Very dry city

I haven’t had a drink in years, and yet it was unnerving, in a city of millions where the busy streets are filled with activity, to walk block after block without seeing a single bar or liquor store.   Where were the beckoning neon signs, the glistening bottles behind glass, the beer joints catering to the Bukowskis of the world?

Gone.  Or at least not visible to the eye.  Welcome to a predominantly Muslim metropolis.

The men hang out at coffee houses all day long, their numbers increasing towards evening.  Seated at tables outside the cafes sipping their tiny cups of espresso, there’s a lot of earnest gesticulation but no boozy bon homie.  And no women.  Like the main floor of the mosque, this is not their domain.  I’d like to think that the women were laughing somewhere behind closed doors enjoying their Negronis.  Hemingway would have probably said that it was pretty to think so.  What a sourpuss!  I’ll go with an Arabic saying that basically says that in order to be happy one must believe in happiness.

Yesterday (Friday), we wandered into the central medina to take in the atmosphere of outdoor stalls selling the catch of the day on ice, stacks of colorful fruit, tennis shoes, wallets, and movie memorabilia posters displayed on easels staged around two cardboard cutouts of Bogie and Bergman remembering how they’ll “always have Paris.”  

Later we strolled through the Arab League Park.  Very linear and long with parallel stretches of lawn between straight red crushed rock paths and evenly positioned trees on either side of a middle row of regulated mini-fountains.  Frederick Olmsted would roll over in his grave!  I realize that the repetition motif in Islamic design reflects the religious value of The Infinite, but it is so numerical and abstract it seems, paradoxically, coldly scientific.  

And of course I’m thinking the Arab League must have set up some soccer fields, but nope, not a chance.  Instead, a loud pushy game of basketball was taking place on a court prominently placed on a rise above the park.  I mean, who’s going to argue with a sport that uses both arms and legs?  

Then the sun sets and it’s Friday night in a city of eight million and even without alcohol there’s a looseness among the people out and about as the weekend approaches.