Читать книгу The Journey: How an obscure Byzantine Saint became our Santa Claus - David Price Williams - Страница 74

Bostra and even from as far as the Euphrates valley; local Egyptians from Alexandria and others clearly from further up the Nile; men from the deserts of Arabia, tanned leathery faces and dark-set eyes shaded with head scarves and black-skinned Africans from across the Sahara. It was like nowhere I’d ever seen before. I could hear all manner of languages too, from Arabic, Nabatean and South Arabian to various African tongues and Greek. Everyone seemed to know some Greek, enough to make themselves understood in the bargaining we saw going on all around us. Latin might be the language of the Roman government, but there was no question that Greek was the lingua franca here.

Finding a small wine shop we ordered what turned out to be a goat stew flavoured with turmeric and ginger, spices that had come all the way from India. There were several different varieties of olives and newly-baked flat bread which was delicious. We drank beakers of a local palm wine and finished with some cakes sweetened with honey and topped with almonds. My eyelids felt heavy with the palm wine and I found myself eager to get back to the ship for a good night’s rest. On reaching the little vessel I fell into a dreamless sleep until the sun was already quite high in the sky and I was woken by the cries of the street vendors selling fresh bread rings. After sluicing my face in a bucket on the deck, Polios and I set out to explore the city.

THE JOURNEY