The summer is winding down and it could not be a day too soon. A British friend of mine took an oven thermostat and put it in his car. Every day, for the past 36 days, it registered above 50 degrees Celsius in Jeddah. For those who work in Fahrenheit, it is a figure you wouldn’t want to imagine let alone live with.

We have a sea in Jeddah to offer potential relief. However, for you to dip your lovely little toes into it, you have to drive a hundred miles or more out of Jeddah. The whole seashore has been appropriated, walled, and made inaccessible to the public. The rich, the powerful, the well connected, and the foreigners have built their chalets and palaces along the line and basically told the rest of us to go take a metaphorical dip.

You might wonder how the foreigners made it to that venerable list of lucky citizens. Well, there are clubs and beaches there that will only allow foreigners to enter for a fee. Saudis are barred from these little havens of saltwater and luxury. I guess they are preserving our modesty lest the fishes see us in our immodest nudity.

Not so long ago I used to take my book in the evenings and sit by a small open stretch with my feet in the water happily sipping tea, huffing on a hubble-bubble (sheesha in local lingo), and reading with the aid of an itty-bitty light. Now there is a wall to bar me from this innocent pastime. If you want to enjoy such activities now you have to enter those fancy cafes, where the biggest sign at the entrance tells you that there is a minimum charge that adds up to six pots of tea and seven hubble-bubbles.

At times, it seems like a métier triste to be a citizen in Jeddah during the summer time. No wonder the mass exodus is in full swing. “It is not a matter of going ahead,” wrote Nietzsche, “but of being able to go it alone, of being able to be different.” Well, that sounded reasonable enough so I packed one evening and went to the flea market in protest at not being able to get to the sea.

The flea market in Jeddah is one of the biggest I have ever seen in the world, and I have seen many. Battling the humidity and the oppressive heat of the night, I was treated to a public look at people’s closets — or it seemed that way. You could find things that you did not think people would own let alone sell. A tin dish of measurable size, banged, chafed, and visibly abused, was there to be had for a riyal (30 cents). It must have belonged to a Bedouin family who has decided to move to the city.

A bag of dry locust sat next to a bag of dry shrimp. A Filipino couple was bargaining with the seller. I just hoped they were aware of the contents of the non-shrimp bag. In the dim light of an open stall, I saw something. A huge pot, dirty and smudged, sat there quietly waiting an expert eye. I knew it was copper. I lifted it and the weight was nothing short of 60 or 70 pounds. I turned it and rubbed the charred bottom. There it was: Raslan. This is the name of 19th century coppersmith in Damascus who used to make the best copper pots and pans in the whole Middle East. I did not have to bargain. The man said 200 riyals ($55). I paid and struggled to lift the thing into my possession. The only way to carry it to my car was to put it on my head and saunter like those Bedouin women with their pots going to the well to fill up.

I was neither a pretty sight nor a graceful one. Then it occurred to me that we, as a species, are nothing more than scavengers feeding on each other’s rights and possessions. They took the sea from me; I took the pot from its dead or bankrupt owner. I don’t think Nietzsche had that in mind when he wrote his aphorism.

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