We'd had lunch already, but I wanted to see what goat meat looked like, so we stopped in next door to the Somali place on St. John Street, where the old butcher obliged. It's bright red, & sinewy. I asked how he cooked it, so he brought us behind the partition where there was a restaurant you'd never guess existed from the outside, like an African secret, no awning or façade. He talked Abdellah into giving us a scoop of meat & rice, for free. To taste, for free. Free to taste. It was anti-American, that's for sure. The music pleasing, & the television entertaining men at three tables. We sat down with our cache, my woman explaining her vegetarian ways, but willingness to try the rice, which she complimented as tribal faces beamed back. I stuck a finnif in his hand early on, so he brought some tea, & explained, in answer to my wife's question about the sign 'Camel' outside, that no, here they have only goat, but back home, if a woman gets married, the dowry is paid in goat or camel. Delightfully anti-American, & downright exotic for an afternoon, snow in the offing, & most everyone else heading to the mall.