Smoking Hookah With Royalty

---

Since Kevin has already done a pretty good job of wrapping up Jerusalem, I’ll talk a little bit about my ‘Hubble-Bubble’ experience.

After dinner on Thursday we made our way back to the King of Hubble-Bubble’s shop (he pronounces it Hubbly-Bubbly) to try hookah. The King himself wasn’t there but two of his sons (the Princes I suppose) were there and they set up a hookah for Kevin and me. It was pretty funny to watch a 13 year old and a 15 year old set up and take the first few puffs off of the hookah. They spoke very good English and we talked back and forth for a few hours, teaching them Spanish and learning a little Arabic. I also showed them how to ‘french-inhale’ (look it up… but think Frenchie from Grease) and that you can make smoke rings by filling a water bottle with smoke and squeezing it. They got a kick out of that and because we were so friendly, I think it was easy to bargain. The princes, not being as wise and all powerful as the King himself, gave us our evening of hookah for 30 NIS total as opposed to the original asking price of 60 each. I’m pretty sure it was a good deal because they opened up 2 charcoal tubes for us, and a brand new box of tobacco.

Regarding hookah…it was really fun…the flavor wasn’t as strong as a cigar, but it was easier to smoke and very relaxing. Scotty, if you’re reading this, we’re bringing you one and we want to join in with you every now and then!

The King finally came and had a cup of tea with us while we finished smoking and we promised to return the next day to pick up souvenirs. The King himself is a rotund man full of energy and spunk…he swept us up and down his shop with “Ok ok, you tell me and I get it, no problem no problem” even offering to mix and match things from neighboring shops. Apparently being the King means you can just steal from other stands. We picked up a few things, and the real fun began when he took me to his cousin’s shop for me to find Christmas presents… after an initial offer of way more than I wanted to spend, I told him that the pieces were beautiful but way out of my price range. It’s not that I didn’t want them, it was that they were just too nice and there was no way it would fall into my price range. Little did I know that with the King on my side, I had nothing to worry about. All I had to do was say ‘no’ over and over and the King bargained with his own cousin and within a few minutes he swept us out of his cousin’s shop leaving the cousin staring at the bills and shaking his head with a forlorn look on his face. The King and I had brought the total down by 66% of the original asking price.

Back in his shop, we began to bargain for the things we were going to purchase from him, and because he made the mistake of leaving the 13 year old prince with Kevin to bargain, prices were lower than the King would have liked and we managed to make a few deals. Feeling bad, the prince even threw in a few things for Scotty’s pipe as a present because he thought we were pretty cool guys.

Hail to the King baby.

-raf

---