Touring our little city

Last week, we went on a bus touring around Yanbu.  L. wanted to show us some of the things that she has found in her research about Yanbu.  Here we go:

Our first stop was the Yanbu Fish Market. It is on the Red Sea. The aqua water is a beautiful back drop.  The fish are very different than the ones we see at home.

 This is squid:

 This was a big fish that a man caught and brought it in to be cleaned and filleted for a party he was having. 

 The worker had to heft it up to the counter.

 The customer said that he wanted to keep the skin intact and likes to display it on his wall.  I assume that he dries it out and has it mounted.

Here we are watching this cleaning process of the huge fish:

Here are some of the pictures along the beach:

This is a boat called a dhow.  According to Wikipedia, the generic name of a number of traditional sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sails used in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean region. Some historians claim the dhow was invented by Arabs or Indians, but the majority give the credit to the Chinese.

Then, we went to Old Yanbu.  This is the house where "Lawrence of Arabia" lived for a time in Yanbu.

 This shop has been in this man's family for 400 years!

 These are camel muzzles.

Then, we went to a Shisha (Hookah) restaurant.  It is an outdoor cafe with cushioned sofas overlooking the Red Sea.  On the weekends, the marina is bustling with activity.  We went during the week and it was completely empty.  When asked about the shisha, we were told that women cannot have shisha unless their husbands are there to OK it.  :)  One of the ladies asked why we couldn't do it since we were not Saudi ladies.  He told us that the mutawa (the religious police) were there and would not approve.  So....we had wonderful food instead!

Great dolmathes, which I normally don't like.

Possibly Baba ganoush dish:

 Hummus:

 Another eggplant dish:

 We think this was a dried pepper dish:

Here are the very relaxed ladies:

It was a very interesting day touring our little city.

Researching Yanbu

We have a new French lady, L.,  here and she is a "mover and a shaker".  When she and her husband lived in Singapore, she decided that the expat community needed a guide for the area in terms of where to find things.  It is a very nice book.  Then, a few months ago, she moved here and decided that the same thing needed to be done here.  To be honest, I thought that it was going to be a very short book.  But I have gone on several missions with her and am surprised at what we have found.  It turns out that Yanbu is more interesting than I thought.  If we could just get some more international restaurants, that would be nice.  :)

Anyway, some of the things that people have a hard time finding are ingredients for baking specialty breads, like flax seed, chia seeds, bran, etc.  A South African lady sent me directions to get to a shop that had some of these things.  There are no street directions, just landmarks.  So, we went on a mission to check it out.  This shop was so much fun!  It was a crazy assortment of things.  Also, there were many things that we had no idea what they were.  L's driver came into the shop with us and interpreted what some of the things were.  Here are some of the pictures.
There were lots of bins with who knows what.  Some things looked like rocks, some dried weeds, some shells.

There were oils in dispenser containers:

There was Virginity soap:

Interesting vinegars, like date vinegar and lavender vinegar:

Snake oil:

Ostrich fat oil:

I don't know what this is, looks like rocks:

These are ropes that you burn the end and put it on your fingernail if you are having fingernail problems:

You grind these and put it on your face (for women).  Maybe it is blush:

He ate this one.  I never understood what it was for:

He said this was for your blood.  Or maybe, he said it looked like blood:

Then they gave each of us a carob pod for free.  It does take like chocolate.

Our next stop was very different from the first.  It was an incredible bakery that could have been a French patisserie:

The last picture is a place where you go to get your flour that is freshly ground: white, wheat, etc.

It was quite a day of discovery!

Saudi Engagement Party II

The second Saudi engagement party was very different than the first one that I wrote about in my last blog.  The venue was more modest.  It was at a local hotel, which is nice, but not as grand as the Al Malika.  Again, there was a separate entrance for the party.  Of course, it was women only, including the DJs and the servers.  We did not go through the hotel lobby.  We checked our abayas in the foyer.  There was a small receiving line of the hosts of perhaps 5 ladies welcoming the guests. The mother of the bride carried herself very regally and was very warm to us.  We went along the line, first shaking hands and then kissing on the left cheek once and the right cheek 3-5 times.  

The people seated at the tables were more modestly dressed than the first engagement party.  They wore pretty evening gowns, but they were not over the top dresses, hairstyles and makeup as the prior engagement party.  There was not a runway.  The dancing was done among the tables.  This party probably had 100 guests.  Again, our table had a carafe of tea with an accompanying dish of fresh mint leaves, a carafe of Arabic coffee (with cardamom), a plate of cookies and a plate of cheese filled pastries.  This party also had female DJs accompanying recorded Arab music.  The music was a little different.  It seemed a bit more tribal sounding.    The dance movements were still very subtle with graceful hand and arm movements.  But at this , engagement party, there was more variety of dance moves.  It seemed as if there were different dances for different songs.  A song would come on and those that got up to dance all did the same dance.  Some dances had sideways movements.  Some dances had a little dip in the middle of the dance steps.  Some were like the moves from the last engagement party.
 The bride's family was from Jeddah and the groom's family was from southern Saudi Arabia, near Yemen.  There were a few different traditions for the groom's family.  One was the use of flowers.  Many of the ladies of the groom's immediate family were wearing necklaces made of garlands of flowers.  As the party went along, the groom's mother worked a band of flowers into the grandmother's hair.  This grandmother wanted to be very much a part of the party.  She was wheeled in to the room in a wheel chair, but when members of her table got up to dance, she would get up to dance also, even though she had a bit of a tremor.  Toward the end of the party, our friend, C, received a garland necklace of flowers.  We were able to smell it and it was jasmine flowers.  
After a couple of hours, an elaborate white cart was wheeled in.  It had several shelves, all containing gifts from the groom to the bride.  It had perfume, high quality chocolates, gold jewelry, oud (the Arabic perfume/scent/incense), a gold Koran, and lots of other things.  The Saudi lady seated next to me said that the cart is often valued at anywhere from 4,000-25,00 riyals, which is about $1,100-$7,000 American dollars.  
Then, about a half hour later, a line of very young girls came in carrying trays and pushing carts of gifts and treats for the guests.  One cart had a pyramid that was formed of small oval mirrors.  They would bring the cart by to each guest and the guest would pull a mirror off the pyramid.
Here is a picture that I took of it at home.  Looking at the picture now, I guess I should have cleaned the mirror before I took the picture.  It has all my smudges all over it.

Then there were little colorful bamboo boxes filled with candies and a key chain.  And it was wrapped in a pretty gold wrapping and tied with a bow.

Then there was a little favor shaped like a golden royal carriage filled with candies.

There was a colorful cloth bag filled with a savory snack:

A mini container of pudding, with a flower on top of the container.  But when I got home, I gave it to Ken to eat before taking the picture.  So here is a picture of the flower.  :)

Then, there was a bottle of Zam Zam water.  I did not know what it was, so I asked the Saudi lady next to me.  She said, "It is Zam Zam water, of course!"  I had read about Zam Zam water before.  It goes something like this.  God had instructed Abraham to leave his wife and son in the desert and to walk away.  Abraham left them in the desert as instructed.  His wife, Hagar, was desperately seeking water for her thirsty son, but could not find any in this hot dry valley.  She ran seven times back and forth between two hills looking for the water.  One version of the story has her son, Ishmael, scraping the ground with his foot and water springing up.  Another version has that God sent the angel, Gabriel, who kicked the earth and water sprang up.  To me, this is interesting because it points out the commonality of some of the characters in early stories of Islam and those in the Bible.  Anyway, it is thought that it was called Zam Zam water because Zome Zome means "stop" which Hagar is reported to have said to contain the spring water.  According to Islam, Abraham built the House of God near the site of the well, which today is called the Kaaba, a building that millions of Muslims worldwide face 5 times per day for prayer.  The Zam Zam well is about 66 feet away and it is part of the Hajj pilgrimage for pilgrims to drink water from the Zam Zam well.
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with it.  If it were like Catholic holy water, you wouldn't drink it.  So, I asked the Saudi lady again, what should I do with it, display it, use it for blessings.....   She laughed and said "You drink it!!!"   Here is a picture of it:

We also received little pastries in their own little sacs.  I ate most of them.

Then we noticed the photographers were setting up near the door at the back of the room.  It was amazing, but within a minute, all of the ladies in the room had their abayas on again .  My two friends had gone to the bathroom.  I thought well, I had better get my abaya on.
The bride appeared at the door at the back of the room.  Again, she looked like a Disney princess.  To me, she looked like Belle from the Disney film "Beauty and the Beast".  She was wearing a gold gown, draped at the neck, a fitted bodice, billowing out from the waist and gathered in scallops at the bottom.  Her light brown hair was in an intricate up swept hairdo.  She had fair skin, that was lightly bronzed.  She was beautiful!  She remained at the door for about 5 full minutes, smiling and looking beautiful.  People were clapping, ululating, tossing rose petals at her.  Then, she began taking her baby steps, as in the other party.   Take a small step, pause for a minute, then take another small step with the surrounding crowd of relatives smiling, ululating and following her.  She made it to the stage and then tossed roses to the members of the audience around the stage.  C got one!  
The lights dimmed and the Saudi lady next to me put on her head scarf and face veil.  I asked her if that meant that the groom was coming in an she said yes.  He appeared at the door in his immaculate white thobe, keffiyah (the white and red checked headdress) and agal (the black coiled rope that holds the keffiyah in place and was also used to hobble the camels in the desert at night so that they did not stray far from the tent).  His family met him at the door and walked with him to the stage to meet his bride.  He did not look at anyone in the audience.  It is my understanding that this was probably the second time that the bride and groom have seen each other, unless they are related.  After the groom asks the bride's father to marry his daughter, there is an arranged meeting between the future bride and groom.  She is unveiled and either one can say no to the marriage.  Now, they can have seen each other before if they are related.  Saudis can marry cousins.  Then, they would have seen each other growing up, until she reached puberty and veiled.  It is said that the ideal marriage is one in which the groom marries his father's brother's daughter.  But since these two were from different areas of Saudi Arabia, I think that they were probably not related.  They did not look like each other at all.
On the stage, they seemed a little awkward with each other.  She did not really look directly at him when he put the garland of jasmine flowers around her neck.  And at one point rather than holding her hand or arm, skin to skin, he wrapped the flappy arm part of his robe around her arm and then held her arm covered.  They stood together for a few minutes.  He presented her with a beautiful, gold Saudi necklace (from the cart) and put it around her neck.  The mothers and grandmothers (including the shaky grandmother from before) came up onto the stage to kiss both the bride and the groom.  Then, he suddenly left the stage and the room without making eye contact with ANYONE.  Then everyone took off their abayas, head scarves and face veils and the party continued.  
The door at the side of the room opened and we were ushered to the buffet.  It is now 2:30 am.  There was a salad buffet, an entree buffet (with hashi, camel meat), and a dessert buffet.  After all the snacks prior to this, I was not hungry, but I did it!  We ate again!  The bride, the bride's mother and the grandmother each came separately to our table to tell us thank you for coming.  Only the bride spoke English.  The grandmother's palms of her hands were covered with black henna designs on her hands.  I am sure that it was to celebrate this special occasion.  They were all so incredibly welcoming and hospitable to us.
We said our goodbyes and left the party at 3:15 am!

This was quite an interesting experience!!!  Thank you, K and C!!!