A visit to the neighbours

'Would you take me to visit the family that lives on the farm next to ours?' my mother-in-law asked me this the other evening when I was visiting her. 'In the evening or during the day?' I asked her. 'Oh, during the day would be fine. Can you pick me up after you pick Ibrahim up from school? We could stop along the way and buy some juice and cookies for their kids.' she replied. 'Ok. Sure. I'll let you know the exact day later.' I told her.

The neighbours at the farm are simple country people. The family has 18 kids; two of them have down syndrome and quite a few of the girls are a bit older and still not married. We usually stop by to visit them for a chat when we spend time at the farm, and my mother-in-law likes to drop in on them every year during Ramadan.

I called my brother-in-law's flat and left a message with his daughter, 'Tell your grandmother I'm on my way to pick her up to take her to visit the neighbours.' I arrived shortly after that to find my mother-in-law dressed and waiting to go. The farm is about a fifteen-minute drive away. I stopped when we were nearly there to buy the juice and cookies. The shop that I stopped at didn't have much in the way of choices but I did notice they had plastic buckets full of Libyan cookies called cak for 2 dinars, so I bought a bucket. When I bought it out to the car my mother-in-law was horrified. 'We can't give them cak.' she said. 'I'm sure they make it themselves. You leave that in the car and we'll take it home.' she told me. 'OK, Hajja. Whatever.'

We got to the neighbours and had a nice visit. The girls caught my mother-in-law up on all the neighbourhood gossip; who was getting married, who was building, who had been robbed recently, what they were growing and planning to grow, etc. I sat quietly and listened to the happy chatter. On the other side of the sitting room was one of the mentally handicapped boys. I judged that he must be in his mid to late twenties. He was sitting on one side a huge pile of unfolded laundry and on his other side was neatly folded and stacked laundry. One by one he was patiently folding the laundry. I've never seen anyone do such a nice job. I seriously thought about bringing him home with me! We all hate folding laundry in my house.

After about an hour and a half it was time to leave. We said our prolonged goodbyes - saying goodbye always seems to take forever in Libya. Finally we drove off. My mother-in-law had a satisfied look about her. It was like she'd been recharged.

When we got back to her house she asked me, 'How much did you pay for the bucket of cak?' I told her 'Two dinars, Hajja. There's a kilo of cookies in the bucket.' She was amazed. She looked at the cak and at the bucket and said 'Why do people bother to make this at home? The bucket alone costs a dinar and it probably costs more than a dinar to make the cak. Then there is the hassle of having someone take it to the bakery to bake it too.' She was inspecting the cak. They were actually very nice biscuits. They were machine made but the ingredients were the same as homemake cak. 'We're not making these at home anymore, not as long as these are available.' she announced. My mother-in-law's house goes through lots of biscuits and I know that she's always asking her daughters and daughter-in-laws to make them. They'll be able to spend their time doing something else now.

I left Hajja in her kitchen. She was happy and satisfied. It was back home and into the kitchen for me.