He was calling out the crowd in Sidon’s ancient souk: ” Albak abyad ya aswad!” “Albak abyad ya aswad!”
Eggplant is called betenjane in Arabic but in Lebanese it goes by aswad, which is black in Arabic. The rhyme can be translated into the following:
Your heart is white O black!
Meaning: Your pulp is white and has no seeds and you are delicious to eat.
It is also a play on a common expression in Arabic; when someone says “my heart is white”, it means I have no sin, I have good intentions, I am pure. The merchant was saying of his eggplant “you have a pure heart”, you are a great one!
Eggplant’s price is listed on the white sheet of paper: 1000L.L per kilo or 30 cents a pound.
11 Comments
Awesome! You are priceless for posting this, so beautiful.
What a great photo and a great proverb!
Beautiful eggplants!
Cheers,
Rosa
good looking dude!
they look wonderful…wish I were there
wonderful eggplant, are enormous !
I’ve never seen eggplants this plump and beautiful! Not even at the farmers markets. It is no wonder eggplants are so quintessential in Lebanese cooking.
Wishing we had an eggplant merchant moseying down the streets. As it is, I will wait for my garden to flourish. And hope the insides are seedless and milky-white.
Wonderful photos and the saying is priceless! I love seeing photos of every day life there.
Love those pictures and your description
Délicieusement rafraîchissantes les photos de cet article….