Ally's Adventures

The sticky heat makes my clothes cling to me like glad wrap. Sweat from the nape of my neck pours down my back. Even my feet are sweating. This, is an Israeli summer. This, is what it feels like wandering around the Arab Souk in the Old City of Jerusalem.

Yet I know I do not bare the worst of it.

There is an abundance of women, most likely sweating more than I am under their traditional Abaya, roaming the Souk (marketplace). Though an Arab market, to those unfamiliar of the Israeli dialect, you would not know. Even though I can speak dabbles of Hebrew, I still did not know it was an Arab marketplace until my brother later told me after a moment I had with a vender.

Arab Souk, Israeli Souk, it does not matter. There is still no greater assault of the senses than this inexplicably rousing marketplace.The exotic spices of cumin, cardamom, baharat, and sweet aromas of aniseed and cinnamon that imbed themselves into your nose. The boom of the shop owners, ‘Eh, come ‘ere madame, beautiful scarf for you!’ The rainbowic splendour of jewellery, scarves, woven rugs, the heat, humidity and bodies clashing against one another as people bustle their in and out of the marketplace corners.

And then, naively and unabashedly I ask a seller, “Camah zeh oleh?” (how much does that cost). The seller stared at me for no more than two seconds before proceeding to barter with me.

“You can’t speak Hebrew in an Arab marketplace, they’ll rip you off,” my brother later said.

And in that moment, I thought that no, it wasn’t that I was speaking Hebrew that he may have ripped me off. It was just marketplace culture. And in that moment, I was infinitely happy to know that a Muslim and a Jewish person could barter peacefully and happily over a cheap scarf.

Sometimes, it's just the little moments that make you stop, think and smile.