I have now been on my first out of town excursion in a mini bus, or death wagon. These lovely contraptions sport 12 seatbelts and transport anywhere from 15 to 50 passengers. Away we go to Zebadaany! Up up up the mountain. Lawnmower engine humming loudly above tradtional Arabic song. This one, Youssef informs me, is about a working man confessing his forbidden love to the woman he serves. 40, 50, now 60 kilometers per hour!
Zebadaany is a beautiful village nestled comfortably against the mountains bordering Lebanon. I was in town to attend a dinner with Siraj and his family and what a dinner it was. The meal was apparently the prototypical Iraqi meal. Sheep, chicken, rice, the table was so full that one literally could not put their glass down. Dish after dish. At the center, a sheep’s head offering such delights as tongue and brain. Both sport a somewhat strange consistency but nonetheless taste quite good. I guess I’m well on my way to eating rocky mountain oysters at this rate, but when in rome…
After dinner we had a decidedly Arabic evening which consisted of tea, tea and more tea. We sat around the table in the garden for an eternity, but never was it boring. Just talking, eating fruit and drinking tea. Eventually we graduated to sweets and coffee. If you’ve had Turkish coffee you know just how wonderfully thick and delicious it is. Siraj and his family were so warm and inviting. His mother had such wit about her, cracking jokes on everyone at the table. The father sitting, smoking, talking politics while his sister was occupied teaching me grammar. The evening was everything you could want from a lazy dinner.
The ride home was a white knuckled ride of doom. I’ve been in enough mini buses now to know that they all drive like made men. They make taxi drivers look like dandies. This man was surely at the pinnacle of his game. While he couldn’t conduct simple math, as evident by our 20 minute delay whilst arguing with a rider over change, he could drive like a demon. We came hurtling out of the mountains like a meteorite of flesh and metal. 120, 130, 140 kilometers per hour! The van shaking so violently I felt we must be challenging land speed records. You know it’s a little dicey when even the locals sitting around you are gawking wide eyed from the window to the driver and back again. The trip home took less than half the time as the one up the mountain. I guess I got money’s worth.
