The Ripe Market has been bringing UAE home-grown businesses together since 2011. This summer it moved indoors, setting up on the ground floor of Abu Dhabi Mall across three July weekends: the 4th and 5th, the 11th and 12th, and the 18th and 19th, from ten in the morning until nine at night. We were there for the final weekend, the 18th and 19th.

Our kiosk sat under the market sign, with the grape-cluster soaps hanging on twine along the back wall where they could do the talking. On the table: saffron ovals with real threads pressed into a honeycomb face, coffee bars you can smell before you see, neem, frankincense, honey and black seed, and the swirled classics lined up on little wooden steps.

Soap is a hard thing to sell from a photograph. At the market, people could pick a bar up, turn it over, hold it to the light and smell it, which is how soap should be chosen. The questions were the same ones we get on WhatsApp: is it gentle enough for sensitive skin, which one for the kids. And it was nice, for a change, to answer them face to face.

To everyone who stopped by, smelled a bar, asked a question, or went home with a little kraft bag: thank you. And thank you to The Ripe Market team for giving small local makers a table in the middle of the city.

We would happily do more of these. When we know where the next table will be, you will read it here and on Instagram first.