This time Adel came with me. He helped me find a Christmas present (more about that when I get back, sorry Beth:-) and we had lunch, Yemeni style. We went to a hole in the wall that sold fasah. The tables were all full, but we were told that the “upstairs” was free. The stairs were more like a ladder with really large steps and it was really narrow, kind of like a steep set of stairs in a phone booth… We got up stairs and there was nothing there… The floor space measured around 12×12 feet, and that was all there was. We sat on the ground and ate. Another guy took a picture for us using Adel’s camera phone, I hope to get a copy of that one of these days…
For those of you that don’t know, I had developed a bit of a colonge fetish before I left. Not your run of the mill stuff of course, like everything else in my life, it was the exotic, expensive stuff. Creed was the most “common” of my favorites and I had started to buy from individual perfume makers… Anyway, I tend to like the oriental types and was psyched to actually go to the orient (yes, this is the orient that is refrenced by orientalists, and oriental perfumes) and sample what they had to offer. Man, was I disappointed at first. All the stores had all the usual department store stuff. Yesterday I got a glimmer of hope, I tried one called “Faris” and it is really nice. It starts off as a sweet/spicy mix and settles down to what I can only describe as a rootbeer/incense scent. It’s a really “soft” scent and doesn’t have any of the alcahol harshness that so many colonges do. I googled it and came up with nada, looks like it’s an actual Arab colonge. It costs the princely sum of $25 US. That’s nothing for me but it is really high for this area. I’ll probably get some, it’ll come in handy durning the summer months. It’ll keep me smelling good even when I start sweating.
Isaac