Le Souk
Believe it or not, as Italian and Brazilian I can be, being in a souk has always been part of my life.
A souk is by definition a commercial quarter in an Arab city. The term is often used to designate the market in any Arabized city. In a central market like a souk you may find textiles, jewelry, delicacies, spices, shoes or Bedouin artifacts. It is always a square of stone vaulted streets parallel to or crossing each other or a tight mass of buildings too packed together for roads to intersect them. In a souk the final price is reached by bargaining with the shopkeeper. Traders of a given commodity will all sell in the same souk.
The commodity of my interest is are amulets, necklaces and all kind of adornments that shine. Like all women in my family —my grandmother Sofia (may she rest in peace) and my niece Gabriella— are pure oriental princesses that would have Messalina envy us for our power of finding and acquiring objects of our desires in the markets at any, I say any price.
The men of my family considered good merchants (my grandfather Hodour was an expensive textiles merchant in Beirut, this is how he got to marry my grandmother Sofia who had a soul fit for luxury) were experienced traders and excelled in the art of bargain. Women like us did not have to go through this useless and tiring ritual because we were always treated as princesses and we had just the important and meticulous task to select, pick up and send the bill to our men.
Not being my fault, this is how I managed to keep the bad habit of not really minding being cheated or trading my money for what is not worth… for me it is worth what I think it is and that’s it.
You can imagine the happy grin on the Arabic shopkeepers when the Jewish Yael girl (me, Joelle in Hebrew) strolls among their merchandise with a concentration that takes her directly to the target —in few minutes they obviously see how it will look appended in her ears or neck without her even listening to their Arabic accent saying in a victimized tone the absurdity of the price
. Mordehai begs me to go for a Jaffa orange juice after I decide to buy so he can bargain with the vendor for the sake of tradition and justice for what he says must be a fair price. I don’t listen. I am impatient that if I don’t hurry the pendant I saw in the Ali stall might be bought by another woman that will not look as nice as I by wearing it the wrong way obviously. Mordehai–Gene swears to me on all the Israeli army and also on his ancestors that he can find 200 better and cheaper pendants than Ali’s.
shopMordehai understands that if I look at him in the eyes the way I am now, is to do exactly as I am telling him “It’s my way or the highway,” and to make him feel better I try to explain to him that I had been all over the globe and pendants like this one do not exist elsewhere, it’s only at Ali’s. As all geniuses, Mordehai knew that “highway” for him meant to go back to the magic lamp, and Mordehai did not want this to happen, he knew it would only happen after my departure from Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv.
With my collection of pendants, amulets, earrings, amardeens (apricot delicacy), Zaatar (spice), a Bedouin lantern from the souk, my money was over (…) as a devoted and thankful princess I was happily satisfied and ready to receive the light of the Shabbat Candles before the “City of Gold “sunset.
The energy was strong, the sunset beautiful and the prayer transcended at its best.
Shabbat Shalom from Yerushalaim.
