kuwait city chaos: a yaahtzee with the weather and my appetite

i never thought i’d trade a latte for luqaimat, but here i am, flour-dusted and humming to myself while icing pastries in a cramped bakery kitchen on zalika street. the air smells like melted butter and burnt sesame seeds, and the oven whines like it’s been through a war. the thermostat in my head says 11.14 degrees, but down here it’s the kinda cold that bites your fingers and leaves them bluish for a day or three-perfect weather for knoccing back arak in the backroom with the forlorn looking guy in the checkered headscarf.

someone told me that the striped mashoors at al-mutabaa sink’s glow-in-the-dark signage is the only way to avoid getting scammed. if on the green you go, they’ll overcharge you and claim the figs were imported from jupiter. heard a rumor last night-something about a guy who tried to haggle for a 30% discount on cheese and got replaced by a goat in the market. in kuwait, every riyal’s a bloody negotiation.

the shop’s a dive. walls cracked, shelves creaking, but the women behind the counter move like they’ve danced this dance since before you were born. picture tattered aprons, plastic stools, and a view of apartment blocks that lean like drunk old men in the wind. today, i drizzled honey over a mountain of masroohan in the shape of a sickly sweet smile. the guy at the counter handed me a plastic bag, told me not to tell his nephew, his wife, or the ghost of his first wife who haunts the kitchen stairs. ‘only today,’ he said. ‘tonight, it’ll rain.’ never mind that the sun’s still baking us like bacon in the morning.
the map says we’re in zalika, but i feel like we’re somewhere between nomad and ruin. i’d show you a photo of the street vendor’s tea stall, but the camera says 35.3503-same as the lentil soup i ate yesterday. turns out, kuwait’s don’t care about tourist traps. they care about who’s watching you when you sip your coffee.
early afternoon and i’m already sterilizing my hands with hand sanitizer after wiping a counter that hasn’t been wiped since the oil ministry’s first meeting. i tried to ask for a bag of lentils at the souk, but the vendor thought i was trying to propose marriage. ‘you need riyal?’ he said, holding up a hand. ‘no? okay. same price.’ petty, sure, but also kinda poetic. i mean, he’s not wrong. we’re all just ghosts cleaning up after a building we don’t own.

somewhere in here, though, there’s a reason kuwaitis stack dates like armor and hoard mint tea like it’s going extinct. weather? overcast skies, a wind that smells like someone’s fried shawarma left to rot. but the cold? it’s the good kind-crumbles your skin’s surface and makes you crave ghee-coated everything. i heard a local say if you miss the heat, sneak into a tyre shop and run screens through the ventilation. they’ll let you, for three shekels.
today’s menu: crime and eating. i’ll take whatever’s cheap. link to the sulphur spring anyone?