Shallah, Mustafa and me in the early stages of cooking our supper.
My friend Shallah invited me to a barbeque out in the desert to celebrate the graduation of a few of our friends from a local college. Of course, I accepted. Just after sundown, I went out into the desert to find the BBQ spot with one of my diving buddies, Mustafa, who is also an American. We found Shallah busily readying the coals for the cooking fire and setting up three foot high canvas windbreaks around the sitting and cooking fires. Next to the cooking fire was a tasty looking sheep skewered on a long wooden pole. It’s belly was sewn shut with sweet white onions and garlic inside. Shallah set the sheep cooking pole on wooden stands across the fire about 7:00 pm. While the sheep was cooking, more of our co-workers came in intervals throughout the evening to drink gahwa (Arab coffee) and shai (sweet tea) and talk about sports, politics, religion, and everything else under the moon. We ate under starlit skies, a perfect light breeze and a three-quarter moon about 11:00 pm. The sheep was excellent. Then after cleaning up we sat around the fire and talked further into the night. Some of the guys had a graduation to attend the next morning and we all had to work the next day so we didn’t stay out all night. Mustafa and I talked about if and how we could do a barbeque similar to tonight’s back home in the States. One thing is for certain; you cannot just pull off the side of the road a couple hundred yards and pick a spot out in some field back home. Otherwise, this would be a whole bunch of fun for an evening get-together.
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