Fed like a stranger

At the fish restaurants beside the market in Jeddah, the menu is a bed of crushed ice. Grouper, red snapper, kingfish cut into steaks, a heap of prawns, and the price per kilo on a board above them.

The man behind the ice asks three things. Grilled or fried. Spicy or plain. How much.

Stand near the counter on a Friday after the midday prayer and the same reply comes back more than once, often from men who have eaten fish every week of their lives: "I do not know. Whatever you think."

It is meant as trust. He knows every fish on that ice, and which of them came in this morning. But he is choosing for a table he cannot see, so he does what anyone does with nothing to go on. The fish he has most of, fried, medium on the spice, weighed for an average family. It comes out with the rice and the tahini, perfectly good, and nobody at the table quite recognises it as theirs.

The guest knows more than he lets on. His father always has it grilled with cumin. The two youngest will not eat anything hot. There are seven at the table.

Guessed out loud, it gives the man something to correct, and correcting is the part of the job he is best at.

"Grilled, I think, with cumin, the way my father likes it. Not hot, there are children. Four kilos?"

The man keeps the cumin and mends the rest. "Grilled with cumin, yes. Half of it plain for the little ones, the rest with some heat. And for seven, three kilos is plenty with the rice."

Say nothing about the table, and you are fed like a stranger.