Pop! Pop! Pa-Pop-Pop! Boom! “Was that fireworks?"
The sporadic popping noises freaked us out.
“I hope that those are fireworks, Jess. Do you still feel safe going to meet up with Saleem? What if he’s not as nice as we thought?”
“Anna, don’t you think if he were going to abduct us or something, he’d have done it last night? It would have been perfect timing. We were tired, weary really, looking for a place to go eat – he could have easily abducted us or whatever last night, if he had wanted to. And we have relied on our instincts so far, and they haven’t led us astray. We’ll stay alert, follow our gut reactions, and we’ll be fine.”
It’s true that if you’re never trusting, you’ll never have the wonderful travel experiences where you truly see and experience the culture. So we decided to take our chances with the Christian Arab who had taken us to dinner the night before.
We met Saleem at his store at nine pm and we started out towards the hookah bar, like he’d promised. As we wound our way out of the city, Jess and I began to fret.
“Where are we headed?” Jess asked nonchalantly. Saleem explained that he was taking us to a hookah bar in between Nazareth and Cana (where Jesus turned the water into wine).
The bar was high atop a hill overlooking the interstate. Dogs were yapping as we sat down on the patio and awaited our hookahs and Arab coffees. For those of you who don’t know, a hookah is a water pipe for tobacco. It has a vase filled with water as a base, with a long neck that widens at the top. On the top of the neck is a tiny terracotta pot in which you place the flavored tobacco; then, you cover the pot and tobacco with aluminum foil and poke miniscule holes into the foil. You then place hot coals onto the foil. The coals heat up the tobacco and the smoke goes down into the water. The smoker will take a tube leading from the vase and put the tube’s mouthpiece into his or her mouth and inhale. Smokers will inhale this flavored smoke, often as a group activity, for around an hour.
Neither Jessie nor I had smoked a hookah before and the experience is one that we won’t forget, but don’t want to repeat all the time. It was a cool way to truly experience Middle Eastern customs.
On our way home, Saleem asked us if we’d had shwarma yet and we hadn’t; so he took us to the best shwarma joint in town to gorge on gyro-esqe pita pockets filled with what we believe was either duck or lamb, onions, hummus sauce, lettuce, and pickles. Saleem was a true gentleman, paying for everything and dropping us off at the convent door by 11:15. We had a bunch of fun – a wonderful international celebration of Jessie’s birthday!
The sporadic popping noises freaked us out.
“I hope that those are fireworks, Jess. Do you still feel safe going to meet up with Saleem? What if he’s not as nice as we thought?”
“Anna, don’t you think if he were going to abduct us or something, he’d have done it last night? It would have been perfect timing. We were tired, weary really, looking for a place to go eat – he could have easily abducted us or whatever last night, if he had wanted to. And we have relied on our instincts so far, and they haven’t led us astray. We’ll stay alert, follow our gut reactions, and we’ll be fine.”
It’s true that if you’re never trusting, you’ll never have the wonderful travel experiences where you truly see and experience the culture. So we decided to take our chances with the Christian Arab who had taken us to dinner the night before.
We met Saleem at his store at nine pm and we started out towards the hookah bar, like he’d promised. As we wound our way out of the city, Jess and I began to fret.
“Where are we headed?” Jess asked nonchalantly. Saleem explained that he was taking us to a hookah bar in between Nazareth and Cana (where Jesus turned the water into wine).
The bar was high atop a hill overlooking the interstate. Dogs were yapping as we sat down on the patio and awaited our hookahs and Arab coffees. For those of you who don’t know, a hookah is a water pipe for tobacco. It has a vase filled with water as a base, with a long neck that widens at the top. On the top of the neck is a tiny terracotta pot in which you place the flavored tobacco; then, you cover the pot and tobacco with aluminum foil and poke miniscule holes into the foil. You then place hot coals onto the foil. The coals heat up the tobacco and the smoke goes down into the water. The smoker will take a tube leading from the vase and put the tube’s mouthpiece into his or her mouth and inhale. Smokers will inhale this flavored smoke, often as a group activity, for around an hour.
Neither Jessie nor I had smoked a hookah before and the experience is one that we won’t forget, but don’t want to repeat all the time. It was a cool way to truly experience Middle Eastern customs.
On our way home, Saleem asked us if we’d had shwarma yet and we hadn’t; so he took us to the best shwarma joint in town to gorge on gyro-esqe pita pockets filled with what we believe was either duck or lamb, onions, hummus sauce, lettuce, and pickles. Saleem was a true gentleman, paying for everything and dropping us off at the convent door by 11:15. We had a bunch of fun – a wonderful international celebration of Jessie’s birthday!
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