JEDDAH, 4 October 2007 — Ashwaq Al-Arishi, an eight-year-old Saudi girl, leaned on an old vehicle at the side of a main street in Jeddah’s Ghulail district. Next to her was a barrel filled with icy water and tied plastic bags of sobia, a mash made from raisins or bread mixed with yeast that is widely available during the holy month and hard to find during the rest of the year.
“I come with my father every day to this place after my mother makes the drink and fills it in bags,” she said.
Sobia vendors go out before sunset during Ramadan, and some adults are finding that using their kids as the vendors attracts more customers. Poorer families who make and sell sobia to help make ends meet tend to use younger family members to attract customers.
“We are a simple family and we need every single income we can make,” said Ashwaq’s father, Ahmad, who said he found a lot more people were buying the drink when he placed his daughter next to the barrel to handle sales while he stood away watching from a short distance.
“I used to have a little bit of money,” said Ahmad. “I lost it in the stock market. Now we’re broke.”
Ahmad, a security guard who says he earns about SR1,500 a month, is one of the Saudis who was lured by the promise of quick rewards in the Saudi stock market over the past year only to discover the harsh realities of investing when the market took a turn for the worse.
Now Ahmad’s financial plans have been humbled; he says that his daughter sells about 10 SR5 bags of sobia a day, which is enough to double his salary for the month. “I have a wife and four children to feed,” he said. “We have to do whatever it takes to keep the family alive.”
At the Madain Al-Fahd Street, in Jeddah’s south, a young boy stood by the trunk of his father’s car holding up bags of sobia to lure passersby.
“Good sobia!” he said. “Tasty sobia!”
Like Ahmad, the boy’s father, Saleh Al-Majdi, watched from a distance. The father of the seven-year-old boy, Al-Majdi said that he is training his boy to become a salesman and a future businessman.
“It’s good to push your child sometimes in order to teach him how to deal with people,” he said. “Besides, he attracts more customers than I do.”
The boy, Hani, seemed happier than Ashwaq was. “I sold four bags today without the help of my father,” he said, smiling.
Al-Majdi, a government employee, said he uses the money from sobia sales to help pay for the expenses of the Eid holiday that brings Ramadan to a close. (This is the time of the season when Muslims give gifts and buy new clothes.)
Hani sold two bags of sobia during the interview with his father. He told the customers that his sobia is the best in town. The customers promised the boy that they would come again.
