Wednesday was a lull between projects (late at night the next bit of work came in) so I did some accounting and refamiliarising myself with the memory room story. This is a longer novella, and I have been chewing over it for a very long time indeed. I think it’s promising, but let us see if it ever is completed.
In the Guardian I came across this article (screenshot will be added for posterity once my internet is no longer throttled) and was taken aback to see that one of the women in this photo from 1925 looks, well, it could be me. I won’t say which one, of course, but perhaps I am actually a time traveller.
In the morning we went down to Hamra’s Souq al-Tayeb to stock up on fruit. One of the sellers accosted us, a man selling flavoured roasted nuts. Aside from rosemary cashews and thyme almonds he had two others that he considered unique. One was a curry cashew, which was very tasty, but clearly something alien to Lebanese tastes. The other he said was lemony, but actually it wasn’t lemon at all, but… ‘Kaffir lime,’ the GF said, ‘very tasty.’ At this the man looked absolutely outraged and shouted several times, ‘How did you find out?!’ and ranted furiously for a few minutes. We said that we’d just come from Malaysia, which caused him to relax a bit, but he was clearly very miffed all the same.
A funny old encounter. He seemed extraordinary angry and said that no Lebanese knows about kaffir lime or curry leaves so he doesn’t even bother telling them.