Karin: “But we’re allowed to wear turtlenecks.”
Margit: “A turtleneck is a collar.”
Karin: “Nah-aaah.”
Margit: “It goes around your neck. It’s a collar.”
Karin: “Whatever.”
Today was the start of “summertime,” meaning that the clocks sprang ahead an hour. In Israel. And Jerusalem. But not in the West Bank. Or in Palestinian East Jerusalem. Or in the homes of anyone whose political loyalties move them hold out another two weeks until the Palestinian Daylight Savings. You would think, with so many issues to disagree upon here, that when to change the clocks would be a battle someone would be willing to forfeit. But no. For the next two weeks I predict mayhem in concentrate form as meetings and conferences and concerts and bus schedules attempt to carry on for a population divided by one politicized hour.
To get out on the town before the clocks or minds of Jerusalemites exploded in confusion, I went out last night in the hours before the time change to what seems to be the hippie/hipster hangout of West Jerusalem. The restaurant is called Soup & Jazz, and to this marriage I say Mazel Tov. I haven’t heard of a better pairing since Soup & Taco. Smoky describes the voices and the air at this dive joint near the Old City. The soup was homemade, the décor was Chinese propaganda art and the scat held a dim candle to Ella Fitzgerald’s, so I was well impressed.
My boss is good at recognizing when I’ve reached my limit of desk time, and I was at that point by 11 a.m. today. So Mark said I could go outside and pick up trash along the fence that circles our property. I joined Khaled and Mohammed, two men who work on the grounds here, and a teenaged boy from the vocational training center that LWF runs. Picking up trash is probably one of my favorite activities, and for two hours I got to tromp around on the hillside bagging broken bottles, empty cigarette cartons and crumpled cups with Nescafe grounds stuck to the bottom.
Litter is an issue, to say the least, in Palestine, and the sight of someone picking up garbage is a rare and puzzling one. What I’d call puzzling is a bunch of boys riding down a well-trafficked road on donkeys, which happened as I was picking up garbage. They stopped and laughed at me and I laughed at them and we had a little conversation that lasted as long as my Arabic vocabulary did, or about two minutes. And then the donkeys and the boys trotted off, but apparently only as far as a point in the fence where they could hop over, because out of no where I have ten-year-olds surrounding me and shaking my hand. And then they started picking up trash with me! So it was for all of five minutes before the donkeys got revved up again, but nonetheless. I inspired children. Mark says that from now on he’ll send young women out to do the groundskeeping and we’ll eventually recruit the neighborhood. Pretty soon East Jerusalem will be overrun by adolescent donkey-riding environmentalists. I can’t wait.
