The King is passing by...

After six days of being sick I am finally feeling better! YAY for medicine! I guess I should have kept my Tuesday Dr’s appointment. Oh well. Next time I will know better…

So today I ventured down to the shopping district with my roommates who needed some last minute teacher supplies. It didn’t take us long to catch a red “petit taxi” for the quick trip to the next neighborhood. We piled in and started off on our merry way – a trip which should take about 5 minutes. We got to the light at a main 5 or 6 point intersection. Just as we got there officers in very official looking blue uniforms were tooting their whistles at our direction of traffic and holding up hands to stop anyone from venturing out as the light turned green. The honking that ensued was horrific! I was sitting in the front of the taxi and could see the big round point in the middle of the intersection. Cars from the left and one of the boulevards on the right were allowed to pass while another one of the boulevards on the right & the continuation of our own straight ahead were blocked to traffic. Our light stayed red for about 10 minutes and off and on the fleet of honkers blew their shrill chorus out at the officers of the “sureté national”. Across at the round point one of the officers who was directing traffic got a little uptight and started jumping up and down and wildly waving his arms at one SUV. He reminded me of Donald Duck the way he was jumping around hopping mad. I laughed out loud. I asked the taxi driver what was going on and he said that His Majesty the King was passing by. (I had heard that the King had come to town last week to pass out school supplies to some underprivileged children. Can you imagine getting school supplies from the King? As a little girl I would have wanted to save them forever instead of using them!) Pretty soon we heard a voice crying something again and again in Arabic over a loudspeaker. I imagine he was saying “Make way for the King!” but my Arabic wasn’t quite up to distinguishing the actual words. As we started hearing the voice every horn in the area started honking in support of His Majesty. I never did figure out which car he was in, and I wondered if he knew what happened to traffic patterns when he visited big cities.