Safari to Hell
A colleague of mine was at the scene of this morning’s suicide attack against Israeli citizens in Kenya. This is her first report and hours later she was interviewed on Jerusalem Post Radio. Her interview is transcribed here.
Take a minute and read her disturbing account of what happened and what she saw.
I wouldn’t feel complete living elsewhere in the world. These past couple of years have been tough; there is no denying that. Whenever I travel abroad I feel safer, even a bit relieved. While visiting the Netherlands and Norway I specifically remember feeling how good it was to be away from the “situation”. It felt wonderful to sit in a cafe’ or restaurant and not constantly look over my shoulder. I savored it and took full advantage of this wonderful feeling.
I bet most of the Israelis traveling to Kenya felt the same way.
Traveling will never be the same again.
Victory is mine!
Go me! I passed my Israeli driving test today with flying colors. I have been driving for 11 years but got screwed by the system because I chose to serve in the IDF.
There are several benefits that immigrants receive when they move here and are granted citizenship. Upon being drafted all of those benefits are temporarily frozen while in the military. I served for a year and a half. I was told that all of my rights were to be frozen. I was wrong. They are all frozen except the transferring of one’s driver�s license. I was originally told that I had to take 28 lessons and then pass the real drivers test. That costs thousands of shekels. Luckily, I was able to convince the motor vehicle bureau to exempt me from the lessons. I ended up doing several anyway to familiar myself with the ABSURD BACKWARD driving laws of this country. I won’t go into the ridiculousness of the laws now because I have no intention of following them. Generally, the drivers here are extremely aggressive and driving can be downright dangerous. I’ll drive more safely if I follow my own rules and not the laws as stipulated by the Israeli government.
There is still one hurdle to cross. According to the licensing bureau I am now a Nahag Chadash, a new driver. This means that I can’t drive alone for two months and I have to hang a stupid little sign in my window announcing that I am a new driver. How humiliating. Even though I am working until 2:00 a.m. tonight you can bet your bottom dollar that Ill be at licensing bureau as soon as it opens tomorrow morning.
The absurdity of the entire cycle of events is that I have been licensed to drive a 3 million dollar tank but not my $15,000 dollar Honda.
Good food and good people
Everyday the sandwich guy shows up to the office at about 12:00. He offers a wide selection of sandwiches from the very traditional (tuna, egg salad etc) to the more esoteric.
An esoteric sandwich? What can an esoteric sandwich taste like? It is through him that I discovered the “sabich”. A sabich is a sandwich traditionally eaten by Iraqi Jews on Saturday morning (the Jewish Sabbath).
It might be the most delicious sandwich I have ever had in my life. It’s a delicious combo of hummous, techina, hard-boiled egg, pickles, parsley and fried eggplant shoved into a pita. Elsewhere in the world it’s known as Babi Jan. Apparently about forty-somewhat years ago an Iraqi Jew ran a small kiosk in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan and served up these delicious sandwiches. The name of the guy was Sabich (It’s like being a Smith in Iraq) and he was the only person in the country making the Babi Jan so everyone started referring to the sandwich as a Sabich.
I love the food here. Nothing can be more satisfying than a fresh falafel stuffed with all the goods. I love the ethnic food. The soul food of the Jewish people. There are hundreds of these places all over the country. Most of them were started by women 40 years ago whose sons now run them. The mothers (now grandmothers) still meddle and can be seen in the kitchen nearly everyday. My favorite place of all time is called Mordoch and is located near the Mahane Yehuda open-air market in Jerusalem. The Mordoch family are Kurdish and serve the best kubbeh soup in the entire country. Kubbeh soup is a meal unto itself. There are two kinds - red and green - Red kubbeh soup has a tomato and beet base. Green (commonly known as Chamutzta) is a really sour soup made with swiss chard and a ton of lemon juice. The star of both soups however is the Kubbeh itself. Kubbeh are bulgar dumplings filled with meat and spices. I have consistently had at least one bowl of kubbeh soup a week in the past five years.
Mahane Yehuda might be one of my favorite places in the entire country. It has such an old school feel to it. It features tons of fruit and vegetable stalls, fresh fish, and aromatic coffee, thousands of spices, butchers and baked goods. The merchants are constantly yelling. On Fridays, the prices get cheaper and cheaper as the Sabbath draws closer with merchants trying to sell as much as possible before the Jewish Sabbath begins. I shop at the same merchants every week. When I was a soldier and was doing my shopping there, the amount of free stuff I received was unbelievable. I once went to this prepared food place and ordered a small chicken and a couple of side dishes. I was in uniform and I guess it struck the owner as odd that I was buying food for one person. Friday night dinner is to Jews as Sunday dinner is to Italians. Tons of family and even more food. The owner asked me why I was buying such a small amount of food. I told him that I was a chayal boded, translated as a lonely soldier - a soldier who doesn’t have any family in the country. He then invited me to his house to eat with his family. In America, this would be viewed as odd, even a little dangerous. Not so here. It’s quite common to have strangers over for Friday night dinner. The only reason I didn’t go was that I had just finished my most difficult week of basic training - called war week - and just wanted to eat something, shower and sleep for 24 hours.
I have never experienced anything like Mahane Yehuda in America and it’s really a shame. The closest I thing I have ever seen was The West Side Market in Cleveland which had a lot of character and was somewhat old school in a middle America sort of way. But it ain’t my market and they don’t serve kubbeh soup there.
Visionary
So Time magazine is reporting in this week’s issue that Israeli forces are operating in southern Iraq.
Jane’s Defense Weekly leaked this information over two months ago - check out my entry about it here.
Rock and Roll
Welcome to the view from here. Even though this weblog has been active for a couple of months I consider today the real beginning. I can’t thank my old friend Glenda enough for her help. She took my basic unorganized design and cleaned it up. You can check out her blog here.
Ill be improving on the site nearly everyday and will try to write an entry at least once a day. Rock!
Redesign and other depressing stuff
The redesign of this site is moving along at an incredibly slow pace. I have absolutely no idea what I am doing and cannot figure out the proper way to do anything. I sit down with dreamweaver nearly everyday and feel completely inept. It’s incredibly frustrating. I think that I’ll be more motivated to write everyday once the design is finished. Hopefully that will be sooner than later. I plan on bugging a certain friend to help me out in another two weeks once she is finished studying for the Lsats (wink, wink!).
I have been carrying my digital camera in my man purse for the past couple of weeks. Its a good habit to get into and perhaps will get me into photography again. There was a time in my life that my camera never left my side.
I went to the site of Thursday’s suicide bombing attack. It was about a mile away from my house. This little girl lost her best friend in the bombing. It was sad seeing her there. She is so young and I’m not sure she can really comprehend what happened.
There are more images from the bomb site here, here and here.
When, if ever, will it end?
The old man and the violin
I was seventeen years old, in Israel for the first time with an organized teen trip.
Every night we spent in Jerusalem we had free time on Ben-Yehuda street, the main tourist thoroughfare.
Back then there was no need to worry. There weren’t suicide bombers blowing themselves up. The worst thing we had to worry about was not getting too drunk that it would be impossible to masquerade our sobriety.
That was the first time I saw him.
He was sitting near where Cafe Chagall used to be. He was old, perhaps in his late seventies. He was one of many street performers. His act was a simple one.
He held a violin, played a small part of the traditional Jewish song, Shalom Aleichem and then ceased to play and sang a verse and then went immediately back to playing the violin.
That’s it. That’s what he did. And I loved it.
I don’t remember if I gave him any change that night. I’d like to think that I did.
Unbeknownst to me at the time I would move to Israel six years later.
I moved to Israel in 1997. I had been back between my first trip and then. I just can’t remember if I ever saw him.
Upon arriving here I, of course frequented Ben-Yehuda Street. He was still there. Except that there was no longer a violin. The violin had been replaced by another stringed instrument, the mandolin. He didn’t sing anymore. He didn’t even play the mandolin. He just sat in a chair with a hat in front of him for people to drop some spare change.
What struck me so strongly was the pride that this man had. He wouldn’t beg. He sat there with his mandolin. It didn’t matter that he could no longer play. What mattered is that he had his pride.
Everyday I gave this man whatever change I had in my pocket. He used to reply by saying Zie Gezunt, Yiddish for “be well”. Although he stopped speaking altogether, it didn’t really matter to me because his eyes were expressive enough.
His hat was never empty; it was always full of change. I guess I wasn’t the only person to have a special connection with him.
About a year ago he disappeared and I haven’t seen him since.
I assumed that he died and was strumming his mandolin with the angels. I was wrong. I saw him yesterday. He was pleasantly walking down the street with a big smile on his face.
It made me happy and made my day. Nah, it made my month.
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