Our local grocery store on campus is called Tamimi, though it does have some rather vague connection with Safeway (in the US) because we get Safeway products sometimes, and there is a large Safeway 'S' on the store front.
Though there are some complaints about Tamimi, on this Thanksgiving Day, we should express our gratitude; I am, in fact, grateful for Tamimi. When we first moved to campus, there was no grocery store. At all. For at least two full months, we all ate for free at the campus diner or at the various fast food restaurants in Discovery Square, which is a public square and hanging out part of the campus - it has the post office, bank, Burger King, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf cafe, a shwarma restaurant, Baskin & Robbins, the cinema, a small take-away pizza place, an Arabic food place (which seems to often be closed due to hygienic issues), and an Indian restaurant. Though it sounds like a lot of options, those of us here in the fall of 2009 quickly tired of these choices and of eating our evening meal in the public square with everyone else, every evening. It was fun at first, but, you know, we all started to crave our own cooking within our own homes and family times.
About three years ago, around November of 2009, Tamimi opened. We were thrilled. We no longer had to eat our meals with everyone all of the time, and we no longer had to take a bus to Jeddah to buy food and bring it back in large coolers. I did that on several occasions, and I vividly remember racing out of the mall with a friend who was doing the same thing. Our abayas were flapping around our legs as we ran towards the waiting bus, waving our arms for the driver to wait for us and pushing shopping carts of groceries and our cooler wildly in front of us. I am sure that observers thought we were mad. To this day, we laugh at these memories. Tamimi saved us from certain dementia.
We all soon discovered that Tamimi was temperamental. Sometimes it had goods we planned to buy, and, well, nearly as often, it did not. Sometimes it has Cheerios. Sometimes not. Sometimes weeks go by without Ritz Crackers. For months last year, we could not get any canned pumpkin - though it did seem to arrive just before American Thanksgiving. Often they get packages of frozen bagels, but then everyone buys them, the packages disappear, and there are no more bagels for six months, when they suddenly appear again. Many of us like to have frozen blueberries, but they are purchased within hours of delivery, hoarded into people's freezers, and never seen at Tamimi again. One time two years ago, there were plastic tubs of pasta sauces that many of us recognized from US grocery stores; we called each other and bought out the store's supply in a weekend. It's funny when we plan our meals because we have to have a back-up plan in case key ingredients are gone that week. Hayden has gotten into cooking recently and bought a French cookbook. Unfortunately, many recipes include pork products or various types of spirits - all of which are unavailable. Like the rest of us, he learns to adapt, adjust, and find something similar.
To Tamimi's credit, many more organic products are now available, they have a constant supply of basic food items - like pasta, baking products, olive oil, milk, juice, meat, cheese, vegetables and fruit - so we are certainly not suffering. It is humorous, however. Ooh, I gotta run. Rumor has it Tamimi just got blueberries ...
Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you, Tamimi, for turkeys, potatoes, pumpkin, and squash!
Thanks for reading, Jennifer
that is a great card:) oh america... one day, maybe, we'll all realize that what is most important cannot be purchased.
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