch the camels being loaded in and out of
trucks.
It
was a marvelous sight as a big beast was winched up in a canvas
sling with hobbled legs dangling awkwardly accompanied by
mournful bellows at the indignities it was suffering.
We were obviously not customers, but the dealers treated
us cordially, offering rides to the foolish foreigners, some of
whom accepted the offer and wished they hadn't.
A rising camel is a precipitous perch so many a would-be
Lawrence of Arabia fell off long before his mount had lurched to
all four feet. The
photo opportunities were unbeatable and the atmosphere lively,
so the camel souk was a great favorite with everyone.
Souking
became a habit with the children as well as with me. When they were home from school, they would go off in the
morning with Ali Harbi and come back with all manner of
acquisitions, treasures to take back to school, camel or horse
trappings to decorate their rooms and tales of the bargains they
had struck.
Now
that we had become householders once again, shopping became a
major preoccupation. I
had already discovered that the day's activities were punctuated
by the prayer calls, but scheduling my own endeavors around them
had not been necessary during our market-less weeks in the
Yamama, and it took a bit of getting used to.
Particularly difficult was the afternoon closure of every
shop of any kind while the city napped from noon to four.
I
knew all about Wazir Street, the block of shops downtown, not
only from our furniture shopping foray but from the daily trips
to Khazindar to pick up the International
Herald Tribune, the only English language newspaper
available. The fact
that it was usually five to seven days late in no way diminished
its impact; we simply lived a week behind the rest of the world
except for the VOA and BBC broadcasts.
The
newspaper run was part of each day's ritual that included a halt
at the post office to pick up the mail and enjoy the Riyadh
vignette of the scribes who were headquartered on the steps
offering their age old services.
Still to be seen were the pens and ink boxes, but a few
typewriters had come into use and in time would displace the
intimacy of the hand written personal letter.
The post office stood at the junction of Wazir Street and
Batha on the way to Khazindar, so renewing our daily contact
with the world outside was only a matter of two quick stops.
Wazir
Street also featured some fabric shops; the National Museum
Store with a variety of items from baby clothes to desert boots
displayed in very cramped quarters; and Batok's store, a melange
of glasses, dishes and pots and pans mostly from Eastern Europe
and very cheap. The
centerpiece of this, the only shopping street in the city, was
Raji's market where on any morning one could count on meeting
most of the western community laying in a supply of canned food
and staples, picking over his meager supply of produce or
plumbing the depths of his freezer for the same products that we
usually preferred to buy firsthand from the frozen food store on
University Street.
This
was a freezer warehouse with a small retail outlet consisting of a room with three or four freezer chests, most
of whose contents were various meats from Denmark, all packaged
with attractive illustrations that bore no resemblance to the
much thawed and refrozen contents.
There were also some objects that looked to me like old
Indian war clubs, but which turned out to be whole beef
tenderloins of unknown provenance and unpredictable flavor.
I ultimately developed a recipe for beef that utilized a
great deal of ginger jam to mask the distinctive taste of freon
and incidentally learned that no matter what the experts say,
you can live on food that has been repeatedly refrozen without
dire consequences. It’s just a matter of taste.
They
did have some wonderful frozen Sealtest milk concentrate that,
with the addition of water, could be reconstituted to the
consistency and taste of fresh milk, an unexpected luxury that
soon disappeared never to be seen again.
From then until the importation of dairy herds in the
eighties, we lived on
powdered milk.
Food
shopping was serious business and the slightest rumor of
something new on the market produced a run on the supply with a
resulting similarity of dinner tables throughout the western
community.
Bread,
despite the company handbook's findings, existed not only as the
delicious local variety obtained hot and fragrant from the
little neighborhood baking ovens, but as western style loaves
from the Automatic Bakery, an establishment recently opened at
the point where the Airport Road became Batha.
The automatic aspect of its operation seemed to be the
slicing machine, which did indeed zip right through the loaf,
but had several teeth missing resulting in very irregular
slices. In any
case, it was singularly tasteless and speckled with hard to
identify inclusions reminiscent of the Yamama’s breakfast
toast.
An
attempt at bread making on my own was a disaster -- a dense,
yeasty lump that defied the most robust digestion.
Mohammed disclaimed any knowledge of the art himself, and
we settled for a combination of the automatic variety for toast
and the good neighborhood product for sandwiches. Eventually, I
did obtain a foolproof recipe for dinner rolls, and we managed
to turn out quite respectable ones, but the homemade loaves of
my Jeddah counterparts never saw the light of day in
my kitchen.
The
girls had already discovered the fast food specialties of the
souk. Committed as
I was to the super sterilization of everything that went into
our mouths, I was dismayed at first when they came home with
various newspaper wrapped delicacies half-eaten on the way.
Tamia, a variety of filafel; sambousa,
deep-fried pastries stuffed with meat or cheese; you name it,
they found it and ate it with absolutely no gastric
consequences. When I finally worked up the courage to do some tasting and
found out how good they really were, these local specialties became part of our diet.
Shwarma, seared bits of meat shaved from a large chunk on a rotating
spit was a particular favorite -- at least as it was made then
rather than the Lebanese style that prevails now.
It was usually mutton, occasionally beef, and always
prepared with fresh vegetables and yogurt, nestled in a long
roll that had been toasted in a hot press resembling a waffle
iron. But, it was
our discovery of muttabaq that
opened up a new era in picnicking.
On
cool evenings, we headed east out the Dhahran Road to a garden
coffee house where we could watch the muttabaq
being made. The cook would throw a small ball of dough on a
marble slab until it was tissue thin, place a thin rectangle of
bread in the center and pile on ground meat, chopped greens,
spices and finally a raw egg to bind it all together.
After folding the thin dough over the filling, he would
toss it onto a hot oiled grill where it would immediately puff
up and brown. Turned
once, it was then cut into six pieces with a flourish of what
appeared to be a pair of putty knives.
A sweet version, made with bananas and sugar and egg was
a perfect dessert and we would order batches of both.
We took them away heaped on a huge enamel tray, garnished
with whole lemons and tomatoes, and carefully covered with
newspaper for insulation, the tray to be returned on the way
back into town later in the evening.
It is my personal recommendation for a perfect impromptu
picnic.
We
had better luck on the local market with food than we had with
clothes. Most
clothing purchases were best left to vacations in the States or
Europe or trips to Beirut, but the girls and I loved the dresses
from the harim souk,
which were made of brightly colored and patterned cotton, all
one size with long tight sleeves and no opening for the head.
One simply cut a hole halfway between the shoulder seams,
turned the material under and stitched it into whatever shape
fit the head and seemed the most pleasing.
The length had to be adjusted as well, but since the
dresses cost only ten riyals, even the most inept seamstress
could afford to make mistakes. They were wonderfully cool in
summer for lounging around the house, and the girls took
them to school for dorm wear as well. Men's sandals were popular
purchases as they are today, and white ghutras were in demand as
tablecloths for the inevitable bridge-size tables, made in the
carpenters' souk, which were the feature of every outdoor dinner
party.
Having
brought nothing in the way of home decorations or accessories
from the States, I bought all manner of things to make the villa
a little more home-like. Soon,
we were awash in coffee pots, spice boxes and camel trappings
and I still kept an eye out for something new and different.
In the course of this, I learned a lesson about
bargaining that I have never forgotten.
I was offered a sterling silver coffee pot in the
traditional shape, embossed with the palm and swords emblem --
the hallmark of the the palaces -- for 60 riyals. Immediately, I countered with 30, at which point a thobed arm
reached over my shoulder, handed the full amount to the seller,
and a Saudi gentleman made off with his prize.
Yahya shook his head at me disgustedly.
Bargaining may be a way of life, but when you really want
something, pay the man. If
you don't, someone else will.
I do
regret never having bought one of the painted panels, which
adorned the sides of the old open-topped Mercedes trucks.
These were colorful naif renderings, both realistic and
fanciful, that made the trucks look like lumbering carnival
wagons decorated right down to the mudguards, but I just
didn’t recognize truck art when I saw it just as I failed on
so many occasions to see through the simple context of a find to
the aesthetic that transformed it into a valid expression of
folk art. However, on one of the rare occasions when Dick was
driving me to the souk, I saw two men turning down an alley
dragging a lengthy piece of what appeared to be wrought iron
shaped into a beautifully elongated arabesque.
"Stop the car," I
shouted, "I've got to have that."
He
took one look.
"It's
a truck spring," he
said and drove on.
I
still think it would have looked great over a fireplace.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Frances
Meade is an American who has lived in Saudi Arabia
since 1965.
Born in New York, she and her family moved to
Arizona in the '50s and still call it home.
She has a degree from Mount Holyoke College and
has written and edited educational texts as well as a
monthly magazine column.
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