Butcher shop saga... my funny story.

So, I have a friendly relationship with my butcher. He admires how we always ask for our meat with very little fat in it and always remarks at how fat he is. He's a little roundish, but not bad really. He looks very normal. Anyway, this last time he was running through the same conversation again about fat in meat and how Kurds like fat in their meat and then he mentioned how I was looking thinner and asked how much I weighed. This is not an awkward question to ask a woman here in this culture. People will regularly tell other people that they are fat or thin and scold them on it. I didn't know how much I weighed in kilos, but then he started guessing. I was stuck... still didn't know my weight in kilos. Then he pulled out a large meat scale. He wanted me to stand on his meat scale so that he could weigh me! There I am, surrounded by large slabs of meat, standing on this scale with my shoes on. I struggled to just keep from laughing.

From there, the conversation went on into the normal questions of life here. He was sad that I wasn't married (he was married at age 17) and the Koran says it's a pity to not be married (according to him). I tried to tell him that in the Bible it isn't a pity not to be married and that I was okay. He then got all excited and said he knew all about the Bible and proceeded to tell me the story of Jesus' birth and Mary and how he preached. I stood there nodding and smiling as well as I could. I just wanted 3 kilos of ground beef! It took a while... it always does. But the story was worth it.