Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-17
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...
The new National Library is on a beautiful campus, right near our parliament building.
Or so I'm told. After a couple of hours of stumbling along poorly labeled streets in our capital and waiting for ghost buses at stops whose signs didn't correspond to the lines that actually do stop at them, I give up on finding it.
At the moment of surrender, I see that I'm near a station of the light rail. At least I know that that can get me back to the train station.
I hop on the next one that arrives. Along the way, we stop at the station for the big Shuk, a massive market of small stalls, shops, and restaurants, ranging from shabby to fancy. I've been there before. I hop off again.
A sign near me says that the Shuk is about a block away to the east, across a small street. I stand there and stare at my surroundings. If I could tell which way is east, or if there were street signs, the map would be more useful.
I wander in the direction in which I happen to be facing. Fortunately, that's right.
I want to get lunch. I'm not sure what I want to eat, or where I might find it. After some arbitrary turns, I see a sign that says "Shakshuka." It is indeed a small eatery, simply named "Shakshuka." They only serve shakshuka. I like shakshuka.
As I approach, the worker welcomes me in English. She also has a North American accent of some sort. Their shakshuka comes with a bewildering array of options, including eggplant, mushrooms, a variety of tomato sauces, different types of cheese, and cilantro. She must see me overloading as she rattles through them. She stops abruptly and says, "Or we can just go for the classic." I go for the classic.
She does ask about a couple of options again, one at a time. I get it with the not-too-spicy sauce and mozzarella on top. It's so hot when she serves it that the freshly shaved cheese melts as I watch.
It's quite good, and reasonably priced.
Afterward, I stop at another stall for coffee. I order a double espresso. I'm taken aback when the worker says, "Double espresso, Yosef." There's no possible way that this guy, in a city an hour away from mine, knows me, too. I'm relieved to figure out, after some eavesdropping, that the guy making the espresso is also named Yosef.
Further down, I pass a sort of ice cream joint, featuring a sort of apotheosis of the ice cream cone. It's everything my dietitian tells me to avoid. I can't resist.
Unfortunately, as I write this, I can't recall what it's called. The name is somewhere between "Kravitz" and "cartouche." Hopefully one of you will know it.
It starts by winding a strip of dough into a cone shape. They then fry it for about two minutes, in a vat that they also use to make churros. They take it out and roll it in any one of several coatings. I get the cinnamon.
You can then get up to four fillings or sauces. I get pecans, a sort of dough tubes that I think are also cinnamon but turn out not to be, and the white chocolate sauce. Then they put a scoop of ice cream on top. I get the French vanilla.
It's quite good, though not quite as amazing as I had hoped. But it gives me a new appreciation for the art of the cone.
The train station is just two stops further down on the light rail. Rather than deal with rush hour crowding, I walk along the tracks to the station.
The direct trains back to my city run about every half an hour. One pulls out just as I get down to it, but another is already waiting. I get on board. Even though I'm sitting there for a long time, its seats are more comfortable than the benches on the station platform.
I start to look at news and messages, but I doze off. The walking and eating have made me tired. I wake up when needed, enough to get home, but looking at what's happening in the outside world will have to wait for tomorrow.
Feel free to forward the newsletter to other people who might be interested.
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.)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
L'hitraot.