Hack

Yesterday was truly an amazing day here in Algiers. Not because the bus I took was so packed that the doors couldn’t close and I ended up getting a free ride; not because at the commissariat de la police the Bureau des Etrangers guy looked up at me once, then went back to his work and grunted negations to all my questions about my carte de résidence (no, I can’t get it before I leave on Wednesday, sadly); not because it was about 85 degrees and muggy, with no wind, and there was a strange smell throughout the whole city; no, it was amazing because when I got up in the morning and went out on the balcony to look over the city, I couldn’t see the port for all the smog.

On the street in town it was possible to see the smog in the air above you. If there was an air-quality index here it would have read: unsafe for all. Or like in some Lord of the Rings movie, “The very air you breathe is like a poison to your lungs…” I’ve seen some bad smog in my day, from Los Angeles on a pretty daily basis to when I used to go up to Red Rocks to hike around and look down on Denver, the pressure zone against the mountain holding the pollution over the city like a dirty wool blanket, but I have never experienced anything like this. Breathing anywhere was difficult, even inside.

Not to worry, though, because the government has recently announced that it will stop giving new taxi licenses in the next year, to try to ease congestion. If you can figure out how that makes any sense I would love to know. Maybe the impending end of the oil age and civilization as we know it won't be such a bad thing...

In other news, I found out this weekend that sardines can be delicious. Call me ignorant, but I didn’t know that sardine was the name of the fish; I thought it was just the name of the tin filled with pickled fish of some kind. In Algiers they don’t do fish very well, that distinction is for Oran; however, they do do sardines, which in the traditional Algiers style are gutted, dipped in a spicy batter and then fried, and you eat them whole. This is a fisherman’s bar lunch here, and they are the perfect food to eat with beer. They also serve them with a peck of pickled peppers and tomatoes with onions and olive oil. It took a while, but I finally found the elusive delicious Algeroise cuisine…beer and sardines.