"What do you think of our clothes?"

A young journalist laboring to make conversation in English with me as he accompanied me to his newsroom for a consultation today asked this question.

Well, I fumbled for an answer that was both honest and understandable to a speaker of, as he told me, "intermediate level" English. Well, people seem to pay a lot of attention to their clothing.... er...fashionable. I thought about shocking and wild. He told me that Moldovans spend a large percentage of their income on clothing. Another reporter here, with more English, put it this way: "Oh, the foreign men, they like our women very much."

Moldova has become unfortunately well known as a center of trafficked women, which may be the real proof of this.

Eid and Easter

People celebrate Eid by remaking themselves. B.aths are open all night before the start of the holiday and it is traditional --as for Easter at home -- to buy all new clothes for the day. Everyone from children to grandmothers deck themselves out in finery.

My colleague's niece snapped a telling photo of the stylish new sandals her aunt was saving for Eid

Sweet mint tea

And the cap on every iftar is wonderful Algerian tea served from a pot into tiny glasses. I love the tea but the service always makes me feel like a little girl playing tea party!

This photo was taken by the young niece of a coworker who invited me to her home. The little girl played for hours with my camera leaving me with a legacy of the small treasures carefully arranged in an Algerian home readied to receive guests. These homes Victorian and grandmotherly to me -- they have a feel lost in our big, modern palaces.

Doing Ramadan

After work today we went to the Centre Ville to "do Ramadan." This entailed walking around the bay and downtown shops along with huge hordes of other people. Not a lot of work gets done during Ramadan.



Nadir pointed out that while you are supposed to refrain from sexual dealings in the day during Ramadan plenty of couples were snuggling on benches along the bay. Business was very brisk in the markets as people shopped for dinner through heaps of fresh herbs and pyramids of black and green olives and slabs and counters of meat: skinned rabbits with bulging eyes, the most gigantic plucks turkeys I've ever seen and chicken carcasses with scaly legs and feet still attached. There were dozens of kiosks selling Ramadan specialities like fresh dates and breads studded with sesames and molded into star, wheel and cigar shapes.



The aroma of fresh bread, pungent mint and parsley and sharp olives was intoxicating on an empty stomach. "You see," Nadir said, abuzz with pleasure at showing us all this, "that is the smell of Ramadan."



He bought me and Dell each a string of jasmine. They were like miniature leis and smelled wonderful too.



I bought a pair of khaki pants and matching jacket from an outdoor kiosks. I could not resist this bargain -- I mean $8 for the perfect desert gear. Nadir was again delighted because it is traditional to buy new clothes for Eid, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. I had unintentionally complied with a hallowed Easter-like tradition.

Soaps -- Ramadan style

TV watching is big during the evenings in Ramadan when families are assembled for big dinners to break the fast. We watched them while we visited our friends for dinner and while we couldn't understand the language, the music and the dramatic settings seemed very familiar. I've found some plot outlines to these shows in the Kuwait Times online -- and find them amusing Muslim takes on traditional soap opera themes.

In Al-Malek Farouk (King Farouk) The king eventually springs back to health where he establishes a close rapport with his Egyptian doctor. His wife meanwhile gives birth to another baby girl but this time he keeps his word and does not hassle her. Instead he goes to his wife and tells her that he is happy and that he will call her Fadya. The mother is stupefied and wonders why her husband is happy this time. The king however confides in Hasaneen that this time he is happy because he believes that it's not his wife who is responsible for thebaby's gender, but it's Allah's will.

In Al-Wazeera (The Woman Minister), Amal asks Ghalib to approach her mother with a proposal as soon as possible, but he in turn tells her that he doesn't even have a roof over his head to stay after their marriage. She tells him that they can live at her home with her parents and he agrees. She also badly wants to tell her mother about Ghalib but she doesn't know how and where to start. She then plucks up courage, approaches her mother and tells that she had had sexual relations with Ghalib whom she lovesvery much and who wants to marry her. At first her mother shouts, flies into a rage and even beats her, as she never ever expected her daughter to go that extent. But now she is left with no other choice than to agree on the marriage. was one of the wooers cavorting with his mother when she was in Palestine.

Ramadan and rumbling stomachs

* The word Ramadan comes from an Arabic root -ramida or ar-ramad, which means an intense scorching heat.

*Stick out your tongue! That command is the test if you think someone is lying about fasting. The tongues of fasters have a white coating.

*A doctor who writes a special Ramada advice column for our newspaper came to visit us today 10/2, curious to see the non-Muslims attempting to fast. I told him I thought I'd lost weight and he said it's fairly common for women to lose 1-3 kilos during the month (that's 2.2 to 6.6 pounds) by eating twice a day and staying away from too many sweets.

Ramadan at night

The busy Sidi Yahia section of the city comes alive with shoppers and dinners and strollers and cruisers afer dark during Ramadan.

Ramadan ramblings

* Authorities in Khenchla, a province (east of Algiers) are looking into reports that donkey and dog meat are being sold to Ramadan shoppers. At a time of year when people are making nightly feasts, a lot of food is being sold and so it's easy to chop up inferior goods into minced meat. This would not be the first time it has happened, either, according to Nadir. A similar case occured two years ago. Nadir remembers that people would bray at residents of the district where the donkey meat had been sold. Hee Haw. It makes me kind of worried, but Del's view is that so long as it tastes good, who care what kind of meat it is. Carrots and melons are looking good to me.

*Our driver Shar invited us last night to his house for Iftar, the evening dinner at which you break fast. This was a big honor and we were excited, not least, because his wife is a great cook and there's nothing like 12 hours of fasting to build an appetite.

Shar picked us up and their little house was shining and spotless in that way you know people have gone out of their way for guests. They also had invited their nephew to eat because he is the best student in his English class and he could translate. They had the TV on to catch the first notes of the maghrib, the signal that fasting for the day is over. We started with traditional dates and milk, the meal the prophet Muhammed broke his fast with, spead on a platter on the coffee table in the sitting room and then we moved into their tiny kitchen. It was a little like playing house. The kitchen table was set with an array of platters and there were dishes on the counters and pots on all the burners. The house was filled with a rich, thick smell of day-long cooking. And we dug into a kind of chorba with chicken, brik, burek, pita, salad, Thoum -- which are garlic and meat balls, a stew of lamb and chickpeas, another stew of beef, apricots and prunes in a sweet sauce, lemonade and Coke. They had been cooking for more than five hours.

Well, just as I was thinking, I'm getting full, a wave of weakness overcame me. I thought I was going to faint and so excused myself to the bathroom where I sat with my head between my knees for a while. I was completely white, my lips blue and I was sweating out of control. Even when I went back in, people could tell there was something wrong. It was embarassing. I basically was intoxicated with food after eating all that rich stuff on an empty stomach! The sensation happily didn't last too long, a little sweetened tea and I was flesh-colored again but I did not eat any of the fruit or cakes that came out next.

Because I have always eaten and eaten lots, this reaction to food after fasting, the heat, the speed of metabolism kicking in, is fascinating. We also are realizing that we can't eat as much. We made soup and meat the other night and decided after the soup that was enough, for example.

We are going to buy flowers and get Nadir to help us with a thank you note in Arabic for the great evening.

*Our colleague Salleh Eddine was telling us how his 4-year-old daughter is insisting on fasting. That raised the question of how you get children started in this religious rule. There is no age at which children must start, but the usual time seems to be aroud 8 or 9 when children want to be like their grown-ups around them. Parents encourage their children to observe the fast -- but only so long as they can. If they go four hours than eat, good that's a start. As they get closer to the full amount of time -- say 9 hours, parents will urge them to try to hold out a little longer before eating. And for children who observe fasting for the first time there is praise,celebration and small rewards -- a little silver ring in some places, special juice in others, a change to eat dinner with the grown ups sometimes. It's kind of like potty-training at home. You make a fuss over the child who gets it right.

Ramadan Report

*In addition to the usual five times of prayer a day Muslims add another 90 minutes of Tarawih prayers in the evening during Ramadan. A translator applicant we met recently described the nice feeling of a family dinner and then going in a group to pray at the mosque. You get special breaks for prayers during Ramadan too -- like our Catholic special indulgences --but you have a work a little harder than usual. There are four "bends" in regular prayer session, Nadir explained to us, deep bowing in reverence toward Mecca. Tarawih requires 12 bends.

*After you go all day without eating, when you finally do sit down and ravenously eat dinner, food tastes sooo good. And then you get hot. Really, we throw open the balcony windows after sitting down originally with long sleeves and socks on. Food seems to turn instantly to fuel that heats you up.

* Just as newspapers in Christian countries get fat in November with ads and extra pages, Ramadan is a good season for journalism here too. Our newspaper boosted the number of papers it prints for the season for example. In Morocco book sales go up. Reading is a way to pass time during fasting hours.

*Children, pregnant women, people who are sick and travelers are not required to fast. One of those exempted in the traveler category this year will be Malaysia's first astronaut, Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor who is lifting off in a Russian space craft Oct. 10. en route to the space station. Malaysia's Science Minister says the Muslim astronaut will not be compelled to fast, though he has been during his training for the flight.



He also will also only have to pray three times a day instead of five. Kneeling and bowing in a gravity-free atmosphere is a chore -- and so is figuring out what direction Mecca is at when you are orbiting the globe.



*Next to the concept of mass fasting, I like the idea of zakat, a required act of charity, mathmatically derived, during Ramadan. The head of every household is required to give enough to pay for two kilograms of semolina wheat for every person in the family. Algerians use semolina because that is a staple food here, but other Muslim countries use whatever is their staple. The government posts an official price per kilo because, of course, the market price varies daily so that zakat calculations would be complicated. This year it is 50 dinars -- a little less than a dollar -- a kilo, meaning that a typical family of five must pay 500 dinars -- under $10.

A supermarket two days before Ramadan

Ramadan, the month-long fast during which Muslims do not put anything past their lips during daylight hours, begins in two days.

I went into Monoprix for bottled water today and could barely move in the isles it was so crowded. People were piling up carts and baskets.

It was exactly like Price Choppers or Publix before Thanksgiving or Christmas.

But wait.

Thanksgiving and Christmas are feasts. The opposite of a fast.

Zied explained it to me though. When you don't eat all day that meal at night is WAY important. People shop, stock up, prepare and savor the meals during Ramadan.

There you go feast, fast -- or hurricane -- supermarkets do a good business.

Doors

More of the nail-studded turquoise doors Tunisia is so proud of. There are posters, magnets, post-cards and models of these doors everywhere. Of course. These are from Carthage and Sidi Bou Said and the second two are by Zied.

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.

To give or not to give

Beggars make me so uncomfortable.

I feel instantly guilty at the sight of skinny feral-cat like kids, cripples and amputees, mothers with babies at flappy breast and especially of battered old women without sons to care for them asking me for money, I who am traveling to exotic places, spending money on silly souvenirs and dieting because I have too much to eat.

Some people cope with this guilt by seeing all beggars as fakes who are actually earning riches by feigning poverty and deformity on the public sidewalks. I don't believe that, or if it's true, they still deserve something simply because that's an awful way to make a living. Some of my traveling friends believe that giving to beggars encourages more begging, which is why I never give to children in the streets. How likely would it be if they come back with a big haul that their pleased parents would decide, OK, it's time you went to school now! I was overwhelmed in Kampala at first by the sheer number of people approaching me for handouts so I developed this system of giving only to the old women and walking by the children and the lame. I try to keep my pockets full of small bills and all my coins to give away. In Bosnia I gave to the old ladies in kerchiefs on the street curbs.

But I am having some trouble with that system here.

Walking down a Tunis street a man in a wheelchair waved two leg stumps just inches from by body. I gave him money. The other day outside a little aquarium in Carthage that caters to tourists a withered old woman with scraggly hair and missing teeth sat outside on the cement terrace, a wash bucket and a crutch nearby. I pressed a dinar into her hand.

She started laughing and clutched my hand to return the coin. She spoke only Arabic and I only English. But I asked You are OK? and she nodded, still chuckling

Hmmm. How's that for meaning well and giving offense? Or maybe she is mentally ill or has a system of only taking money from countrymen. I don't know.

So, outside the Great Mosque in Kairouan I found this woman above (and no, I didn't coldly train my camera on her. I was shooting pictures of the facade along with about 38 other people and only zoomed in on her later by computer.) Beggars outside mosques are as common as the kicked-off shoes of worshippers. Islam demands the giving of alms, so mosques are a good place to remind practicing Muslims of that. Our newspaper in Algiers did a recent story about a trend the prayerful find disturbing of beggars coming inside the mosque and hitting up donors as they lift their heads from talking to God.

I thought maybe I should give her something. But she wasn't asking; she wasn't even looking at any of us. She was just sprawled on her rug with water and fan in the crushing heat. Was she begging or praying? Appealing to fellow humans or to God?

The power of tipping

Tipping is not required in Tunisia and locals don't.

I read up on this and for my first week here I mostly followed that custom. But I'm headed toward my third week here and every morning I go to the hotel breakfast room and see the same waiters. They are very nice and even try English with me. It just wasn't feeling right.

So, yesterday I left 21 dinars by my plate. This is a little over $16 or in other words only about $2.30 a day.

This morning, I had two virtual slaves slobbering over my table, fetching me clean napkins, pouring me fresh coffee and delivering, unasked for, a plate of unblemished fruit artfully cut into a design that put tidbits of peach and pear at my fingertips.

I am gonna tip the chambermaid tomorrow morning to see what happens. Extra towels? Shoe shine? A new paint job?

Why I won't drive in Algiers

Cars get stuck all the time on the narrow streets and sharp turns. There is no angst about this, however. Drivers get out, passers-by offer suggestions and help. They cope.

Then there are the jams, which are another way of getting stuck on the roads.

Extreme views

One of the Algiers tabloids ran a picture of a bloody fetus as it Page 1 photo today. This was a new low even among the shredded babies and eviscerated teens the papers have run recently.

Islam is more pro-procreation than Catholicism. Abortion is a sin --and in this Muslim state also a crime for those who perform the operation. Muslims like Catholics also are supposed to abstain from birth control -- except through abstinence.

Extreme and passionate views on abortion is something Algeria and America have in common.
Cruising the Internet casually I came across the following pro and con views of the issue.

Caution: they are raw.

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=825697737


http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=15234893

Tom, Dick or Harry -- Algerian version

The word for "everyman" here, akin to our Tom, Dick or Harry or John Q. Public is -- not surprisingly -- Mohamed.

Yell out that name and more than one man is highly likely ti turn around in response. Think of yelling out Tony or Rose at a Scaringe family reunion -- same idea. Other popular boy names are Samir and Zine El Abidine.

The wife of the great prophet of Islam supplies one of the most popular woman's name here -- Aicha (eye-eee-sha). Other very common names also have religious connections: Halima, meaning gentle or mild, and Nur al Hudda, meaning clear path. I've met one of each even in my short time here. Other pretty but more modern names here are Lamia, Nabila and Samira, Imane, Rym.

Tzeghrit

It looks like I had my fingers on the wrong letters of the keyboard but this is the word for that distinctive African woman's sound of joy -- a trilling wail of a cheer that you'll hear at graduations, weddings, football games. Men can do it too, but it's better sounding from women. And I have no idea why it's as uniquely African as drum beats.

I still cannot pronounce the word. It's in three parts -- like Tzcha--ghr--it -- but that's not it. For short you say you-you-ing. And here's how you do it.

Put the tip of your tongue against your bottom front teeth and hold it there. Then yell the word YOU raising your voice as loud as you can. Practice. And get a crowd of women around you doing the same. Formidable!

A last family gathering

Sadly, a friend here lost his father this week to cancer. He was too young and his loss was especially hard on a family that already suffered the lost of a son during the Dark Years of terrorism. Five of us co-workers drove out to Blida, about 40 miles from Algiers, to pay respects.

Blida is further from the sea than Algiers, separated by mountains from its cooling influence. The place is bleached and dusty white hot; you can smell the sickly rot of dumpsters blocks away. Our friend has always said about his hometown, "Blida is hell" and we agreed.

Tables were set outside the family's apartment building with bottles of cold water and tea. We hugged our friend, murmured condolences and the men retired to those tables to talk and sweat.

The women went upstairs where it was cooler, but more crowded. Here, rooms has been cleared out so that on the floor around the walls of the living and dining rooms women in robes and veils sat cross-legged or with their legs straight out. They'd removed their shoes outside the door where they were piled in a heap. In the living room a rug had been put down on the tile floor and a cushion on top of that for the body, which was displayed covered in an emerald green cloth with Arabic writing. On the stereo a deep voice chanted the Koran.

The widow sat near the body in a yellow and white robe and veil while neighbors and relatives in sombre colors hugged her, talked a little but mostly and sat with her and the body. Her granddaughters walked through the room and around the body, stumbling through the shoe pile, climbing into her lap every once in a while, keeping uncharacteristically silent.


The daughters and daughter-in-law greeted visitors in aprons and offered couscous, traditional funeral fare that is offered to anyone who comes for three days and three nights after a death. But it was too hot to eat. Visitors do not bring flowers, which are strictly for happy occasions in Algeria, but close friends might bring coffee or sugar.

This all struck me as lovely and sad but not scary, the way we have made death with funeral parlors and embalming and wreaths. I remembered that our friend who's sat vigil on his father for some time always answered our polite and impotent inquiries with: "What can we do. This is life."

Male relatives and friends carry the body away for burial within 24 hours of death, a custom that is logical considering the intense heat.

But Muslim views on death are healthy as well as full of faith. They believe that God gives life and so can take it away at any time he decides. That is unquestioned, yet that doesn't mean you cannot be sad. When the Prophet's son died, his followers found his crying and were surprised. Of course, he told them, I cry and my heart is heavy, I'm human. Then he made rules to guard against paralyzing grief. Mourning should have an end, he taught. Widows, for example, may not remarry for a period after a husband dies, but that period is not even half a year long.

I like one other of the Prophet's teachings about death. There are three things, he taught , and only three that may continue to benefit a person after death. They are not money or status. They are

*charity given during life which continues to help others
*knowledge from which people continue to benefit
*and a righteous child who prays for him or her

Words to live by.

The final dress change!
The cloaked bride arrives at the party.
Bridal high fashion from head to toe is on display. The dancing is as hot as the fashion. Weddings are a chance to cut loose and relax, women say.
Our driver shows off the pouch of gold jewelry his wife brought for her four dress changes.