Blessings for sale

Outside the Great Mosque in Kairouan this man sprinkled water from a silver container on worshippers as they came out from prayer and put their shoes back on. He sprinkled me too as I waited for Zied to reshod.

How nice, I thought, a blessing even for a kafir, and better by far than the usual experience for westerners and women of being shooed out of even the courtyards of mosques here by crabby old men.

Then he opened his other palm and showed me the silver coin inside. Oh, I said, and handed him a dinar.

Watery blessings are no more free for tourists than candles they are invited to light in cathedrals. Of course.