Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-16
Hi. I'm Joseph Zitt. I moved from the US to Israel in 2017. This is my newsletter about more-or-less daily life in my city in the shadow of war. You can select these links to subscribe or unsubscribe. There are more links at the bottom. You can also read this email online here. Here we go...
I see the laundry man standing outside his shop. I call out, "Hi!"
"Hi, Yosef!" We've only met twice, months ago, but we remember each other's voices, at least, since I call to confirm my laundry pickup every two weeks.
He turns to a woman sitting on the bench next to him. "This is Yosef."
She looks up. "Yosef Zitt?"
"Yes." This is the shopping district where everybody knows your name. Cheers.
I tell him that I'm having some trouble with stains on some of my shirts, including the one I'm wearing. He taps each faint stain with a finger. "Like this, this, and this?" Yes. "Those are oil. Normal cleaning won't get them out. But we can send them off to our dry cleaning department. If you want to take this one off, I can send it out now."
I laugh and decline. "OK," he said. "Bring them by tomorrow, and we'll send them out. It will cost extra, of course."
"Of course."
Passing the shop where I got the underwear yesterday, I see that it's actually two doors down from where I got the trousers. (And the underwear fits. Yay.)
The owner of the trouser shop sees me as I enter. He reaches behind the counter and pulls out a bag with my name on it. He apologizes for not having it ready yesterday. I tell him, "That's OK. That happens." We thank each other profusely.
Down at the City Square, it sounds like someone is playing a Judy Collins record, really loud. When I get there, I see that the sound is live. A busker with a guitar is singing local folk material in a clear soprano. She's good.
I bring the trousers home, then head out again. I intend to take a bus into the next city and get lunch there. As I pass the area with the small shops that I'd been in earlier, I realize that I'm already hungry.
I'm in the mood for a warm plate of hummus. I spot a hummus place that I hadn't tried before.
I go up to the counter to order. The man behind it asks if I'm eating there or getting something to go. I'm eating there. He waves toward an open table. "Then sit, sit. Order there. Pay when you're done." OK.
I get the simple hummus. It comes with a large bowl of various sliced vegetables. I haven't had enough vegetables in the past couple of days. I eat the whole thing. And the hummus is excellent.
I look at news and messages as I eat.
Thanks to all of you who commented and sent me messages after yesterday's post. A wider group of people than I had thought are reading and valuing what I write. That means a lot. And many of you told me to take care of myself and not to wear myself out with the writing. OK. Thanks.
The local news site tells me that the launch of our Metro system appears to have been pushed back to 2050.1 I look forward to riding it when I'm 92 years old. At least I'll have a senior citizen's discount.
The site also tells us that there won't be the usual big Purim parade next month.2 There will be smaller, more distributed events, but with security forces already stretched to the limit, he doesn't want the gathering of several thousand people to tempt attacks.
(Google Translate pulls a howler on this one. The Hebrew name of the parade is Adloyada. It gets translated in English to "Eid al-Adha," which is a completely unrelated Muslim festival. (And I'm impressed that my spell checker recognized that I'd typed "Eid al-Adha" wrong.))
When I get up to pay at the hummus joint, the man is behind the counter again. "Would you like any coffee or tea? No? OK, was the hummus good? Excellent. Please, come back. We're always here." I will.
Later, an alarm buzzer goes off as I enter the mall.
The guard puts out his hand to stop me. I've seen him before. I haven't seen the younger, much more military guard standing beside him. He always waves me through, sometimes asking "Any weapons?" Not this time.
"I'm sorry," he says, "but you have to take everything out of your pockets and place them here on the table."
I do. I pass through the gate again without setting it off.
I stand to the side and put my wallet, keys, phone, and everything else back into my pockets. I'm carrying too much around. It takes longer to stuff them in than it did to pull them out.
The next person is grumbling in what sounds like Arabic. He sets off the gate, too. The guard also stops him. "What?" the customer snaps.
"I'm sorry, but you have to take everything out of your pockets and place them here on the table."
"I've never had to do it before!"
"Yes, this has changed as of yesterday. Because of the situation."
"And I bet you only stop people who look like me."
The guard points at me. "Everyone has to stop. This gentleman had to, also." The customer looks at me. I nod at him. I guess I look like the stereotypical not-a-terrorist.
I don't find anything that I'm looking for at the mall. Both the housewares and clothing stores are out of stock on what I want. The workers seem affronted when customers ask for help. The heck with it. Tomorrow or the next day, I'll go back to our family friend's shop and ask for what I need there. He probably has it, buried in one of the nooks in his store.
I find myself thinking, as I did while sitting in the warmth of the hummus joint, that I have always wanted to retire to a small town, where the people in the shops would know me, with a good movie theater, right near a big city and the sea.
Now that I have found this district, a short walk from my apartment and the House of a Hundred Grandmothers, a bus ride away from the city and the sea, a train ride away from the capital, I see that, on my vacation, I have stumbled across that town.
I've been living there for years.
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Here’s an archive of past newsletters.
You can find me via email, Bluesky, Mastodon, Facebook, and, just out of inertia, X/Twitter. There's more about me and my books, music, and films at josephzitt.com.
The newsletter’s official mailing address is 304 S. Jones Blvd #3567, Las Vegas NV 89107. (I’m in Israel, but if physical mail comes to me at that Las Vegas address, it’ll get scanned and emailed. I don’t expect that to happen much. If you want to send me physical mail, ask me for a real address.)
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L'hitraot.