Ramadan and Medina

Yesterday we went down to the Medina, the old city, for a tour. Our tour guide led us through the gates, past the old University, where the river was redirected (when the river was there) and past the four essentials for an old Medina town: a Qar'ranic school, a mosque, a public fountain for water source, and a public bakery, where people could bring their pastries to bake in the public oven. Nowadays, the public bakery also has workers who bake bread and pastries to sell, since most people have ovens in their own houses.


This is the apothecary in the Medina, where we bought some tasty cooking spices. He also offered soaps, fragrances for any use, and herbs and spices he said would cure a variety of maladies.


The city is the artisans' capital of the country. Handicrafts of all kinds can be found around every corner, with each street lined with hand-painted pottery, hand-stitched embroidered cloth, hand-sewn clothing, hand-punched bronze, and hand-dyed leather. Our tour guide told us that this is the city of over 50 different types of handicrafts. It's easy to believe.

The craft stores are interspersed with shops selling foods. Burlap bags overflow with beans, dates, and exotic dried fruits. Boys push rickety carts of prickly pears, whole animals hang from meat-hooks, fresh vegetables hang in cords like Christmas garlands, strung together on reeds. Through all this sun-kissed hubbub thread women in brightly dyed djellaba robes and beautiful silk headscarves - usually not matching in the American sense - like the jewels on a golden ring.

Eventually I'll get used to this. I have about 300 pictures to my name already.