House progress

We are still living in our empty marble sepulchre with just a couch and our beds but there is light on the horizon (more on that in another post) and there was was some tangible progress today.

For a few months now we have been eyeing the colourful and comfortable Arabic style couches that are designed to be placed on the ground and are often in living rooms and dining rooms here. We had asked about prices before and they were a bit steep for us, but we decided today was the day to see what we could do about that.

We headed over to the souk that is behind one of the malls and there are several shops that have them. Here is what one looks like set up on the floor of the carpet shop - please note the carpets on the right of the photo that look like someone skinned a Muppet.

Matthew is a fantastic haggler, and here you never go with the first price, so after going between a couple of shops to see who could match the best price, he managed to get two of these for half of the original price which ended up costing us just under $200. The Afghani guy running the shop was very nice but had limited English and a stutter which made it all a bit more challenging but at the end they of course had to shake on the deal.

As we are still without a car, we had figured that we would hire one of the van taxis that we had ridden in before to get us and the two 7ft couches home. A quick call to the cab company later, in which they told us they had no such cabs (did I mention we rode in one the other night...) and we were left with a bit of a dilemma. Well, we got a regular cab, threw all eight loose cushions in the trunk, put Matthew in the front and then folded the base cushions over me in the back. It was cosy.

Me trying to wave and a very bemused cabbie!

But all was well when we got them home and set up in their temporary spot in the living room. Eventually they are going to be part of our grand plan for the patio, but for the meantime they are making our living room far more cosy and clearly working a bit too well!