I got up early enough to get a ride with Peggy and John to Sharjah to see the Central Souk . This was a huge conglomeration of i.e., totally indoors but not a coordinated mall. Its design respected the souk, if you consider that a souk consists of shops with a covering built over the street. The Central Souk was like a set of strip mall shops that parking, and a covered central walkway – two storeys high. Two long buildings were joined by second storey walkways. The whole was decorated in an tile design.
After dropping Peggy at DWC (Dubai Womens College), John drove into Sharjah. We conducted a mumbling debate about which coffee shop he should leave me at: he was thinking taxi after coffee, and I was thinking close to where dhows are loaded. On my own, I drifted a bit along the road, thinking I should go straight to the dhows while its cooler. Then I heard a voice calling, to which I paid scant attention, until it revealed itself to be Dirk. He and some colleagues had just started
to have coffee and breakfast, and they invited me to join them. So, I spent hour chatting with them. They were playing hooky from jobs. I to appreciate the force of the desert heat, which grew steadily, although we were in the shade. I could feel it radiating from the sunny part of the patio. (Everyone else was indoors with AC.) One man said it is now getting to 45 degrees during the day. I didnt realize it was that hot.
In their friendly way they offered me a ride down to the sea front. Good thing, too, because it was a lot farther than I thought and required crossing several large intersections.
I watched dhows loading, standing on the traffic median between the and the slip road, a widely used device here for getting local traffic out of the way of Dhows large, small, old and modern were loading and unloading, exchanging goods crossing the UAE from the Mediterranean to the Indian Ocean and back again. Watching this process, I came to understand the meaning of trading nation.
fish market that I hid my hands under my shirt tails. Once the traffic median ended, I carefully padded through sand at the side of the road. The sand felt much hotter on my toes than the sun.
On a hill thats part of the road system was the plant and flower market. The there had no margin for walking, so I stayed on the other side. There was almost no activity and few flowers set out; perhaps people shopped there later in the day when the air was cooling.
Further along was the fish market. Such beautiful, fish! Most of them were unrecognizable to me. I could name the king fish (steaks about 8 long by 5 wide) because Peggy had served it for dinner one evening, and small sharks (about 25 long), and sardines. There were several red fish of apparently different varieties, ranging from about 10 long to about 30 long with large heads and
The size of the market was smaller than I had expected, although the fish were plentiful. Only two of the rows of tables were covered by a roof, leaving the customers of the outer tables
in the sun. Each vendors wooden table was about 4x8 with a ridge around it to contain the fish, some of which were cooled with a few bits of ice, most of which were refreshed by (sea?) water periodically thrown on them.
There were a fair number of customers; about half or more of the vendors were calling out their wares. Most of the customers were men, but a few traditionally dressed women were there, and one Japanese couple were discussing their selection.
At the end of the market were grouped all the fishing boats, jammed together, forming a sort of platform for those on the outer sides. Nothing was happening on them.
From the fish Market to the Central Souk was a convenient footpath. I tromped across the boulevards and parking to the shade of the souk, although it was not fully enclosed and so not particularly cool. To my relief there was a large circular seating area, where I rested and drank my (warm) bottle of water.
