May 2009
8 posts
The Last Week
It’s a small world
I was reading Nell’s post on her first twelve hours in Afghanistan and I was amused by a particular observation she made:
“There is another party behind layers of security guards – in ritzy restaurants, basement bars, air-conditioned offices, Western-style supermarkets, and armored cars – to which flock the strangest mix of foreigners. There are adventurers,...
Context, as they say, is everything.
theunscientificmethod:
I’ve been thinking a lot about contextuality, with regards to life. Events that are so insignificant in their motion-by-motion breakdown become so strangely relevant when read together with last week, with the thoughts behind your blurry eyes, that other person who is sitting so close but for the intrusion of a wall and a door. Sometimes I find myself craving the purity of...
Klickhere →
Ari’s recap of his day visiting me and friends in Haifa. In case you’re wondering about manaeesh, the Carmelit, and the peculiar but rare Jewish-Arab family.
Currently
listening to the call to prayer from the fourth floor of Mayroon and Maysoon’s family home. The sky is a dusty pink, and the neighborhood reminds me of the colonies of flat-roofed houses in India.
Belated, but
Today, I penned the last of many e-mail responses to the question “what are you doing in Israel?” Though I have the uninformative sidebar to the right and though I’m actually in my last month here — not my first, or even second — I think it’s time to belatedly explain my story.
When I first decided to take the spring semester off, I thought I’d work on a...
The West Bank archipelago →
Fanciful map and blog post by the indefatigable Lede Blog
April 2009
6 posts
Lately
I hitchhiked twice this weekend: first, less securely in the West Bank when no taxis would rescue Saadet and me from the Mount of Temptation. A day later, en route to meet Merav from Harvard at Doctor Shakshuka. Neither experience resulted in rape, scam or murder, thankfully. When I first arrived in Israel, I hadn’t realized that I’d be living with a family of Arab university and high...
Single, feminine, first declension
In the three years I’ve had facebook, never once did I set my status as “single.” Call me obsessive, but I used to read very deeply into the language and anthropology of facebook: if you don’t list whether you’re “interested in men” or “women,” it either means you’re gay or creative. If you list you’re “married,”...
In honor of Arabic literature, I give you
The extraordinary Khalil Gibran (“Haa-leel Jee-brahn”):
But if in your fear you would seek only love’s peace and love’s pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love’s threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but...
“It’s funny — I’m thinking about the connections I’m...”
– From my private journal
“In poems the deepest thoughts are often the most painful thoughts, and they come...”
– Robert Bly
March 2009
10 posts
Harvard-area events
Am I making you lust for Israel? Lust no further, Harvard friends. Here are two events to get your kippa on:
HUDS, the Food Literacy Project, Hillel and the Harvard Bookstore present History, Traditions, Flavors: The Foods of Israeli and American Passover Celebrations. It’ll take place this Thursday, April 2 at 7:00 PM at Harvard Bookstore. Come listen to the award-winning food writer James...
Goodies
The New York Times and International Herald Tribune (bought and swallowed by the Times) announces its new global edition. Friends, who’ve set the Times as their home page, change it here.
If you’re wondering about innovative strategies for Arab and Jewish coexistence, check out Hand in Hand. It’s an NGO started in 1997 that has successfully launched mixed K-12 schools in...
NY Times: Riots and tear gas in Umm al Fahm →
Before this becomes too much of a “I was there, see me waving” blog, I wanted to post this article because I — literally — was in Umm al Fahm yesterday to document this confrontation. I’m not waving.
Luckily my boss Jafar, co-worker Adam and I left before they unleashed the tear gas. Even though we’d come in the morning, when protestors and the right-wing...
BBC: Failed Israel bomb attack 'huge' →
I was at this mall last night, just twenty-four hours after the roads were blocked to contain the bomb. There hasn’t been a large-scale attack in Haifa in eight years.
Question: what does it mean to buy a one-way...
Answer: It means hauling five tons of potatoes, eggplant, onion, garlic, cucumber, bread, pasta, couscous, almonds, assorted spices, cold cuts and cheese back to my apartment.
I remember telling friends right before I left how excited I was about cooking in Israel — one of the highlights of living in the student village at Hebrew University last summer. We had a gorgeously unfurnished...