journal

Al Masmak contained an exhibition dedicated to the emblem of Saudi Arabia, adopted in 1950, of two crossed swords, denoting the Kingdom of Hejaz (see link) and the Sultanate of Najd (land of triangles), with a palm tree, symbolising growth and prosperity and delicious dates, from which once tasted fresh

(but before that, another day:) . . . this one spent on the hunt for a simcard. . . in vain; that evening I ended up purchasing a Maya esim; a fraction of the cost for the same network, Zain, of Airalo, it seems more native to these parts. . . . . . keeping with the theme, I must

That Q gestures towards the loop symbol with the two dots above it, diaeresis, with which the same symbol with one dot, F, makes a glottal stop-like caught-in-your-throat hard K, with which the ك is not to be confused, the soft k; German friends joked only English would have a

. . . the happy discovery of a local supermarket with fresh produce, served by a man with a sideways head, his head resting on his right shoulder (who, after that initial encounter, greets me warmly, the second time doing a dance like the dwarf in Twin Peaks), canned, bottled, 0.0 beer

. . . cats, a theme of Türkiye too, here less the public deities they are there, but fed, loved, never possessed. I have so far seen one dog, and there was a dead dog on the drive out to Ushaiqer, أشيقر. . . note the loop with the diaeresis, a very unusual sound to

. . . it was Ethiopian, came in a small block of stone, cost noncompetitively @NZD5, but that was not all: this café, called Passion with a symbol for wheat, advertised itself as a bakery, we were hungry for breakfast bread (it might even have been the day I arrived, since I got