Like its name, the El Dorado Café doesn’t seem to belong in East Jerusalem. While most of the shops along Sala’h Diin Street have racks of glittery hair barrettes or plastic alien masks flanking the doorway, ElDo has a mantel of polished pink marble around its windowed façade. Inside, the walls are all mirrored, with gleaming gold framing that reflects in the marble floor. Upstairs you watch yourself reflected infinitely between the walls as quiet couples and louder families eat enormous slices of cheesecake. Downstairs you sit at the bar while the barista brews up layered mugs of milk and espresso and foam. The mirrors disappear for one portion of the wall and are replaced with columns of multi-colored coffee beans and pastel-wrapped gourmet chocolates. The mirrors and the marble and the men slowly smoking cigarettes at the bar give a strange feeling of excess that doesn’t fit in with most of the neighborhood, and I just find the intriguing and a good spot for people watching. I’ve taken to spending a few hours there on Saturday mornings. I study Arabic verbs and I leave smelling of the espresso and tobacco of middle-aged men.
This morning a man was perched on the stool next to mine at the bar, drinking a cappuccino and looking regal with a pageboy hat and a gilded cane.
After a few minutes of neck craning he finally spoke. “Excuse me, can I see you handwriting?” he asked, pointing at my notebook where I had meticulously written out the curves and dots of Arabic. The script is beautiful, even if you’re just writing verb conjugations. “You have very nice handwriting,” he said. “You have the potential to learn calligraphy.”
“Oh, do you know how to do calligraphy?” I asked.
“I’m a calligrapher.”
Huh. Didn’t realize that was a profession. I have one month before he moves to France if I want to take lessons from him. It would be a fun thing to try, although I think eventually I need to start learning skills that are useful.
Who knew dates were so pretty? Here’s a fresh bunch at a stand outside of Hebron in the West Bank.
