Souq

Recently, in our favorite vegetable market, my son eavesdropped on a nearby conversation in Arabic while filling a bag with flat, sweet peaches.  He learned from the conversation that the price I’d been quoted for strawberries wasn’t the best one and let me know what was.  And it struck me that he’d become a true souq son – a crucial participant in the local shopping life.  The souq is a Middle Eastern downtown shopping area.  It is a lively place filled with shouting, frying felafel, ripening fruit, and wares spilling out onto the streets.  Its dusty chaos gets into your bones.  Some of our favorite places include the large secondhand outdoor and indoor marketplace, the ‘ataar (where I get things to make soap and balm with friends), the bakery (which smells like heavenly phyllo dough, warm cheese and sugar syrup), and the large craft shop with tiny notions stuck into all of its corners.  There’s really nothing like it and it’s become a part of us these years…