April 10, 2024

Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-04-09

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...

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The cashier at the café downstairs from work is in a bad mood. I walk up to the counter. She just glares at me.

I ask for a salmon sandwich, in Hebrew. She says, "What." It's a statement, not a question.

I know that I have the Hebrew right. I ask again, more slowly.

"To go or to eat here." She's speaking heavily accented English. I stick with Hebrew. "To go."

"What to drink." English, again, so flat that it's almost a grunt.

I stick with Hebrew. "Café Americano, cold, large, without milk."

"What else."

I pick up a prewrapped poppy seed pastry from the rack in front of the register. "Also this." I hand it towards her in case she needs to scan the code. She doesn't.

"What else."

That's all. She tells me the price. I wave my phone at the appropriate device.

She pulls a wrapped sandwich from the case and thrusts it at me, almost hitting me in the nose. I take it and go over to the coffee counter.

She talks with a man across from her in the seating area as she brews two shots of espresso. He is stuffing rolls into large bags for a woman sitting in the corner. I can't hear what they're saying. That's probably just as well.

She dumps the espresso into a large to-go cup of ice, then fills the remaining space with cold water. She brings it to me and continues her interrogation.

"No milk." Right, no milk. "You want sugar." No, no sugar.

She puts the container of sugar syrup down, slams a lid onto my cup and a straw into it, then goes back to talking to the other man.

I head out, juggling the cup and the sandwich. A maintenance person who attends the afternoon prayers holds the door back into the lobby open for me. We smile at each other and go in. After the deli tribunal, it's good to see a friendly face.

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The Internet Archive's blog has an interesting piece on their adding the library from the home of a rabbi who was a friend of the family back in New Jersey.¹

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Türkiye has announced that they won't be exporting several items to us anymore, including some building materials. So while it's been looking for a while, politically, like we've lost our marbles, now we've lost their marble, too.²

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McDonald's has announced that they're buying back all their franchises here.³ Apparently there was international uproar after they started supplying free meals to our soldiers.

Maybe we should focus on more regional cuisine. You deserve burekas today (if the Turks still let us have them).

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I stop at the usual café for supper. I don't know the cashier. He's pleasant, but speaks too softly for me to hear him well. Traffic is making a lot of noise as I stand outside and order.

I mishear several things that he says and answer questions in the wrong order. He asks what kind of bread I would like with my halloumi salad, but I think he's asking what type of dressing I'd like on it. I don't know what he's saying when he asks what kind of egg I'd like on the salad.

I know how to say what I need to say in Hebrew. When one of my answers doesn't make sense, he asks the question again in English, but switches back to Hebrew for the rest.

The seating area is relatively quiet. I like the music: something like trip-hop with klezmer clarinet on top, dropping down to an interlude on what sounds like a koto before building up again. My apps can't identify it.

I head home listening to a podcast on the world's funniest songs.⁴ One from the Goodies has me laughing out loud as I walk, and again as I write this.⁵ I'm pretty sure that I'll remember it, probably at the most inopportune times.

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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.