Concerning Souk

Before I start- its really sweet of Mak to share such kind words about me on his blog (so obviously i'm gonna link it for maximum exposure :P - i'm pathetic like that :)

So I was going to type out this really long post on my weekend at the Souk (Trade Fair) but then I started watching Smallville so lets see how much I can cover. Saturday I hosted an “Islamic” version of the Weakest Link (someone told the organizers that I’m witty and sarcastic so they got me to do the spot- obviously I am neither so I did enjoy the sarcasm aspect) I had a co presenter to do the boring bits like ask the questions, and I handled the insults. I spent some time in the morning making up some ‘muslim’ dumb lines like

Whose tasbeeh is missing a few beads?
Whose brain forgot to renew its Halaal certificate?
Whose musallah compass isn’t facing Meccah?
Whose mother forgot to feed them almonds this morning?
Whose Zam Zam well of knowledge has dried up?
Well, the loudspeakers are on, but I can’t hear the azaan?

We had a cut off age of fifteen so that the contestants would be assumabley smarter than a carpet of mould on a piece of stale bread. Should have thrown the net a little further as even though the contestants were around nineteen a piece they were dumb as hell! To give two examples- I asked one of them to name three of the five pillars of Islam, so they thought about it for a moment, then said ‘err, hajj, Taraweeh…’ then silence. Taraweeh! Sheesh. I asked another to name one of the four Caliphs after the prophet, and they said Bilal- I felt like hitting them with the mike. But I guess I’m over reacting as I asked a close friend the nest night and he was also confounded. I guess I take certain things for granted because of the crowd I hang out with it, but then again – the person who didn’t know the answer went to Orient Islamic school! Well, anyway, half way through the weakest link, my co presenter tells me, ‘ok Mj, please continue with the questions’. I was like, WTF, because I had to make up shit on the spot, since I do have a slight conscience I decided to go easy on the Islamic questions and did some general knowledge stuff. Sunday I did a piece on radio for Mak – he asked me to do a video game slot on his radio show ‘wired’, so this week I just highlighted my personal top ten lists for ps2, xbox 360 and psp. Later that evening we did another weakest link slot and some moron didn’t know what AIDS was. Oh well, it made him into such an easy target.

Later that night Masood and I co presented an arm wrestling competition which pretty quickly proved to be the most popular draw at the fair. I spent the night at his place( his folks were at wild coast) and we got into the Christmas spirit by watching Home Alone :) . I like celebrating Christmas! Yes, I am muslim, but I see nothing wrong in a day that brings families together. Whats wrong with a fat guy giving kids presents? We drove to his place around midnight and the church down the road was quite full for a midnight mass – I guess when stuff like that stops, when people stop going to church, then we should be worried. Monday afternoon we go to the Souk again and kick things off by M.C’ing a local nashhed group, Waahid, who did a superb job entertaining the crowds, and actually had two catchy songs (you know your stuff is catchy when Masood and I change the lyrics into something more lewd) That night we did another Arm-Wrestling conversation but this time we were joined by a new Al Ansaar presenter ‘Doc’. This was probably amongst the most memorable nights of my year as we had the crowd in stitches with our insults and jeers directed at all the participants. Its amazing how much shit we got away with actually. For instance, we had a Moulana who was arm – wrestling (picture someone with fist length beard, three quarter pants and miswaak in pocket). So our comments ranged from ‘he is Kajoor fuelled’ to ‘if he wins we must all go on jamaat’. We also had some big guys who we called shrek, hulk etc. I’m still amazed we got away unscathed. I tried my hand at it, at the audiences request, but lost pitifully to some steroid jacked up freak in his younger brothers top, a small consolation was that he made it to the final.

On Tuesday I walked around with a Lillah tin and used a pretty cool gimmick to get some money- I told all the stall holders that I only wanted twenty cents from each stall, normally you’d say ‘give whatever you want’. Anyway- turned out they all (due to guilt or goodwill) gave much more than twenty cents and within five minutes I made about five hundred rands- next year I’m gonna start a collection for my ps3 – hope that goes well. Lots more to write about- wasn’t the most exciting souk I attended, but was definitely a lot of fun- but its getting late so I’l leave those stories for another post.