Sorry, I'm English - can you say that again?
It’s been a while since I blogged, partly due to busyness on my part and partly because I hit something of a wall when it came to considering possible blog content. I’ve got plenty of half-baked ideas floating around, but in my opinion the internet is not an appropriate place for airing one’s dirty laundry without a degree of editing and I haven’t fully processed some of the things I have to say as yet. I read a Bill Bryson article once in which he jammed together a group of little stories that didn’t really have a common theme but were, in his opinion, worth sharing with his audience. So today’s blog contains some un-linked episodes, things which struck me as amusing or interesting, which give a little flavour of my life here and which I thought were worth sharing with you, dear reader.
1. Attempting to speak Hebrew in the shuk
Hebrew is a notoriously difficult language to learn. It sounds funny (lots of ‘ch’ sounds made with the back of the throat, rather like Gaelic), it is in no way similar to any western language and when it’s written the vowels are often left out, making reading it a bit of a guessing game for the novice. Not that I’m even at the reading-it stage, though I’m picking out a few letters. א, for example, is the letter a and שmakes a ‘sh’ sound. I’m currently saving up for ulpan, an intensive course of Hebrew lessons, which should put me on a more sure footing. We sing songs in Hebrew at church with the Hebrew letters, their phonetic translation and their English translation all on one page and that helps me too. In the meantime, however, I’m trying to pick things up through conversation – with the cleaner, with Jewish friends, with the stallholders in the shuk. I can now count to twenty, something I learned through shopping in the shuk and endeavouring to give the stallholders correct change. I can also do greetings and farewells, as well as the basic ‘how are you?’ conversation, though I grind to a halt after that.
This was evidenced by a conversation I had just before Christmas with the guy I buy eggs from the shuk. I’ve been going to the same guy to buy eggs for a few months now – I’m not sure his eggs are any better than anyone else’s but there are so many stalls in the shuk selling the same thing and one gets into habits of where one goes for specific things. I go to one particular place for hummus (covered with harif, a spicy red paste – yummy), one place for fresh pomegranate juice, one jammed little shop for certain vegetables where the owner’s son berates me if I don’t go regularly (“Where have you been lately?”), one butcher's which is good value for money but where the owner waves his lit cigarette over the produce. Actually, that’s not unique to that guy – everyone in the shuk seems to do it.
Anyway, it was a Friday morning and in an attempt to avoid the Friday lunch-time crush I stopped by his stall on the way to work to buy eggs for my weekend breakfast. (A little aside here: Friday is always the busiest day as people rush to get food in before Shabbat, yet for some reason tour guides love to bring huge tour groups on Fridays too. Why can’t they come on Monday when it’s quieter instead of clogging up the already crowded market?) So, he looked at me and said “Ma shlomech?” which means “How are you?” It was pretty early and it took me a minute of thinking to myself “I know this, what’s next?” before I finally managed “Beseder! Ma nishma?” (“OK! How are you?”). He said “tov” (“good”) and I was feeling rather pleased with myself for managing the formalities when he launched off in rapid Hebrew which I had no hope of understanding. We’re actually still having conversations along those lines, though I’ve now got to the stage of asking him for eggs in Hebrew (“Shteim esrei beizim, be vakashar”) for which phrase I have to thank Tamar, my resident Hebrew tutor (another mention for her on the blog, she’ll be happy about that). Also, the Hebrew for eggs is the same as the Hebrew for balls of the male genital variety. Tee hee!
2. Living in Nahla’ot
Nahla’ot is my neighbourhood and it’s really rather lovely. It’s a relatively old part of town and fairly orthodox, with at least 100 synagogues and yeshivas in a small area. This means that Friday nights can get very noisy when the locals start up the singing for the evening service; Saturday mornings are blissfully quiet and on Saturday afternoons the place is filled with families out passing the time of day, playing in the little courtyards and playgrounds, just hanging out. Over Succot there were sukkah (tabernacles) everywhere; during Chanukah lots of people had chanukiah (the traditional 9-candle candelabrum used during the holiday) outside their front doors.
It feels very safe, on the whole, and is a very pretty part of town. When it rains the streets turn into small rivers and the water doesn’t drain properly, leaving big puddles everywhere. This does have the positive effect of washing away a lot of the pee (both human and animal) and poo (only animal, I sincerely hope) which litters the streets. Dog-owners here do not scoop their poop, plus the ubiquitous cats seem to shit for Israel. For some reason the corner our building is on is a favoured spot for both forms of excrement, so walking around requires some care if you don’t want to end up with something nasty on your shoes. Nice.
3. Interactions with the locals – some Israelis are funny
I’ve had some pretty interesting encounters with locals, both residents and people visiting the area. I came out of the house one day carrying some old furniture down to the big dumpster where all local rubbish goes and a guy coming out of an apartment further down the street said to me, in English, “Can I give you a hand with that?” My response wasn’t to do with his offer, it was to do with the fact that he spoke to me in English rather than Hebrew – “Do I really look that un-Israeli?” Yes, yes, apparently I do.
Another night there was a knock on our door and I opened it to find an orthodox guy selling religious literature. He shouldn’t even have got up the stairs to our apartment as there’s a gate which requires a code to get through, but lo and behold, there he was on my doorstep. When I said that I wasn’t interested in the literature (seriously, couldn’t he see the Christmas tree and lights in the room behind me?) he tried to sell me a cd. “It’s lovely music,” says he, “some religious, some classical.” Then he paused. “But, you look like you’re into something a little bit wilder, am I right?” He wasn’t the only one to make it through our locked gate (seriously, how do they do it?) – on Boxing Day I threw a small ‘curry-and-beers’ party for friends and at about 1 a.m. there was a knock on the door. Thinking it might be a neighbour we were keeping up I opened the door, only to discover another orthodox guy there. “Do the Friedmans live here?” he asked. They don’t, but he then had the nerve to ask me if he could use the bathroom. When I said “No” (with, it should be noted, a degree of shock registering on my face that a total stranger would even ask that question) he actually begged me – “Please, I’ve walked all the way from Talpiot and I’m desperate.” I should have told him to take a hike and pee in the alley like everyone else, but I was several beers down so muggins here actually let him in. Fortunately my very tall friend Jesse had just walked out of the loo so it was obvious to him that I had men in the apartment and therefore there was no funny business on offer.
You’d think that funny business wouldn’t even be a consideration but it turns out that it can be. One afternoon in the holidays I was walking home through the little alleys and I overtook a young orthodox guy. By the way, in case you’re wondering how you can tell if they’re orthodox, it’s a clothing thing – usually black suits, white shirts, black hats. The degree of orthodoxy is then denoted by various things: side-locks (or not), beards (or not), the size/shape/type of hat or coat. Anyway, I didn’t really register him (headphones in, head down checking for faeces on the ground) but he tapped me on the shoulder and started talking to me in Hebrew. I said “Slicha, Anglit” – “sorry, English” – so he switched to very broken English and started asking me questions: did I live round here? What was I doing in Israel? Had I made aliyah (the immigration process open to all Jews, who have the ‘right of return’ to Israel)? Eventually I shook him off and walked on, headphones back in. So I’m standing punching the digits into the gate of my building when he walks past, spots me and comes over. He asked me a few more questions and when he asked me who I lived with alarm bells started ringing, so I said goodbye, at which point – I kid you not – he moved in for a snog. I made it pretty obvious that was not going to happen (“Whoa! What are you doing? No way!”) and he threw his hands up in the air, either in apology or disappointment, I couldn’t tell which and walked off. Upon recounting this story to my Jewish friend Naomi later than evening she made the excellent point that I should have had alarm bells ringing a damn sight earlier – when he started talking to me, in fact, as an orthodox guy would never talk to a strange woman in the street (or any woman not in his family). You live and you learn, as they say, and one of the things I’m learning here is to hone my ‘weirdo’ radar so that I can spot the dodgy ones and run away when necessary.
4. More interactions with locals – good ones, this time
I had to return home recently for a family funeral and took the opportunity to change up some shekels into pounds to pay into my bank account without the hideous fees involved in wire transfers. I’d had a money-changer recommended, Shaban in the Old City on Christian Quarter Road, but alas, four days before I was due to go I came down with the flu and so could only make it down there the day before I left. At such short notice he didn’t have enough £ for my needs but he recommended a friend (of course) in East Jerusalem on Salah-ad Din Street, so off I trotted. On the way I stopped to buy baklava for my parents, one filled with delicious custardy stuff, and when I mentioned to the shop-keeper that I was taking it home to the UK he was filled with horror – “no, no, it must be eaten fresh, within the hour” – and so swapped the custard ones for something with pistachio instead. I’d already paid him but he then gave me the fresh ones for free anyway. This is so typical of the hospitality I’ve received here, from both Jews and Arabs. This was evidenced later on when I couldn’t find the right money-changer. Shaban's instructions were not the greatest - Al-Azz was the 3rd money-changer on the right, he said, though this turned out to be complete cobblers and confusing to boot on a street with at least 8 money-changers. I ended up asking directions from another money-changer, who managed to decipher the 'map' Shaban had given me and then insisted on walking me down the road and delivering me in person to the right place, before spouting off in Arabic, smiling at me, lighting up a fag and heading back up the road.
I feel like I could go on and on with these little episodes in an expat life but as usual I’ve gone on a bit and the interests of brevity encourage me to draw this blog to a close, for now. More content coming soon so stay tuned, campers.
1. Attempting to speak Hebrew in the shuk
Hebrew is a notoriously difficult language to learn. It sounds funny (lots of ‘ch’ sounds made with the back of the throat, rather like Gaelic), it is in no way similar to any western language and when it’s written the vowels are often left out, making reading it a bit of a guessing game for the novice. Not that I’m even at the reading-it stage, though I’m picking out a few letters. א, for example, is the letter a and שmakes a ‘sh’ sound. I’m currently saving up for ulpan, an intensive course of Hebrew lessons, which should put me on a more sure footing. We sing songs in Hebrew at church with the Hebrew letters, their phonetic translation and their English translation all on one page and that helps me too. In the meantime, however, I’m trying to pick things up through conversation – with the cleaner, with Jewish friends, with the stallholders in the shuk. I can now count to twenty, something I learned through shopping in the shuk and endeavouring to give the stallholders correct change. I can also do greetings and farewells, as well as the basic ‘how are you?’ conversation, though I grind to a halt after that.
This was evidenced by a conversation I had just before Christmas with the guy I buy eggs from the shuk. I’ve been going to the same guy to buy eggs for a few months now – I’m not sure his eggs are any better than anyone else’s but there are so many stalls in the shuk selling the same thing and one gets into habits of where one goes for specific things. I go to one particular place for hummus (covered with harif, a spicy red paste – yummy), one place for fresh pomegranate juice, one jammed little shop for certain vegetables where the owner’s son berates me if I don’t go regularly (“Where have you been lately?”), one butcher's which is good value for money but where the owner waves his lit cigarette over the produce. Actually, that’s not unique to that guy – everyone in the shuk seems to do it.
The un-covered section of the shuk, packed out just before the shut-down
Anyway, it was a Friday morning and in an attempt to avoid the Friday lunch-time crush I stopped by his stall on the way to work to buy eggs for my weekend breakfast. (A little aside here: Friday is always the busiest day as people rush to get food in before Shabbat, yet for some reason tour guides love to bring huge tour groups on Fridays too. Why can’t they come on Monday when it’s quieter instead of clogging up the already crowded market?) So, he looked at me and said “Ma shlomech?” which means “How are you?” It was pretty early and it took me a minute of thinking to myself “I know this, what’s next?” before I finally managed “Beseder! Ma nishma?” (“OK! How are you?”). He said “tov” (“good”) and I was feeling rather pleased with myself for managing the formalities when he launched off in rapid Hebrew which I had no hope of understanding. We’re actually still having conversations along those lines, though I’ve now got to the stage of asking him for eggs in Hebrew (“Shteim esrei beizim, be vakashar”) for which phrase I have to thank Tamar, my resident Hebrew tutor (another mention for her on the blog, she’ll be happy about that). Also, the Hebrew for eggs is the same as the Hebrew for balls of the male genital variety. Tee hee!
2. Living in Nahla’ot
Nahla’ot is my neighbourhood and it’s really rather lovely. It’s a relatively old part of town and fairly orthodox, with at least 100 synagogues and yeshivas in a small area. This means that Friday nights can get very noisy when the locals start up the singing for the evening service; Saturday mornings are blissfully quiet and on Saturday afternoons the place is filled with families out passing the time of day, playing in the little courtyards and playgrounds, just hanging out. Over Succot there were sukkah (tabernacles) everywhere; during Chanukah lots of people had chanukiah (the traditional 9-candle candelabrum used during the holiday) outside their front doors.
Chanukiah in Nahla'ot, night 9 of the holiday so all candles lit
It feels very safe, on the whole, and is a very pretty part of town. When it rains the streets turn into small rivers and the water doesn’t drain properly, leaving big puddles everywhere. This does have the positive effect of washing away a lot of the pee (both human and animal) and poo (only animal, I sincerely hope) which litters the streets. Dog-owners here do not scoop their poop, plus the ubiquitous cats seem to shit for Israel. For some reason the corner our building is on is a favoured spot for both forms of excrement, so walking around requires some care if you don’t want to end up with something nasty on your shoes. Nice.
3. Interactions with the locals – some Israelis are funny
I’ve had some pretty interesting encounters with locals, both residents and people visiting the area. I came out of the house one day carrying some old furniture down to the big dumpster where all local rubbish goes and a guy coming out of an apartment further down the street said to me, in English, “Can I give you a hand with that?” My response wasn’t to do with his offer, it was to do with the fact that he spoke to me in English rather than Hebrew – “Do I really look that un-Israeli?” Yes, yes, apparently I do.
Another night there was a knock on our door and I opened it to find an orthodox guy selling religious literature. He shouldn’t even have got up the stairs to our apartment as there’s a gate which requires a code to get through, but lo and behold, there he was on my doorstep. When I said that I wasn’t interested in the literature (seriously, couldn’t he see the Christmas tree and lights in the room behind me?) he tried to sell me a cd. “It’s lovely music,” says he, “some religious, some classical.” Then he paused. “But, you look like you’re into something a little bit wilder, am I right?” He wasn’t the only one to make it through our locked gate (seriously, how do they do it?) – on Boxing Day I threw a small ‘curry-and-beers’ party for friends and at about 1 a.m. there was a knock on the door. Thinking it might be a neighbour we were keeping up I opened the door, only to discover another orthodox guy there. “Do the Friedmans live here?” he asked. They don’t, but he then had the nerve to ask me if he could use the bathroom. When I said “No” (with, it should be noted, a degree of shock registering on my face that a total stranger would even ask that question) he actually begged me – “Please, I’ve walked all the way from Talpiot and I’m desperate.” I should have told him to take a hike and pee in the alley like everyone else, but I was several beers down so muggins here actually let him in. Fortunately my very tall friend Jesse had just walked out of the loo so it was obvious to him that I had men in the apartment and therefore there was no funny business on offer.
You’d think that funny business wouldn’t even be a consideration but it turns out that it can be. One afternoon in the holidays I was walking home through the little alleys and I overtook a young orthodox guy. By the way, in case you’re wondering how you can tell if they’re orthodox, it’s a clothing thing – usually black suits, white shirts, black hats. The degree of orthodoxy is then denoted by various things: side-locks (or not), beards (or not), the size/shape/type of hat or coat. Anyway, I didn’t really register him (headphones in, head down checking for faeces on the ground) but he tapped me on the shoulder and started talking to me in Hebrew. I said “Slicha, Anglit” – “sorry, English” – so he switched to very broken English and started asking me questions: did I live round here? What was I doing in Israel? Had I made aliyah (the immigration process open to all Jews, who have the ‘right of return’ to Israel)? Eventually I shook him off and walked on, headphones back in. So I’m standing punching the digits into the gate of my building when he walks past, spots me and comes over. He asked me a few more questions and when he asked me who I lived with alarm bells started ringing, so I said goodbye, at which point – I kid you not – he moved in for a snog. I made it pretty obvious that was not going to happen (“Whoa! What are you doing? No way!”) and he threw his hands up in the air, either in apology or disappointment, I couldn’t tell which and walked off. Upon recounting this story to my Jewish friend Naomi later than evening she made the excellent point that I should have had alarm bells ringing a damn sight earlier – when he started talking to me, in fact, as an orthodox guy would never talk to a strange woman in the street (or any woman not in his family). You live and you learn, as they say, and one of the things I’m learning here is to hone my ‘weirdo’ radar so that I can spot the dodgy ones and run away when necessary.
4. More interactions with locals – good ones, this time
I had to return home recently for a family funeral and took the opportunity to change up some shekels into pounds to pay into my bank account without the hideous fees involved in wire transfers. I’d had a money-changer recommended, Shaban in the Old City on Christian Quarter Road, but alas, four days before I was due to go I came down with the flu and so could only make it down there the day before I left. At such short notice he didn’t have enough £ for my needs but he recommended a friend (of course) in East Jerusalem on Salah-ad Din Street, so off I trotted. On the way I stopped to buy baklava for my parents, one filled with delicious custardy stuff, and when I mentioned to the shop-keeper that I was taking it home to the UK he was filled with horror – “no, no, it must be eaten fresh, within the hour” – and so swapped the custard ones for something with pistachio instead. I’d already paid him but he then gave me the fresh ones for free anyway. This is so typical of the hospitality I’ve received here, from both Jews and Arabs. This was evidenced later on when I couldn’t find the right money-changer. Shaban's instructions were not the greatest - Al-Azz was the 3rd money-changer on the right, he said, though this turned out to be complete cobblers and confusing to boot on a street with at least 8 money-changers. I ended up asking directions from another money-changer, who managed to decipher the 'map' Shaban had given me and then insisted on walking me down the road and delivering me in person to the right place, before spouting off in Arabic, smiling at me, lighting up a fag and heading back up the road.
I feel like I could go on and on with these little episodes in an expat life but as usual I’ve gone on a bit and the interests of brevity encourage me to draw this blog to a close, for now. More content coming soon so stay tuned, campers.
Comments
Post a Comment