Zachary Backes - CP 4

Time to play catch up

June, 9th
This time me and Faisal met at the Sweet Shop, off Jefferson St. and I will say one thing...America, we're smoking hookah wrong. I'm sorry, but I've smoked hookah with Americans. Americans throw a bunch of random fruity flavors together like we're at Tropical Smoothie and chug as if it really were a straw. I was never much of a Hookah smoker but I've made it to a few of the local spots around town with friends, most are a decent place to lounge and relax and for the non smokers there is normally some nice music and good tea. The sweet shop is no exception. It's one of the reasons it has become one Faisal's favorite spots in Tallahassee. Which is surprising since he does not actually smoke much either. A funny fact which we both discovered after unraveling some cultural confusion. See, his friends told him all Americans love hookah and to bring me here, which he was more than happy to do but he didn't want to be rude and invite me to a place that serves hookah and not smoke with me. And I, assuming his prior mentioning of this establishment being a favorite spot of his meant that he enjoyed smoking as well. So, neither of us wanting to be rude we were both well into the first hour before we figured out neither of us was big into smoking the stuff. Thankfully, Faisal picked his favorite, a mixture of mint, hazelnut and vanilla. He had picked up a few things from all the time he spent at the sweet shop and the mixture was so good and we were both enjoying the conversation so much that we just laughed at the whole thing.



Before we got to the big reveal the majority of the first hour of our conversation was based around our families again. He had a lot of questions about what they did and aspects of how they raised me. His curiosity sparked my own and I began throwing back questions about his earlier life. One thing we found a lot of common ground on was our fathers. Both of ours are "retired" which culturally means different things. Faisal recognized the word when I used it ironically with quotation marks as I often do when describing my father's work status, and asked me what it meant. I described it in the normal cultural sense, that my father no longer worked full time at regular job and had saved up money in a "retirement package" to live off of. But I told him that my dad didn't know how to stop working so he started a business he runs himself renting out an open air photobooth (explaining the concept of which was kind of tricky). He laughed once he understood and said his dad was much the same. He had worked all his life and when he quit his primary job as an accountant he took on farming to help support the family. He keeps goats and chickens, tending to them daily mostly by himself. This is possible because Faisal house in Saudi Arabia has a large walled in yard and the animals say out back in their own pens that Faisal and his brothers helped build. I was impressed, but he said it was not uncommon to see some middle class families with a goat or two or maybe some chickens. They are seen like almost like the American vegetable garden, a productive and helpful hobby that can provide support for a family. When I asked him about pets we got into another conversation that lasted the rest  our second hour. I am die-hard dog lover and could not grasp it when Faisal told me that dogs were not really seen as so much as pets, but as pests by a good majority of people. He said there are some families that keep dogs but they are normally very well off and keep them like trophies. He did assure me though that if i kept a pet while in the Middle east, even if it were a dog, people would not think it too weird. When we finished Faisal invited me to his house next week for some Kabsa, He would not tell me what it was but told me to come hungry so I'm pretty psyched.