death defying

I woke up parched the other night and felt my way down from my loft to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Passing through the dark hallway, I felt something trailing against the floor and saw in the dark a short black strip hanging from the side of my foot. I gave a kick to dislodge whatever it was I had stepped on, and then felt a bite from what I had assumed was inanimate and watched in horror as the thing started writhing. I did a nice little kick-scream-run combination and then spent the next five minutes in my dark kitchen, sitting on the couch with my legs pulled safely from the floor, imagining that a deadly asp was lurking around the corner, ready to slither toward my foot the moment it touched the floor.

Relating this story the next morning, my boss and his son deducted that it was probably a forty-legger that I encountered. A second cousin once removed to the centipede, forty-leggers (not its scientific name) have a bite about as poisonous as a scorpion’s. What I got was most likely a prick from a pair of pinscers. I’ve been spending a lot of time on my tip-toes the past few days.



The annual report has been finalized and sent to the printer’s shop. The layout and design work was done by Majdi who works at a design company in Ramallah. On Friday my boss and I drove up to this thriving Palestinian metropolis and spent a good eight hours working with Majdi on the report. And we all ended up working on Saturday too, me calling Majdi and making the final corrections remotely. It was a long phone call with numerous interruptions, as I listed each minute word change or photo alignment. First Majdi got a call from his buddy. Then he had to call his mom. Then, after a few more minutes: “Margit, you’re going to hate me. But wait just a minute again. There is so much shooting outside.” After a minute he was back, explaining that lots of men with guns were shooting outside the office building. Within two minutes they had drawn nearer and I could hear the gunfire over the phone. These weren’t handguns going off--bullets were flying. “Majdi,” I said, “if you need to go to the hallway and get away from windows and crossfire, that’s okay.” “No,” says Majdi. “I have to finish the annual report.” Employee of the Week.


The Economist did its cover story on Jerusalem this past week, and the article is one of the most accurate I’ve read since I’ve been over here. Click here if you’d like to read it. It’s quite short.