.

after walking through imaginary alleyways from the past, it was reassuring to see something concrete, that still stands to this day and is taken thoughtful care of. this is a detail from the wall surrounding the al-manaa’i mosque, erected in 1896

tour guide deema al-ghunaim in front of bourisly mosque, built in 1916

the writing on the cemetery wall. if it weren’t for farah al-nakib’s description of these walls (‘whenever you see a fence with tetris-like designs on it, that’s a cemetary’) i would not have known what was on the other side. i love knowing that little fact. thank you, farah

inside one of the mosques these two water jugs…

and this beautiful window with traditional rugs. i remember these rugs from my past. my grandparents had them in their homes, my great grandmother…walking around inside these mosque courtyard took me back to my childhood when my parents used to bring us back for the summer

the caretaker who lives here clearly takes all this beauty for granted. his laundry does, however, add a splash of color to an otherwise monochromatic palette

how precious is this? and sad too. a well-intended project-gone-wrong and a tiny mosque protected. this situation elicits some pretty strong emotions in me. it makes me want to cry and throw up

outside the sharqiya ma’arafi hussainiya. this was my favorite location

inside, one of the main halls off the foyer is being renovated

deema was saying that the ground floor was for the men, and if ladies chose to attend, they would sit up in the balcony. many of the women who brought their young children were re-located to a completely different room because of all the noise their little ones made. boo!

prefab ceiling and fan. i don’t know why i took this photo but i like it. this is clearly a later addition to cover up the courtyard of this hussainiya

and in the floor is this: one of a few wells scattered around the courtyard. of course these are covered by a lid like the one you see in the top right hand corner. even so, i’d be terrified to have something like this in my courtyard

this is beautiful. i love the roof and the greens and gold

pastel panes in a room that smells like mothballs. i love the smell of mothballs by the way

inside a storeroom are these massive pots. i see folks serving machboos and other rice dishes from these pots at ashoura and other festivals. these things are huge. humungous. i cannot express how big

and later on at qout market, me and my fellow tourists matt and sarah. we collectively saw so many people we know. my sister yasmine described the event perfectly: like speed-dating [but far less romantic]

we saw mai and adeeb

me and mai. memai!

we tried to get matt to buy these wooden glasses because he had a headache from ‘absorbing’ too much sun. check out the guy in the background: gee, what’s goin’ on here?

on our walk back to the maritime museum, we found this. i wonder if this guy knows his photo is missing…

matt and a doomed building with great potential