The Old Lady from Bethlehem

On Monday morning - a bright, chilly Ramallah morning - a tiny, bent woman climbed the steep hill  that leads up to the main road from the mosque in Al-Tireh. She had a coat on to protect her from the wind; a skirt that reached just above her ankles; black stockings, and a colorful little silk scarf tied under her chin, covering most of her gray hair.

In her right hand, she held a brown wooden cane to support her slow, slow, arduous ascent.

When I caught sight of her, on our way to work, something tugged at my heart and I gave Tarek a nudge,

"Honey, ask her if she needs a ride," half thinking that she would never agree to get into a stranger's car. Where I come from, you don't offer people rides unless you know them.

Tarek rolled down the window and called out,

"Sabah el kheir, ya hajjeh." Good morning, hajjeh (a polite way to address old ladies).

She stopped and leaned against her cane, squinted her eyes at us.

Tarek repeated the salutation, and then: "Where are you going, ya hajjeh?"

She couldn't quite hear.

A little louder: "Get inside the car, ya hajjeh, we will drive you."

The little lady obliged, showering us with blessings, mumbling her gratitude to God Almighty as she scrambled her way into the back seat. I helped her with her cane.

"Where are you going, ya hajjeh?"

"To the doctor." Her shoulder was aching, and she was on her way to see the doctor.

"What doctor?"

"The one that is in Ramallah Tahta," she replied.

If I walk from the house in Al-Tireh to Ramallah Tahta, the old part of the city, it would take me at least half an hour.

I looked back at the little lady, her brown, smooth, leathery face. She was old, she could barely hear and her back was curved with age, but there was a whole lot of spirit in her.

"Where are you from, ya hajjeh?"

"Bethlehem, but I moved here 45 years ago." After some quick calculations in my head, I realized that meant that she had seen the 1967 Israeli invasion, the first Intifada, the second Intifada and the 2002 invasion of Ramallah; and she looked old enough to having been a girl in Bethlehem during the ethnic cleansing of what is now Israel, that culminated in the 1948 war. I wanted to ask her about it, but she could hardly hear anything and I got self-conscious about my Arabic.

She looked at me, "Where are you from? She doesn't look Palestinian," she told Tarek.

"I'm from Sweden," I replied.

"What?"

"From Sweden, Sweden."

"From where?"

"Sweden, ya hajjeh."

"Sweden in Europe," Tarek clarified.

"Ah, Amreeka, yaani?"

"Yes, Amreeka." Close enough.

We drove. Up the hill, past the olive trees, rounded the gas station, passed the UN Women's Vocational College, the Scouts center, the Kol Shi Shahi delicatessen, the video rental store with bootleg DVDs.

When we got to Ramallah Tahta, we pulled over and said good bye to the little old lady.

Then, as she was hobbling away from the car, Tarek suddenly said, "I have to make sure she has money to see the doctor," and went after her. Three strides and he caught up with her.

I watched them through the rear window.

When Tarek came back he said that he had given her a 100 shekel. He had asked her if she had money, and she had replied,

"No, but God will look after me."

Then she had refused to take money from Tarek, but Tarek insisted and finally tucked the 100 shekel bill into her pocket.

She was right. God did see to it that she would be able to pay the doctor's bill.

Creative E-Mail Addresses

So. I work as a project manager at a local NGO in Ramallah, and we have several different development projects for youth in the West Bank with conflict resolution training, media internships, talk shows on TV... among other things.

Anyway, for reporting purposes, we have our participants sign attendance sheets at events and training sessions.

And you can never believe the e-mail addresses kids have these days (how old does that make me sound?).

Therefore, I will list a few:


soosa-BIGBOSS (my personal favorite)

love_snuger

red_flower

pearl_sea

hope-tear

dintistforever (somebody who likes the dentist?)

missy_romance

nedal_VIP

lovely_mays

when_Ineed_you

cute.larna

im4you4ever

badstory_soso


Haha. Very creative.

(I only listed the fun stuff that comes before the @ for privacy reasons. Plus, many of them had a series of numbers after their name, which I didn't include in the event that evil spammers monitor my blog).

The Fruit Seller and His Son

Once upon a time not very long ago, there lived a fruit seller in Cairo.

There lived many fruit seller in Cairo, of course, just like there still live many fruit sellers in this immensely large city; but only one who sold fruit on the street corner opposite my sister’s and my apartment.

Every day, he sat on the curb outside of the grocery store on Al-Hegaz Street, in his gray or light brown traditional galabeyya robe with baskets of fruit beside him.

His son sometimes took his place during the long days; and sometimes his brother. Somebody would always be there from early morning until after eleven or sometimes twelve at night.

His son was about twelve years old, perhaps a little tall for his age, thin, had beautiful brown skin. He also wore a galabeyya, and he was cross-eyed, shy and very sweet.

For only half a dollar per kilo, the fruit seller and his son sold huge, firm pomegranates that, when you cut them open, would drip with dark, dark crimson juice and stain your fingers and color your tongue red. They had pale green guavas that would make your whole apartment smell sweet; and large, aromatic navel oranges for less than half a dollar per kilo.

And they sold expensive golden apples from Syria; the most expensive fruit in Egypt that cost a whooping three dollars a kilo.

One day my sister and I stopped to buy oranges and pomegranates on our way home from Arabic school. The fruit seller was on a break, and his son was there instead, squatting on the sidewalk. When he saw us approaching, he immediately stood up, ready to weigh the fruit we wanted on his hand-held scales.

We knew the fruit names in Arabic, my sister and I, even if we didn’t speak the language very well yet. But the fruit seller’s son understood our broken sentences and picked out oranges for us, some guava, a few pomegranates.

Then, while I was trying to put together an acceptable sentence in my head to ask for some of his beautifully red strawberries, he must have been plucking up courage, too. For the moment I opened my mouth, and as he handed over the bags of fruit, he took a deep breath and started,

“Ana bahebi…” I love y…

“Momkin nos kilo farawla, low samaht?” I never meant to cut him short, but I had the strawberry sentence all ready on my tongue already and I couldn’t stop it.

The fruit seller and his son had no bananas, because bananas were sold off the cart by another galabeyya clad man, cut directly from the stem. Small, yellow bananas, sweet and soft.

The fruit seller and his son also had no lemons. Lemons – the local kind that are the size of a large strawberry, sweeter and more lemony than the “Italian” ones that you could sometimes find imported in some grocery stores – were also sold off the sidewalk, but because they fetched such a negligible price, it was a little bit below the rank of our apple-selling fruit seller.

He had started, maybe 15 years ago, with a small basket of lemons on the same street, saving as much as he could from the small profit he made, slowly working himself up to guavas, oranges, and now even apples. He was doing well now, and a woman a little bit further down the street had filled the lemon-selling void in our neighborhood. Lemon, fresh mint, parsley and spring onions.

If I return in ten years, I wonder if I will find her there still, selling oranges, maybe mangos and apples instead. Who will sell lemons then?