Supermarkets in the Negev

Whenever my mother is sick, she likes to remind me that it is okay because she never gets sick.  My stomach is a clenched fist today and I am reminding myself that I never have stomach problems.  I will, however, concede that eating a pint of cottage cheese while hiking in the desert was a bad decision.

The problem is that I am a supermarket romantic.  The less familiar the product, the better.  By this logic, earlier in the week, I ended up washing down some peanut flavoured cheetos with half a can of baby formula.  Obviously, I've had cottage cheese before, and can readily identify it by the pleasant farmhouse on the label. What intrigued me, on this day, were the large olives floating in the sky above the farmhouse.  I guess I had imagined it to be like yogurt with fruit at the bottom.  As it turns out, it's more like eating soupy, salty, curdled milk in the hot sun.  The olives don't really change that.  

Nevertheless, without this misguided indulgence I wouldn't have found the perfect intersection of Negev Desert life, the Mitzpe Ramon supermarket.  Everyone must eat, and there are very few alternatives for hours in any direction.  In the first aisle, a shawled Bedouin woman is examining a bottle of wine.  Her yellowed fingernails trace the Hebrew letters like braille, often pausing between each character as if digesting a private meaning.  In the deli, a veiled woman absentmindedly plays with the collar of her fur coat.  Our eyes meet and I suddenly feel a pang of embarrassment as I smile.  All I can see are eyes and hands.  It seems silly to smile at a pair of hands, but I know that I shouldn't be looking at her so directly.  I shouldn't be trying to find faces behind veils.  Turning away, I nearly bump into an orthodox Jewish family as they boorishly discuss different types of frozen pizza.  The parents pay me no notice but the children's eyes fall heavily on my bare knees and colourful t-shirt, this time it is their turn to be embarrassed.

There are plenty of secular people here too.  Young men are buying beer and there is a punky woman whose bright red jacket perfectly matches her hair.  Some soldiers catch my attention because they look like kids with guns.  Their baskets are filled with cookies and energy drinks, items that seem more appropriate at summer camp than boot camp.  They laugh and push each other.  They whisper in each other's ears.

For me, this is the greatest challenge in Israel.  Understanding how all these different people fit together (or do not).  The orthodox, while friendly enough, can be unyieldingly dogmatic.  Their rhetoric is not of unique magnitude or amplitude, but rather it is the same fearful and hateful tone that resonates among so many conservative institutions.  It is a madness that we are familiar with in the United States, one derived from reading the same book too many times.  The orthodox can be openly hostile toward Arabs, and the Arabs toward them.  This is when the children have to get involved.  Ironically, the Israeli Defense Force is extraordinarily secular.  The people who care the least about religion end up in the middle of all the tension, often protecting people that resent the IDF from people that despise the IDF.  

After spending time in the West Bank- talking to Palestinians, settlers, expats working for NGOs, academics, and soldiers- it is abundantly clear that there is no such thing as right or wrong.  As an outsider you want to simplify the situation and point to a guilty party.  Above, I picked on the orthodox Jews, not to say that they are more culpable than anyone else, but only because I think they share interesting philosophical and social parallels with the very people they so strongly oppose.

This stuff can get pretty heavy around here and it is easy to get lost in your thoughts.  At least, however, it is under constant discussion.  The situation is on everyone's lips, whether spoken in public or behind closed doors.  I hate to paint this with a Disney brush, but it is true that life goes on.  On both sides of the green line there is a feeling that the constant tension forces people to live in the moment.  It is not an environment that many would choose, but it is their reality and you can see that people try to make the most of it.

While visiting friends near Gaza, one of them said to me "I wish that they would shoot some rockets at us today so I wouldn't have to go to work."

You wouldn't believe what can become normal.

First Impressions of Israel (Heaven Without an Asterisk)

Remember those physics problems for an object at equilibrium?  Different forces are pulling from all directions and you need to figure out the final unknown force to keep it all from falling apart.  Israel is like that.  It is high contrast.  It is contradiction.  It is vegan cuisine.  Fine, I'll say it, they even read backwards.

Israel is the interface of the visible and the invisible worlds.  Consider two cities: Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  Tel Aviv is a city of cranes.  A thousand drills and jackhammers singing in unison.  It is a city that spontaneously erupted from the sand one-hundred years ago to serve as a foil to Jerusalem's history and restraint.  Far from the monument to hedonism as many choose to describe it, Tel Aviv is simply a monument to "the New Jew," and it comes with a side of bacon.  Where Jerusalem was built by slaves dragging limestone blocks, Tel Aviv was built by bright-eyed young idealists with cinder blocks.  Free from the encumbrance of history, the city defines itself as a home for intellectual and social capital.  It is a home to art, music, and fine dining.  It is the Silicone Valley of the east.  It is a safe place to show some skin. 

Chilango

I'm slowly working out where I am.  There are a number of forgettable large arterial roads that criss-cross Mexico City, all of which are lined with the sort of soulless buildings that quickly erase themselves from the memory or else cause your mind to avoid them altogether.  However, just a block off of my own personal intercity super-highway, Insurgentes, the cinderblock structures give way to more sturdy neighborhoods.  Cracked streets turn to tree lined avenues.  Avenues converge at lush parks with elaborate european fountains, which in turn are surrounded by crowded cafés serving culture as much as coffees.  It is easy to dismiss DF as just another enormous and polluted environmental disaster, but such an assessment ignores the seeds of city aspiring to grow into something better.  A closer look reveals roof-top gardens and people pushing for social change that will influence the rest of the nation.  It is a place that is so undeniably international yet absolutely Mexican.  A crepe is just as likely to come with blue cheese and walnuts as it is with queso oaxaca (string cheese) and nopales, sautéed cactus.  It is not easy here, but if you have the energy, what you will find is worth the effort.  

Jumil

Although it is 28 degrees and fair, it is Christmas in Taxco as surely as anywhere else.  Where people once sold onions and tomatoes there are now stands filled with flashing lights, plastic Santas, singing animals, and the obligatory themed candies.  A plastic ponderosa pine forest has been steadily growing from the market's center, each day the mint colored trees creep even further along the streets, forming a vast evergreen forest disrupted only occasionally by their white plastic cousins and stands selling pirated DVDs. 

As best I can tell the first seeds were planted near the deli section, however, things tend to catch on quickly around here, so it is hard to be certain.  If it isn't rudely bleached jeans or an animal flu that occupies the public mind, it is most assuredly a seasonal holiday or food. 

Last months hot item was the Jumil, pronounced “who-meal.”  A beetle so disgusting people get two days off of work to celebrate it.  This spotted pest appears in the nearby mountains in the autumn and for the next several weeks makes up an important part of the Tasqueño diet.  Like all things local, both the producer and consumer believe it is the best.  Let's face it, if Vegemite, Green Chili Wine, or deep-fried turkeys stuffed with chicken and duck were actually the best, they would enjoy more widespread popularity.  As it is, they are mostly favored by people who grew up with them or, at the very least, tolerated for fear of not fitting in.  The same is true of the Jumil. 

Rainy Season

There is a flash of light followed by stillness.  For a moment time stretches on in a white void and for this infinitely short life you are alone.  Suddenly the world recolors itself and is punctuated by a clap of thunder that nearly sweeps you off your feet.  The rain arrives in drops so fat that even with an umbrella the splashes off the ground can soak a person up to their waist.  When it really gets going it tumbles with persistent and admirable intensity until the streets turn to rivers and pedestrians into climate refugees.  It rains cats and dogs, lions and lambs, fish and bicycles.  Every cliché ever spoken falls from the sky and is washed away with the cigarette butts and dog shit of the sidewalks. 

The culture dictates that any location other than your home is appropriate for affection and the rainy season does not change this simple law.  On such occasions eager lovers seek shelter anywhere possible, taking advantage of yet another opportunity for a public fondle.  Unfortunately, it is not unusual for a small stoop to breed an awkward third-wheel type situation.  Like a car accident, you try not to look, but with so much heavy breathing and wet sucking sounds it is all you can do not to get involved or else throw yourself into the deluge.  The best coping mechanism is to imagine that some of these people are simply strangers making the most of the bad weather, or else, first dates that are going really well. 

The good thing about these storms is that they do not last long.  There is light and sound and romance, but after fifteen minutes the world resumes its regular business.  People smile at each other and laugh at their wet shoes.  People emerge from sheltered nooks with disheveled hair and looks of disappointment.  The city is washed clean and we set out tentatively, like explorers of a new planet.

Robbed

When moving to Mexico City they say it is not a question of if you will be robbed, but when.  It's a sort of initiation, much like a candle-light bris or first sexual encounter.  The best you can hope for is that it will be over quickly and that nobody ends up traumatized or seriously injured.  For me, like earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, I knew that the possibility was there, but figured I would be out of the city fast enough to beat any of the odds that might await me.  That said, on a cool September night, the odds won and this boy became a Chilango.

On the night in question, a friend and I were walking home through the back streets of La Roma.  We had just suffered through a rather unsavory dinner and were silently pondering whether going hungry wasn't the better option.  Not far from my house, a man called out to us, “Just want to get your attention, don't want to be surprising you!”  He approached us from the other side of the road and explained that he wanted to announce his presence so we wouldn't be scared and mistake him for a thief.  The man wore clean, tailored clothes, consisting of a button-up shirt tucked into baggy slacks.  He may have even looked respectable were the outfit not two or three sizes too large.  Upon arriving to our side of the road, he informed us that it was a robbery, but would like to do so in the nicest way possible.  He lifted the extra fabric of his large shirt to bring our attention toward an amorphous bulge tucked into his belt.  “I have a gun, and I am robbing you.”  He did indeed have something concealed in there, but it was just as likely to be a box of macaroni and cheese as the pistol that he claimed it to be.  Nevertheless, he was the one with the bulge and who were we to question it.

METRO

There is often a large puddle, a breast feeding indigenous women, an antique watch, or a new DVD to bypass at the entrance of the metro.  A woman shrieks to sell her chorros, a deep-fried okra-shaped piece of dough covered in cinnamon and sugar, sometimes tasty but usually dry and hard.  The man next to her sells a generous breakfast pack including a sandwich, yogurt, banana and juice.  He is cool and quiet but offers a good product.  Many in this country could take this lesson to heart and realize that no amount of noise making will sell a product like a good reputation.  But, no doubt, they will continue to try.  

Descending the well worn marble stairs I pat my pockets to make sure the day is in order.  Keys-right.  Money-left.  It is probably a false sense, but I feel very much a local as I swipe the metro card and push through the turnstile.  At least much more so than Amelia, who fumbles to separate a single ticket from the thick bundle buried in her purse.  Were we at a Chuckie Cheese, such a clump would be enough to buy an RC car or a Chicago Bulls beach towel, but as it is, so many tickets can only cause delays.  For all that, my brief smugness is quickly extinguished with the arrival of the train.  During peak hours, the foremost carriages are reserved for women and children, with the remaining going to the vast majority of morning and evening commuters, sweaty men.  As Amelia steps on board and takes a seat, I force myself into the chest of a business man and suck in my stomach to allow the doors to close.  Sometimes the train can remain stationary for minutes as doors open and close, all the while banging on arms, legs, briefcases, and backpacks.  When at last we begin moving, a wave of warmth washes over the passengers, settling on faces and dampening clothes.  It is the collective heat of hundreds of people, it smells like corn and it makes handrails moist and sticky.  After a couple of stops I jostle myself to the back of the crowd, where at least there is a chance of not being washed overboard by the tides of exiting commuters.  From this vantage I can enjoy the metro culture as it unfolds before me.