Shop til you drop - Tripoli souk edition

When I travel for work, I always try to go shopping. I can't help it. I have the girl gene for shopping. So when I met a young Tunisian human rights activist here in Tripoli, I asked her (after much serious conversation about women's rights) if she would take me to the souk.

Assuming it was for practical reasons, Maha and her Libyan friend Munira, picked me up at my hotel and took me to the souk, a.k.a., the Marks & Spencer-like shopping mall. I tried to humor them for a bit, but looking at gaudy Turkish imports of lingerie and bedding was not exactly what I had in mind.

So I called my colleague Halima, who had earlier given me the scoop on Libyan handicrafts, and asked her to explain in Arabic what I meant by shopping. She did and off we went to the main Souk in Old City. As we pulled up in the taxi, the taxi driver burst out laughing and mentioned that this was the site of Gadaffi's last speech, where he promised victory, etc. etc.

Great...

Anyway, a little on edge with that comment, plus being uncovered and seeing lots of police around, my shopping gene fended off my chicken shit gene and I surged toward the souk.

It turns out that Maha had quite a lot of shopping to do herself and I felt relieved that I wasn't dragging these ladies here. She bought a ton of stuff for her house. And Munira was browsing as well. Methinks the shopping gene is universal!

After picking up a trinket or two just to say: "I bought these in Libya," we wandered out of the market and over to a scenic area with a water fountain and a castle-like structure - probably the old walled city - and took some pictures. Munira went off to her next appointment after I thanked her with a ton of "shukrans."

Maha and I waited for the driver to take me to my next meeting. We talked about Tunisia and activism and I promised to help her network with some people coming to Tripoli next month. Faraj, the driver turned up, and Maha launched into what I thought were directions, but soon they were laughing and chatting. She's electric and accessible to everyone. She looped me into the convo too - happily translating back and forth and giggling with us both.