Salmiya

I have mentioned in a previous post that the special charm of Mombasa’s old city can hardly be perceived instantly. My Jordanian colleagues from Kuwait and I had booked at the Whitesands Sarova Hotel north of the city. The view of the Indian Ocean just outside the hotel with camels on the beach was breathtaking. The constant breeze from the ocean made humidity and tropical temperatures very comfortable. In fact a place to die, I was thinking. My friends are not the ideal company when exploring exotic places. On my request, we went to Mombasa, but it was hot and dusty and I was told “we know all of this” from home. When I became curious about the 16th century Mandhry mosque with its strange minaret, I was informed by my Muslim friends that it was not prayer time, so asking to enter was hopeless. Nobody was either interested in the vegetable and fruit market. Was that a bazaar? We rushed through the lanes. Souvenir shops sold beautiful collectibles at reasonable prices. ...

I have posted on this blog some time ago an unusual Seh Mihraba rug from the Shindand market area in west Afghanistan. I had bought it from my friendly Afghan carpet sellers Mirwuis and Syed who used to have a small shop in Kuwait’s Souq Mubarakia. They frequently offered a variety of rugs from Afghanistan and Iran on the Friday market in the Al-Rai industrial area next to the notorious 4th Ring Road, just behind the nurseries. Opposite to the animal market, there is what is called the Iranian market where you may find in fact everything you might be looking for. The whole area is very fascinating. My friends and I liked to go there, if possible every weekend. I would like to post another, much more typical, Seh Mihraba rug here. Tareq Rajab, Kuwait’s former Director of the Department of Antiquities and Museums in Kuwait and owner of two most marvelous private museums in Jabriya (the museum for calligraphy I had a chance to visit shortly before leaving Kuwait for good in 2007),...

Suleiman , one of Whitesands Hotel’s tour managers, wasn’t in a good mood. Very talkative, he obviously believed that I would actually be interested in his family affairs which seemed to be in a mess. His wife had been taken back to Riyadh by her parents where they were living. Arabs. A black man was not really the son in law they had expected, he told me. But at least you are a Muslim, aren’t you? I asked him. Yes, he replied, but his mother was Christian, and it doesn’t really matter. Then he told me about the origin of the Palestinians. Although knowing the story about Jacob and his older twin brother Esau, the two sons of Isaac and Rebekah, I wasn’t aware about theories regarding the two resulting tribes, the children if Israel (or Jacob) and those of Esau, the Palestinians (or Edomites, I suppose). An interesting hypothesis. We took a ride to Jumba la Mtwana (he unavailingly tried me to pronounce the Swahili words correctly). The century-old gorgeous ruins of a town north of Mom...