Eating fish

Al Khor is just north of Doha along Highway 1A. It is a small fishing town, old and rather abandoned. Along the Persian Gulf sits a small warehouse where the boats dock. The warehouse has fish for sale, fresh fish. You pick out the fish and they clean it while you wait. Today our neighbors (about 8 of them) invited us to go for a lunch/supper at Al Khor. We are experiencing the third day of a desert storm (not the war, just a big dust storm), so we were glad to join them and avoid walking somewhere amid all the dust! We live in an interesting neighborhood surrounded by post doctoral students. It's a very quiet neighborhood generally, most of the post doc students are single and many rent or buy cars while they are here for 2 or 3 years. Today, one of the students was from Malaysia, one from China, one from Egypt, 3 from Lebanon, 2 friends from Poland, and 2 old people from America (that's us in case you didn't know!). Basheer, a 29 year old IT specialist from Lebanon did all the ordering. He claims to have a huge appetite so we agreed he was a good choice. He picked out schrimp, cuttle fish, pearly goat fish, orangespotted grouper, tilapia and squid. The orangespotted grouper is called "Hamoor" here and is the favorite fish of the arabian gulf states. Pearly Goat fish is a favorite of the Lebanese. Once the fish were cleaned, we carried them accross the street to a small restaurant that cooked them - grilled and deep fried the fish --- and served us side dishes. We had fatoush (salad), hummus, bread, fries, another dip and lemons for flavoring. It was a feast! I don't know if I have ever tasted fish so good. We all ate with our hands. Utensils were pretty useless. Kleenex is used for napkins. (That's true at most restaurants.) All together we each paid $15.00 for everything - fish, cleaning, cooking and all the sides. I particularly enjoyed my conversation with the Lebanese and Egyptian. These 2 young men were delightful. We talked about families and plans for the future and what brought them to Doha. Particularly insightful were there questions. The Lebanese asked me if it was true what he had heard: That Americans encourage their children to leave home and go on their own at the age of 18. That seemed so unbelievable to him. How could that be? In the Middle East, children don't leave home until they marry. And even then, they live close by. I loved hearing them talk about their mothers and how their mothers just lived to make their children happy. By the end of our talk, I was thinking about inviting Emily and Jonathan to move back home again. I was practically in tears. And then I got back to our apartment and thought some more about the idea. Maybe I will just go visit Emily and Jonathan when I get home ----- and tell them how much I love them, even though they do not live with us anymore. I better not stay in the Middle East too long or I may change my whole way of thinking and develop some "radical" ideas. Days like this help me realize again and again how fortunate we are to be here. Anyway, it was a lovely day.