I've been working here in Kuwait for this past week (the Kuwaiti weekend is Friday/Saturday with work starting again on Sunday) and have managed to find a free internet station at the airport on my way out to Amsterdam via Bahrain tonight.
Last night we were taken on a tour of the old souk downtown in Kuwait City where traders in traditional desert robes and sandals sit comfortably alongside their fruit, fish, dates, nuts, honey, watermelon, spiced tea, carpet and prayer bead stalls and pass the day in animated conversation.
After several hours wandering around admiring this giant Arabian Nights emporium, we were taken by our dutiful hosts to an outdoor restaurant for a traditional Kuwaiti meal drawn directly from the generously laden tables of the souk. After about an hour (and a dozen tiny glass cups of sweet, minty tea) the uneven, rickety trestle tables in front of our party of ten were suddenly swamped with battered tin platters of saffron goat mutton and rice, steaming curried lentil and bean curds, drifts of crisp wild rocket, lemon and coriander salad, a whole shoal of grilled Red Sea prawns, honey and jasmine baked cashews, a small bucket of parsley encrusted houmous, a thicket of moulded, minty lamb koftas impaled on their silver skewers and the incidental matter of six barbequed sea bass caked in caramelised onion and tomato.
"Malesh (no worries)" announced our host, the very generously girthed Hussain, and proceeded to demonstrate just how to attack the nearest pile of food by tearing a corner off a mound of freshly baked, wafer thin, bubbly crusted bread and using it to scoop a portion deftly past his beard and into his maw. We all followed suit politely, gingerly and deliciously. Luckily it is considered good form to leave food on the platter to indicate that one has had an elegant sufficiency.
I'm looking forward to my ham and cheese toasted sandwich for breakfast in The Hague tomorrow!
(22 April 2009)
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