When we last left our heroes, they had explored the traditional (read: rebuilt from scratch in the last 10 years) souq, eaten Persian food, and had a baby shower. We've now gone out to the Museum of Islamic Art twice and Rug Man once. Have to get all the wild and crazy days of our youth in before Baby T. comes.
Here are a few highlights from the Museum of Islamic Art:
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I already can't remember where it came from, and you can't see the detail, but it's gorgeous. Promise.
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| I know that this one was a door, and I THINK it was Egyptian. Unless it was Iranian. Yes, I'm confusing those two. |
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| One of about five pieces in the whole collection to feature people as subjects. |
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Central court of MIA
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| This picture goes on the list of "you should have known better, Carrot." |
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| A sandstone sculpture from some place at some point in history. I should be a curator. |
After the museum, we walked - WALKED! In 100 degrees and 800% humidity! I was really quite proud, unless that wasn't good for the baby in which case I'm very contrite - to the souq, where we had dinner at the Malaysian restaurant. This is also where we decided against the trip to Malaysia we had otherwise been dreaming about. People. You cannot, cannot spice food at that level and expect all the white people going through souq to eat it. Rosko opted to "man up" and eat his nasi lemak (the coconut rice was delicious, though); I managed three bites of my chicken curry. To give you an idea, I took it home, added half a can of coconut milk, an entire eggplant and another breast of chicken and it was finally spiced to what the rest of us call medium to medium-hot. Rosko thinks he might have had a transcendent experience from the spice.
From thence, to the Rug Man. Google if interested. His shop is...well, to get there, you find a taxi and direct them to this one grocery store on this one very crowded street, then you look for a place that might sell rugs. It has a name; it is not The Rug Man. Two and a half hours later, we walked out with this beauty:
The Rug Man sells tribal rugs, which is to say, used rugs that were all handmade by various tribes in Iran, Afghanistan and throughout mid-central Asia. He travels to border towns or villages and buys them at varied rates, depending on the rarity of that tribe's rugs. Ours is of the Baluch tribe (man I need to fact check all of this with Rosko; I was so tired that I think I might have snored out loud at one point during the 2-hour visit) and is a traditional Garden of Paradise design, which you find in varied iterations throughout Asia and the Middle East. There's a story to the Garden of Paradise, but again...facts...hard...
Anyway, it was a lovely, lovely time, my supernatural level of fatigue notwithstanding. We now have a rug to hand on to the baby. Alongside the stories of other cool things we did before she was born/conscious of it all.
