Balad Historic Festival

I have written about Jeddah’s UNESCO heritage site of the old city of Al Balad before and with good reason, it is one of the most interesting parts of the city and one of our favourite places to go for an evening out.  A few weeks ago the city municipality had arranged a historic festival to take place over a few nights so Mr EE and I decided to go down to investigate.

   

Bait Naseef

Due to the festival the traffic, typically horrendous on any evening, was truly atrocious and it took us over an hour to get down to the old town.  We walked up the Souk Al Alawi historic path to the Mecca Gate, the route taking us through a rather modern looking underpass and into the centre of the old town proper.  There is a lot of reconstruction work going on in an attempt to preserve some of the more important historic buildings before they crumble into nothing.  A lot of progress has been made in the year we have been here, however, and it is good to see the municipality looking to preserve rather than to build new.

Bait Naseef

Walking up the historic path brought us to the ‘gun square’ presided over by the Bait Naseef, (once a Royal residence of King Abdul Aziz and worthy of a post in its own right) and a neem tree reputed to be the oldest tree in Jeddah.  As part of the festival a beautiful vintage fire truck had been parked by the side of the square, I meant to get a photograph of it but decided to wait until we walked back.  A mistake that I now regret.  What I did photograph, however, were the light projections onto the façade of the house.  Changing every few minutes from one pattern to the next the designs were quite mesmerising.  While we were in the square the mosques started the Athan, the call to prayer which is such an integral part of life here.  Shopkeepers hurried to close their doors and people started making their way towards the nearest mosque while others congregated on the street to make their devotions, public prayer mats provided for the purpose.  We walked on, moving from the square down one of the side roads towards the Al Shafi mosque.

On the way we came across a courtyard filled with artists.  This courtyard, dilapidated and tumble down is usually nothing special, something we have walked past numerous times and given it no more than a casual glance, had been transformed with ribbons and lights, into an open air gallery.  We wandered from stall to stall, some of the art was amateurish, other items were good in and of themselves but not to our taste.  One artist really impressed us, we bought one of his oil canvasses and will look out for another piece that he has not yet finished.  I have no idea if the piece really is any good or not but we are over the moon with it and it will provide us with a wonderful memory of that evening for many years to come.  

Moving on we came to the Al Shafi mosque itself.  The mosque, dating from around the 13^th Century, is said to be the oldest in Jeddah.  Made from mud and coral it is designed as an open square with a single minaret.  The mosque was restored relatively recently and is therefore in excellent condition.  Mr EE and I, as non-muslims, are not allowed inside but from glimpses through the doors have seen that it is very beautiful.  As we were outside during prayers we did not, however, look in this time opting instead to enjoy the light shows playing over the walls and minaret.

Al Shafi Mosque

We walked from the mosque towards the Bab Makkah.  This was once the start of the last and most difficult part of the pilgrimage to Mecca.  In the old days Jeddah was surrounded by city walls punctuated by garrisoned gates.  The walls have long since collapsed but the gates remain standing.  Pilgrims would make their way through the city and, as they went through the gate, would see nothing but desert stretching out in front of them.  Old pictures give a real sense of just how stark the contrast was.  These days the city has expanded a long way beyond its initial limits and the Bab Makkah is nothing more than a traffic island where boys play football and some unfortunates find shelter for the night.  

Bab Makkah Once the edge of the desert, now a traffic island.

The real joy, however, of a trip up to the Bab Makkah is the fruit and vegetable souk along the way.  Crowded with carts selling every type of produce you can imagine the street is heaving and cheerful.  The odd (brave) driver inches through the crowd but by and large this is a pedestrian zone of organised chaos and a good place to buy a bottle of water and banana or orange to refresh energy levels that almost always sag in the night time humidity.

Fruit and Vegetable Souk near the Bab Makkah

Leaving the souk we made our way through the quieter back streets towards the festival area again.  We found more open air art galleries where ruined buildings were transformed into showcases, a dance and music display and, rather incongruously, a Toyota stand promoting their latest models.  Further on there were stalls selling a range of antiques from old keys and locks to bicycles and ancient record players.  Everyone wanted us to stop and chat, a chance for a sale of course always in their mind but also a desire to talk, to find out why we were there, what we thought of their city.  There was more, much more, to the festival but by this stage we were exhausted and made our way home for the night passing recreations of old fashioned pilgrimages on the way.  

I doubt people who have not lived here would imagine Saudis enjoying festivals like this, gathering together to celebrate history and culture and welcoming visitors into their midst at the same time.  While it is hardly an every day occurrence festivals like this are not unusual here (there was a food festival running concurrently and nearby towns had flower and rose festivals at around the same time).  Jeddah has a reputation as a rather dull posting but, when you start to really look for things, there is a lot going on.

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Date Night At The Afghan Souk

I wrote a post, a few weeks ago, about a trip I made to ‘downtown’ with the express intention of looking for carpets only to be side-tracked by other places of interest nearby.   The other day our compound bus was scheduled to go back to the area in the evening so Mr EE and I decided to get a babysitter and go carpet hunting.  We had been due an evening out together as we very rarely get an opportunity to be ‘off work’.  In the UK, Kazakhstan and Miri we went out, just for ourselves, at least once a week and often more.  In Ipoh a lack of babysitters meant that we only ever went out alone together if it was absolutely necessary, ie for work.  Here we have easy access to a babysitter and we are out quite a lot.  Other than one meal out with friends, however, all of our evenings have been connected with Mr EEs work so we were looking forward to an evening together for some time.

This shop advertises the souk pretty well...

In case you have not guessed from our decision to spend our evening together in carpet shops, we LOVE carpets.  I can happily spend hours sipping tea with the owner looking at various colours, qualities and designs.  I am, sadly, no expert on carpets (although I would love to take a course), but I have spent a considerable amount of time  in carpet shops, first with my parents and later with Mr EE and/or my sister, all of whom share my passion, feasting our eyes on all the many beautiful pieces on sale.  Of course, like everyone, I am very partial to Persian silk carpets.  A few years ago my family had a nasty experience with an incontinent elderly dog on a very beautiful Persian rug (picked up by my Father 20 years ago on a business trip to Tehran), so given Bessie’s age any silk carpets we do buy will not be used on the floor!  That said now that we have a cat I wonder whether she will see wall mounted carpets as climbing material… Wool carpets have their place and can be very beautiful and practical.  My parents had two made to measure and design when we lived in Turkey, they are so dense that any spillages just bead on the top and can be soaked away without staining the wool.  Both of our older children walked for the first time on those carpets (there was something about the feel of them on their feet) and all three of them have enjoyed pretending to ‘pick’ the flowers of the pattern.  Kelims are cheaper, cheerful and hardwearing making them perfect for high traffic areas or children’s bedrooms! 

                                  

A number of sellers, normally based in beautiful high end shops, come to display their wares at the compound every so often and I have seen some stunning top quality carpets there (for top drawer prices as well, one that I have my eye on has been quoted to me for the price of a second hand car although I have not started to bargain on that one yet).  The shops on the souk are an altogether more earthy experience, they don’t tend to have anything approaching the high quality of the really good places, indeed most of what is on sale is cheap acrylic floor coverings and plasticky blankets but there are one or two which have some decent products for sale, if you ask to see them.  

Searching for food

The traffic in Jeddah can be appalling and the bus took about an hour to make the 20 minute journey downtown.  By the time we got close to the area we were in danger of running into prayer time so we hopped out and walked down to get some food.  While I love a lot of the recipes and flavours of street food sold here I am always very careful about what we buy.  Nothing with meat in as we have no guarantee how long it has been lying about, nothing with raw salad or vegetables as they might not have been cleaned.  Apart from that as long as it has been cooked as we watch I am generally ok with it.  We picked up some onion baajhi with a curry dip and a few cans of soda and wandered around until prayers were over.  This gave us a good opportunity to look in through the windows and decide which shops to look at in more detail once prayers were over. 

Wools, silks (some with less traditional designs) and kelims.
Our Indigo and Saffron purchase is bottom right

We found a few that looked promising and started browsing.  Our house has a tiled living room and we have been wanting to get a good sized wool carpet to warm it up a little.  Settling on a colour scheme (dark in case of spills) we spent a happy half hour looking at carpets of various qualities from the very basic at a bargain price to some surprisingly good carpets.  While I truly loved some of the rugs we saw we were constrained by the size of our room.  In the end we found a lovely Turkmen carpet, deep red with a repeating pattern of octagons known as gul or ‘elephant feet’ and a decent but not spectacular knot count.

More silk rugs, the two on display top right were particularly fine.

While we were looking at the functional carpets we could also not resist looking at some of the silk carpets for sale.  Many were poor quality with a long pile and small knot count but there were a few that were really worth looking at.  I fell in love with a silk carpet in deep blue and gold, while not of the highest quality something about it spoke to us.  I think it may have been made as a training piece because although the knot count is high there are some places where the knots face a different direction and there are obvious variations in dye lots.  The price was, accordingly, very reasonable meaning we could afford to purchase it on a whim.  It is by no means a statement piece, the type of carpet we would save up for for a few years (like the carpet I have seen on display in a particular carpet shop in Turkey for years and have coveted that whole time) but it is beautiful and something we will enjoy for years to come. 

Spectacular table tops and some interesting, and
not so interesting knick knacks.

The shop has some furniture as well, many modern pieces masquerading as antiques and some beautiful doors.  A popular thing to do here in Jeddah is to take old wooden doors (many of which are very ornate) and turn them into a table by laying them flat and topping with glass.  Much like a very high quality silk carpet this is something we would like but given the expenses, not only of purchase but also onward transport in the future it is definitely something to be seen as an investment rather than a purchase on a whim.  We did pick up some footstools for the children to sit on when watching tv.  They look ‘antique’ but are almost certainly modern made with old wood and bits of old kelim to simulate an old fashioned look and probably beaten with chains and buried in the garden for a few weeks for good measure!  I can never get too het up about this sort of thing, while I would love some genuinely old pieces with a story to them (and we snap them up when we can) there is no harm in something not quite ‘authentically antique’ as long as you know what you are buying and are not hoping to take them along to an Antiques Road Show to be told you have bought something worth thousands for a bargain price!

Our new carpet and footstools help to warm the place up

Anyway our ‘date’ night ended with us carting what looked like a dead body (carpet wrapped in plastic) back home where we spent the rest of the evening beating out the dust and running over the carpet with the vacuum.  Who says romance is dead!

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