Joseph Zitt's [as if in dreams] 2024-04-12
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 line outside my usual café is unusually long. I'm there earlier on a Friday than in most weeks. I have errands to run after I eat.
Fortunately, most people are getting stuff to go, so there is plenty of eating space inside. Still, the staff is frazzled. After my name is called and I bring my tray to my table, I have to go back and get cutlery, which they forgot to give me. It happens.
I sit inside, by a glass wall. A couple sits down at the outside table that's closest to me. When their names are called, they get up to get their trays. They leave their phones lying on the table. No one steals the phones.
After I eat, I continue my quest for power adapters. First, I go to the address that the worker at the home goods store had suggested. There aren't any relevant stores there.
I do note some changes in shops, here on the snazzier end of the street. Next to a small pharmacy, a tiny supermarket that had opened a few months ago is gone. I'm not surprised. The neighborhood has an oversupply of grocery stores. This one was cramped and hard to shop in. Still, it disappeared more quickly than I would have expected.
Across the street, next to a larger pharmacy, a new shop has opened. I don't know what this store would be called in the States. It focuses on nuts, seeds, and other edible things that people bag from bins.
Another branch of the same chain is open across the street, at the corner. I used to get ground coffee there, but I have found that the prepackaged coffee in the supermarkets is just as good, cheaper and more convenient. I also get a favorite treat there: dates with walnut segments stuck inside, better than candy and healthier.
I don't go into the new branch. I'm surprised that it's there. They might be carrying different things in the two branches. Or maybe they're going to shut down the old one. If so, it might make sense to do so during Passover, when a lot of food shops and eateries shut down for the week and make changes.
I head down to the older part of the street. I remember some electrical shops there that might have the adapters.
I try two shops. In each, the worker is talking casually with a customer. There's actually a transaction taking place, but it happens slowly, amidst conversation and pleasantries. When I get the workers' attention, I ask about the adapters, showing them the photo on my phone. Neither has ever seen anything like it. They try to sell me other things. I decline.
The shop where I got the UPS in the first place is a reasonable walk from there. They don't show the adapters on their website. I decide to gamble on their having them anyway. I check their site on my phone. They're still open this late on a Friday. Good.
At the shop, I try to ask for what I need in Hebrew. The worker switches to English. OK. While I now know the word for "adapter," I realize that I don't know how to say "connector," "plug," or "outlet."
He looks it up on their system. They do carry them. His branch is out of them, but the store in the next town over has them in stock. It's a brief bus ride away.
I take the bus to the next town, but get off it too early. I'm on the right street, but it's longer than I had thought.
I walk past endless shops. Many are quite fancy. The coffeerati are out being seen at cafés and eateries with fancy dishes and drinks. I have to scoot around them to keep going on the too-narrow sidewalks.
I get to the address for the computer store. I see a reflection of a reflection of its logo in a window, but I don't see the shop itself. I mutter to myself as I wander back and forth past it.
A man coming out of another shop apparently hears me. "They're in the basement," he says in English. "I'll show you." We walk through the doorway of the building. Spiral staircases wind up and down from there, without signs as to what's where. He directs me to the down staircase. Once I reach the bottom, I see the shop.
I come in and take a number. When they call it, I ask about the adapters. They have two, one with four outlets and one with three. I get both. We're only supposed to plug one item into each outlet on the UPS. I hope the multi-outlets will be OK for my devices, which don't draw much power.
I hop a bus back to the Heart of the City to get groceries. The store is busy. I get what I need, including a cubic, one-kilogram box of matzos. That should last me through Passover. Last year, I got far too much, and ended up throwing out a couple of kilograms that still remained a week ago.
My landlord is in the backyard when I get home. He appears to be building a desk out of parts found on the trash heap. He waves me over to him. "Yesterday, when you were home, were you sick?" I was. "Did you have a fever?" No. "My wife was worried. She heard you downstairs on a work day and thought you were sick. You are well now?" I am.
He gestures at the bags that he had removed from the bomb shelter. "I took all this out. The government told us to. I know we have a crazy leader, but our Army is strong." It is. "OK, be well." You, too.
In the evening, Kiddush at the House of a Hundred Grandmothers is strong. I find myself standing between two wheelchairs. Before we start, the woman to my right is singing something softly. I can't tell what it is. Someone far behind me gets out of sync on the first song. After we're done, he starts to repeat the final verse.
Our usual server had been away during most of Ramadan. She's back. She moves quickly and remembers what each of us likes.
When I head home, the cats are in their usual places. A white one yowls at me from inside a large flowerpot on top of a wall. A black one looks up at me pleadingly from just outside the doors. He wants me to feed him. We've been warned not to.
The regular crowd is in front of the trash heap. The humans that they count on have already come by and graced them with mounds of kibble. I wish them a bon appétit, and head inside.
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.