And That Was The End . . .

. . . . of the neighborhood Manakish shop. It went out with a BANG!

 

I must say, my first thought was that it was a car bomb. I guess a mindset like that comes with the territory.

Considering that everyone has been predicting that things will go wrong soon (although I haven’t gotten an exact date yet, so much use that one is), and that Ahmaddinnejad has just left town, and that I live near one of the bigwigs in politics who already had a number of his disciples blown up, any bang will get your attention. People are a little on edge, so to speak.

It sounded like the real thing, not like an ‘exhaust pipe’ bang. Although I must say it was a little on the ‘light’ side. I was thinking it was probably more like a ‘warning bomb’ rather than an actual ‘kill bomb’. It’s amazing how you analyze things in a split second. Even my 7-year old is becoming a regular. When she saw me leave the house with the camera, she quickly connected the ‘bang’ with my camera and asked “So does this mean we will not have school on Monday?” Wicked girl.

No, there will be school on Monday. It’s just that the neighborhood Manakish shop won’t be selling manakish for a while. The gas tank blew up, and the ‘fatayer sbanich’ (spinach pastry) was blown all over the street, together with his stock of straws and paper sandwich bags. Nobody got hurt, and the fire department was there within 5 minutes.

It is kind of cute to see these firemen in action. They are without an exception out of shape, and wear no protective gear whatsoever. They probably have to work with equipment dating from the 80’s. Yet they manage to get the job done. Amazing how some things function so well.