Chapter 56 Grilled fish by the river

When the Tigris River arrived in the early morning of the first day, I never let go of it.I have been here for so many days, and it is time to pay a serious visit. Night has fallen, there are not many lights on both sides of the river, and the river is calm in the dark.There is no turbulence, and no ripples can be seen, only lightly flickering waves.The messy bank grass guards it, making it possible to ignore the history and the noise around it.No boat was seen either.The only thing people want from the big river tonight is fish.We walked into a fish restaurant with almost no decoration, which was actually a shack on the river beach, so simple and dated.

The fish was just caught, it was very big, similar to Chinese carp, and the locals said it was called Tigris fish.There is a sink, and two workers are skillfully dissecting and washing.They didn't wear aprons, and they wiped their wet hands on their clothes from time to time, rubbed them, and then dried them. In the middle of the hut is a huge stone fire pond, round and two feet above the ground.On the edge of half of the fire pit, there are black wooden sticks as thick as fingers, supporting many half-cut fish in a semicircle, with the fish skin facing outwards, horizontally, and it seems to be swimming in one direction from a distance.

In the middle of the stone fire pond are a few thick apricot trees, which have already been ignited, and the fire is very strong. When you get close, you can feel the heat on your hands and faces.There is no smoke in the apricot tree, only the heat is shaking.Those fish that are inserted horizontally are shrouded in heat, and they look more like dancing in the water waves. After roasting for a while, the surface of the fish facing the fire turns from white to yellow, and from yellow to brown.The workers took them down, and put the side that was not facing the fire just now in the embers of the firepit.After a while, smoke came out and flames were still ignited at the corners of the fish. The worker quickly stretched in with an iron fork, took out the fish, put it on a square plate, and immediately walked to the customer's table.

Some of the corners of some fish were still burning, so the workers used their black hands to pinch the flames out, or to remove the burning corners. After two or three movements, they walked to the dining table. All the people sitting at the dining table had dark beards, and a few of them wore white or checkered turbans with black circles, just like Arafat.They stretched out their thick fingers, directly tore the hot fish and sent it to their mouths. The worker then brought a plate of sliced ​​lemons and a plate of raw onions. The diner squeezed a piece of lemon with his right hand to drip juice on the fish, and picked up a few slices of onion with his left hand and chewed them in his mouth.Then, several hands stretched out to the grilled fish at the same time, and quickly wiped out the browned outer layer, leaving only the white meat in the middle layer.This made the diners a bit disappointed, so they took a short rest. There was a hookah stand by the table, burning pungent cigarettes, and the bearded people took a few puffs from the long pipes and puffed.

The browned parts on both sides of the grilled fish are fragrant and crispy. Many diners save a lot of money to eat for this one bite.Therefore, eating grilled fish is always the climax, and the rest is to eat fish, and the rhythm of action begins to slow down.Whether the fish in the middle is good or bad mainly depends on the fat content. The fish with high fat looks smooth and tender, while the fish with little fat tends to be dull, which is similar to the firewood mentioned by Beijingers.However, the meat of Chai fish tends to form lumps, and the tender ones are difficult to pick up with fingers, not to mention the thick fingers of bearded people.

This needs to be wrapped with bread. The bread in Iraq is very good, but it is not available in this kind of fish shed. A large stack of thin noodle cakes, which had been spread out a long time ago, was all scattered on the greasy mud floor. No one cared, they picked them up one by one and served them directly to the dining table. The diner smiled, held the pancake with his left hand, and picked up the fish with his right hand. He couldn't pick up the crumbled fish, frowned, and then slowly picked up a bag full.In today's Iraq, this is a top-notch meal. I lost my mind for a while in front of the stone fire pond, then sat at the dining table and ate a little.Seeing that I ate too little, an old man next to me thought that I was afraid of being scalded and couldn't handle it, so he enthusiastically walked over and scooped up balls of fish with his fingers and put them on my plate. I ate them one by one as ordered, but Feeling that if I sat down again, I didn't know how much I would eat, so I stood up and walked outside.Outside the shed is the Tigris River. I think everything about tonight will not change much in thousands of years, right?

The Tigris River has been flowing silently for thousands of years, and the most fundamental part of human ecology has not changed much.Diderot said that modern delicacy has no poetry, and the real poetry lies in the unchanging primitive ecology, just like this grilled fish on the river beach. I also remembered which book I read in the past. It seems to be written by an Arab historian. As early as the sixth century AD, Chinese merchant ships entered the Two Rivers from the Persian Gulf and anchored near the city of Babylon. Then, Chinese businessmen should also have eaten grilled fish in front of the stone fire pond on the river beach.After taking a few bites, I raised my head and meditated, leisurely comparing the kung fu of the season of crab fat and shrimp jumping in the south of the Yangtze River in my hometown.

November 15, 1999, Baghdad, overnight at Rasheed Hotel