JEDDAH, 23 October 2006 — Walking near the Bab Makkah area of Jeddah’s historic center during Ramadan this year, it is quite common to hear somebody offering to sell you some Hezbollah rockets.
“We’ve got Hezbollahs,” said one young man in a thick Yemeni accent to the passing crowds of Ramadan shoppers. “We’ve got it all. Good prices, too.”
If you happen to hear this, relax. The guy is just trying to sell you some meter-tall rockets — the kind you fire into the air in celebration rather than the other kind.
Thanks to this summer’s clashes in Southern Lebanon, “Hezbollah” has become the fashionable nickname for the largest and most expensive of the fireworks that you can buy in downtown Jeddah: One rocket costs SR150, and if the “Hezbollah” is a little too big or expensive, the firecracker pusher might also have some smaller “Bin Ladens” available.
While these toys aren’t weapons, they are quite formidable by firecracker standards. A meter-long stick of wood with an explosive charge the size of a stick of dynamite sounds pretty darn close to something you might hear in an actual battlefield when exploded.
“You stick the wood in the ground and light it here,” said an illegal firecracker dealer after escorting this reporter to his secret location, which felt like a den of ill repute. “It goes up, and then it goes boom with many colors.”
It is almost needless to say that this behemoth firecracker is dangerous — and illegal. These giant firecrackers, and the more conventional ones, are illegal to possess or sell in the Kingdom. Nevertheless, as anyone who has spent the holy month here can tell you, fireworks can be heard, along with the joyous sounds of neighborhood kids, during many Ramadan nights.
And despite this ban on fireworks, dealers abound in Jeddah’s downtown, pitching their wares as if they were selling drugs. Some hide them in the trunks of their cars while others, like the Yemeni man who was trying to sell Arab News the premium “Hezbollah rocket,” take their customers to a nearby storage room and knock on the door with a coded rhythm that tells the person on the other side that it is OK to open the door.
Once inside one of these dens, you see a lot of fireworks and no fire extinguishers or other indications of what one might do in the event of an unfortunate accident with a discarded cigarette butt. After securing the deal, one of the dealers would escort you outside asking you to come again.
Prices differ from one dealer to another. One dealer told Arab News that it is cheaper to buy from storage rooms because they usually sell for wholesale prices, while street dealers are more expensive. All fireworks in the Kingdom are made in China and are smuggled into the country every year, just in time for Ramadan.
