Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-01-26
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 rain on the roof of the café is deafening. We can't hear the overhead music or the announcements. The staff has opened the interior window between the kitchen and where we sit. They shout our names when orders are ready and hand them through so we don't have to go outside.
It's 2 PM. The International Court of Justice is supposed to announce its provisional decision in the case of the supposed genocide. I'm trying to listen on my phone. I can't. The rain even drowns out the sound coming directly from my Bluetooth headphones.
I look outside after a few minutes and wonder if I should just walk home. The rain has let up a bit. We can hear the overhead music. The road outside remains flooded. Even slow-moving cars brush tides onto the sidewalk.
I decide to go for it. I zip up my raincoat and head out.
I don't know if it's due to problems with my headphones or my phone, but they don't communicate when the phone is in my pocket. I have to hold it in my hand. That's OK, until it starts raining harder. The phone can't tell the difference between raindrops and fingers. Random apps start running and doing things, as if a hundred tiny humans per second are giving it commands.
I have to shut the phone down before, left to the device's own devices, it does something I'll regret, like paying to deliver 16,384 stuffed-crust pizzas to Lesotho.
I take some detours on the way home. An adobe-red slurry flows down the street, too deep at its center to cross. Walking upstream, I see that the color doesn't come from any one source. It starts clear, but grows more intense as it picks up more dust from the ground. I wonder if this is how Pharaoh's rivers seemed to turn to blood.
Fortunately, some of the streets have raised speed bumps to slow traffic. Walking across those helps.
Still, before I get time that I get home, I am thoroughly drenched. I silently repeat the Texas Blue Norther mantra: Once you're soaked, you can't get any wetter.
As soon as I get into my apartment, I rip off the outer layer and put on my pajamas, at least until I have to dress again to meet my family for Shabbat supper.
I listen to the court's statement online and thumb through it as soon as it's posted.1 The measures are pretty weak. They tell us to be careful about issues that we claim to be careful of already.
One statement from near the end stands out to me, though I don't see it mentioned much in the early reporting I see:
"85. The Court deems it necessary to emphasize that all parties to the conflict in the Gaza Strip are bound by international humanitarian law. It is gravely concerned about the fate of the hostages abducted during the attack in Israel on 7 October 2023 and held since then by Hamas and other armed groups, and calls for their immediate and unconditional release."
So it's "put up or shut up" time for the terrorists. Either they free all the hostages now, or they can't demand that anyone else follow what the court wants to order.
Not, of course, that the court has any way (at least as far as I know) of enforcing any of this. It's just more talk for the sides to shout about at each other, to try to rile up the politically trendy.
I change into dry clothes to head out to the House of a Hundred Grandmothers. My new jeans are from a different brand than the others that I just bought. Now that they've been altered, they don't fit as well.
The rain holds off while I'm on route. I step carefully around the branches that have fallen on the stairs inside the park. I kick the larger ones out of the way.
Kiddush is relatively quiet. I don't see several of the regulars. Two that I miss are actually there: The man who wears a suit jacket is wearing a warmer sweater. The man who I usually see reading a newspaper at the table nearest the center is now at the table where the woman who passed away a few days ago had sat. We think they're going to reserve what had been his table for guests.
The rain pauses again for me to head home. As I pass my landlords' porch, I see that the cats have ventured away from their hotel. Room service has been there. The landlords have placed neat mounds of dry cat food outside each cardboard box.
I look for fallen grapefruit. None have dropped from their tree. Inedible bitter oranges now litter the path. I kick them to the edges. I've been impressed by how efficiently they mold and rot back into nature when left on the ground.
It takes me a moment to find my house keys. They're in the usual pocket, but they feel different in these new jeans.
The moment I get inside, the rain begins again.
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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.
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L'hitraot.