Mafluq's Chit-Chat

In this 'corner,' friend reader... we shall sit together every month and chat about questions that belong neither to politics nor to literature, and that stand far away from that whirlpool in which our writers and thinkers usually spin without being able to break free...

Yes, we shall free ourselves from that whirlpool and chat together about subjects that so often crack me and crack you, vex me and vex you; we think about them everywhere... and I write about them anywhere... and chatter about them to myself every moment.

Mafluq

Do you remember, friend reader, those white days when the falafel vendors used to cry their wares... 'Five and a loaf for a franc!' Yes, by God — five patties of delicious falafel and a plump loaf with them, which we bought for one franc and not a whit more, with the vendor's thanks and his prayer that the buyer be recompensed. But now, in these pitch-black days, the falafel patty has become a pampered darling to buyer and seller alike — how not, when its price alone is a franc! — and after being the food of the poor man alone, it has become dear even to the man of means. Yet in spite of all this, the falafel market is enjoying a tremendous boom; for proof it is enough to cast a glance at the falafel shop opposite the Empire Cinema, and you will see that it is the people's principal food: the rich man takes it for breakfast in the morning, and the poor man devours it morning, noon, and evening.

Behind this marked boom in the falafel market lurks an imminent danger, which we must forestall from this moment. That danger is foreign competition; for it would be nothing strange to see, one of these days, the grocers' shops stacked with 'canned falafel,' imported from Europe and America, taking its place beside the canned olives, malboun, peas, potatoes, and the fungus they call in the Frankish tongue 'Moshroom.'

These items and others are to be found in the shops of most grocers in our country. It may seem at first glance that I exaggerate in mentioning them, but the facts bear out what I say. Worse still, and more bitter: many of our households cannot do without these items, for no reason but that they are 'imported.' You will see one of them cheerfully pay three shillings for a jar of olives containing only a few dozen berries, while it pains him to buy a ratl of local olives for that price or less... And malboun — this kind of green stuff fills the plains of the Arab lands and can be had for nothing, and likewise its cousin the faqqi — not to mention the onions, carrots, potatoes, chard, and spinach that our lands produce in abundance... and much else besides.

After all that, should we wonder to see falafel in cans?

The falafel vendors, then, must hasten at once to get in touch with the Minister of Economy and obtain from him an undertaking not to permit the import of this 'item' from the lands 'over there,' to protect it from foreign competition, and to keep the 'extra' money from leaking abroad in payment for this new import.