Dinner time

Off again to Mubarak's for dinner, bearing a dozen bottles of the finest Scottish mineral water. He picks me up himself and en route we stop off at an Exchange shop from where he sends money to his Filipina friend in Bahrain. I express surprise that he should have to travel to Bahrain, given the availability of Filipina friends in Doha. We then have a jolly five minutes discussing Arabic equivalents of the phrase 'never shit on your own doorstep'.

"We're having fucker for dinner, Mr. Simon."
"Pardon?"
"Fucker, it's very good. My cousin found a good amount in the desert last year."
The light dawns. He is talking about faq'h, the desert truffle, which we had discussed in class a few weeks before, and which grows only where lightning strikes... Voiceless uvular plosive, not velar.

We sit in the مجلس sipping the mineral water. Mubarak's son is going to France this morning for a football tournament, and I discuss the delights of Paris with him. Unfortunately he is only 14, so some of those delights are as yet unavailable. After he has gone Mubarak sighs, "He's growing up so fast; soon enough I shall have to start looking for a wife for him."

Dinner comes: a delicious stew of baby goat and vegetables. I make a better fist of eating with my fingers this time. The fucker is exquisite.

Comments

MeltonM said…
I do love that Scotch mineral water. What an extraordinary place you're living in - rather like time-travelling in some respects. Or does it seem a bit tame after China?

We had kra'p for dinner at our hotel in Melton Mowbray.
29 April 2011 at 10:36
Simon M Hunter said…
I wouldn't say tame. There is not the energy here there was in China, but there is the same, fascinating, apposition of the traditional and modern.

Sorry to hear about the hotel dinner, but I have to say I cannot remember a great hotel meal in England (unlike France, where it was a surprise not to get a memorable feed).

I admit I may be prejudiced by my a) having worked in too many such establishments and having seen what goes on behind the scenes and b) having been unable or unwilling to spend the money that exquisite food commands there.
29 April 2011 at 12:37
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Décadence Mandchoue

The memoir of Sir Edmund Trelawney Backhouse, 2nd Bt. (Backhouse /bækˈʌs/, which is appropriate) will be published this week , and a cracking good read it looks, even if it is a load of old cobblers. I wouldn't be so sure though. Reading the review I was reminded of my own time in China; if I published a memoir of life in Guangzhou in the mid-noughties no-one would believe it. I could tell of the divorcée who invited me to move in and offered to sweeten the deal by installing a concubine or two. The girlfriend who came over one night with her 17 year old, uninitiated, eager cousin. The unspeakably depraved practices of Mystic Meg from Hiroshima. T he policewoman who, upon discovering the effects of black resin on the male member, ensured that there was always a ready supply on the bedside table. T he millionaire's daughter who drove me to a nightclu b with one hand on the wheel of the Merc and the other not, at every traffic light her head bobbing down for a quick... As I s
Read more
The Songstone, Canto I: The Tower is published today. A free copy from: Smashwords But Kora sat unmoving, in great magic.  The walls, her home, faded about her. Warmth went; all alone and on a freezing plain, dressed in a tunic, sharp knife in her belt, bow on her shoulder, arrows in a quiver  behind. Her eyes gleamed; a pale cold light, ˈlɪmpɪd ɪn ˈdʌlnəs She looked around. Away, at vision’s limit, a dark shape rose above the plain: a Tower, the only thing in all this barren place: no bird flew, no grass grew. Despite the wool  she shivered. Breath-clouds hung in the raw air, ˈsləʊli dɪˈzɒlvɪŋ Then in eye’s corner something moved. She turned to gaze across the Waste and saw a Cloud. Far, almost straight behind her as she faced the Tower, it too reared up black and sheer. Unlike the Tower, moving, whirling, wisps trailing their tentacles around a core, ˈtwɪstɪŋ ɪnˈseɪnli
Read more