My first successful all-Arabic trip to the fruit and veggie stand

On a mission to make good ol’ southern potato salad along with a veggie tray for my staff meeting the other day (which is an entire blog post in itself) I set out for my usual fruit and veggie stand just around the corner from my building. They didn’t have potatoes so I continued down the street until I came to a stand that had potatoes (that looked edible) where the following conversation took place in Arabic: The veggie man saw me looking at the potatoes and asked me if I wanted a kilo. I said yes, I wanted a kilo of potatoes. While he was placing the potatoes in a bag, I looked for carrots and found them in the back next to something green and grassy-ish so I asked for a kilo of those as well (however, these were not for the potato salad). He asked me if I was from America and I said yes. I asked him what his name was and he said Mohommad (why do I even ask anymore?) and I told him that my name was Sarah (I’m trying to establish relationships with people in my area so they see me as a local, living here, instead of as a foreigner, although when I tell some people what part of the city I live in, many don’t believe that I live here- my roommate and I are the only foreigners I have seen in this area!). Then he asked the infamous and dreaded question, are you married? I said no, I was not married. He said ahhhh! I quickly began looking for something else to remove myself from the conversation but couldn’t seem to find the cucumbers I was looking for so I asked him if a certain vegetable that I saw was, in fact, a cucumber but he informed me that it was squash (I couldn’t believe I remembered what the word for “squash” was). So I asked him if he had cucumbers- because a veggie tray just isn’t complete without cucumbers. He said yes and showed me where they were, on a barrel under a burlap sack (of course! Why didn’t I think to look there?). I also asked for a kilo of cucumbers and told him that was all I wanted. He told me the total came to 5 and a half pounds (that’s less than a dollar) so I paid him and he told me I should come again and I told him I would. As long as he doesn’t offer to sell my father any camels in order to marry me because I’m already tired of hearing that line- okay, I didn’t actually tell him that part but it’s true. As I walked back down the street to my flat in the blowing dust and dirt, dodging taxis, donkey carts, thousands of people, mud puddles (from the very rare rain showers we have had this week) and whatever that was on the street, I felt a bit more confident in my Arabic skills and I just kept thinking, I just had an entire conversation in Arabic and he actually knew what I was saying! That’s improvement.