4 things that happened on the recent visit of my one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend (I of IV): Lunch.

My one Dutch friend’s one Dutch friend, who is now also my friend, was in town right before Thanksgiving for research and to see people before catching a flight to spend Thanksgiving with my one Dutch friend and his wife and baby son. So, we caught up the day before Thanksgiving at lunch downtown...

First, he suggested we go to this restauarant that Pakistani cabdrivers go to, which is only a 15 minute short walk from the most chi-chi part of town (which is where the library he was doing research at was located), right on the outskirts of an industrial section where there are a few storefronts tucked away under overhead railroad tracks and amidst vacant lots. We walked up to the restaurant door and there were a ton of people inside in white robes and those little white cappy things, but the door wouldn’t open, so we walked to one side of the building and saw fence stretching out forever around the block, and then to the other side of the building and saw fence stretching forever around the block, so we went back to the door to try it again, only to have one of the serious-faced Muslim-dressed guys inside raise his hand and do a “go around!” motion with his hand.

So, we went around the fence to the right, and eventually there was a gap to a parking lot filled with nothing but 20+ cabs, and a small entrance in the back of the building that we went into... There was a pile of free Pakistani community newspapers right inside the foyer, as well as a bulletin board full of handwritten ads asking for taxidrivers. Once past the foyer, you were right in front of the main counter, where there were two old Pakistani guys in front of a magic marker board with like 7 or 8 different dishes of the day written up there (though no prices), and behind them you could see into the kitchen, and there were a few brown guys (Pakistanis? Mexicans?) slaving over giant silver pots on the stove. Me and my one Dutch friend’s Duthc friend, who is now also my friend, decided to get this goat-rice thing, which they ladled out from pots in the back immediately, and served up on this huge plate along with a bowl of some yogurt sauce and a small plate of giant slivers of chopped raw onions and a few lime wedges, to mix and squeeze into the rice.

There were like at least 15 people in the restaurant, all male, and one of them was getting up to leave as we sat down and came up to us and was like, “Welcome, enjoy, the food here is very good!”, but as we sat down in a booth and were about to eat, pretty much everyone got up and left, and me and my friend just started looking at each other, since it was very weird.

Then, the counter guy behind the counter just burst out into the call-to-prayer, and we realized that everyone must have gone to an adjacent room where they had mats and could pray at noontime...

The food was great, but my one friend said he liked it when they were in the location across the street, which was smaller and little more than a shack with insulation, and had 3 clocks up – one labelled with the name of our city, the second with “MADRAS”, and the third with “MECCA”.