Women

There were about thirty guys at Hamooda's Nargila place tonight, all cheering for Turkey, which played beautifully against the invincibly determined Germans. In Palestinian-Israeli Jaffa it's typical to side with the team wearing red, be it Hapo'el Tel-Aviv, associated with left leaning (i.e. pro-Palestinian) Israel, or B'nei Sachnin, which is Palestinian-Israeli to begin with. Tonight too I felt that the support stemmed from a sense of cultural connection. The Arabs of Jaffa look more like the Turks then like the Germans, they share the Turks' cuisine and follow the same religion.

What most of them don't realize is that there's a deep gap in culture between them and the Turks, one that displayed itself strongly tonight. I've been to Nargila joints in turkey and they were full of women. There were religious girls wearing Hijabs exhaling white, apple scented smoke next to modern girls in jeans. In Hamooda's place girls are welcome. I've sat there with Efros, with Osnat, with downtown lover and with several feminine out-of-town guests, but I've never seen a woman there that I did not know and tonight there were indeed none.

There's no shortage of female football fans. The cameras in Basel showed bleachers full of ladies wearing both white and red, waving the German tricolor and the Turkish crescent. Angela Merkel jumped up in joy when Klose opened a 2:1 advantage on the 79th minute. At her parents home near Jerusalem, downtown lover was meanwhile biting her nails in hope for the Turks to get even. When the game ended at 3:2 for Germany, my only condolance was the notion that the biggest football fan I know, Anna Kemper, is rejoicing somewhere in Berlin.

So why was the Jaffa crowd so homogenous? Arab society in Israel and Palestine is just too patriarchal. Living so much within this society, this is one thing I find difficult to come to terms with. I remember being envious when seeing how sexually diverse Istanbul's cafes are. Though I'm sure things are far from perfect for Turkey's women, It turns out it's possible for a Middle Eastern, muslim nation to be more open towards the place of women in society. In Turkey this can't be blamed on occidental, colonialist influence. There's some form of homegrown acceptence of women being out and about there and too little of it at Hamooda's tonight. This may or may not change eventually. In the meantime it's Germany 3, Turkey 2, Jaffa 0.

O Let Us Live in Joy

In my previous post I wrote of people running away into nature and the feeling that I've been doing the same, allegorically, for too much of my life. Today I almost did it in practice. Stepping over the fence of downtown lover's parents' home, outside Jerusalem, and heading into the hills for a walk. It was past sunset when I left, so the only photo I took looks like this:

It was a delicious twilight, though, and the further night advanced over high Judea, the more serene I was feeling. Meanwhile, DL was indoors with her dad, watching Romania and Italy tie in Zurich. It was a fine moment in which each of us indulged in what we love best. Now her cheer rises from the basement, which means France scored against the Netherlands. I'm sitting here, writing, with a bottle of beer by my side. Minutes ago DL's mom showed me photos of China, where she often goes on business, and now my mind's eye is full of Beijing highrises and of moonlit Israeli forests. So this is another such fine moment, maybe even finer.

"O let us live in joy, in peace among those who quarrel, among people who quarell, let us live in peace." These words are attributed to the Buddha. I dedicate them to whoever was shooting a machine gun in the valley earlier this evening, and to whomever he was shooting.

Europa est Perdita

I desperately love Europe. It's where I came from, well, not really. I was born in Israel and both my parents were too, but our background is European and there's something in us that will always long there. We get out of a Metro station in Paris, look up at the Housmanian rooftops, breath in mist and big city smog and feel completely, passionately, disturbingly at home.

There's too much irony in this love-love relationship. As an outcome of WWII, Europe succesfully rid itself of Jews. Many of us came to live here, just one unbreachable step away from its outskirts, in a ghetto divised by our own dumb minds. We saw Germany and Austria, homes of Nazism, grow to become prosperous beyond belief, calm and relatively happy, while we're here suffering strife and inflicting it on others.

Our hunger for European aesthetics is unquenchable. Yesterday a bunch of friends and I all headed north for the day. We visited Nazareth, with its chapels of 19th century Catholic fluff,

and the remains of the old German templer coomunity at Alonei Aba, looking more like a quaint village in Dorset.

All the cirtue of such delights vanished as we entered the austere, grey boxy urbanscape around Rabin Square in Tel-Aviv, we love our city, granted, but it does not delight the eye in the way, say, Amsterdam does.

This week, however, there will be a lot of Europe on our table thanks to the Euro 2008 tournement. Unlike DL, who's a very serious fan, I know nearly nothing about football and tend to support teams based on countries I like. (Last night's Czech Republic's victory was a delight, but I wept for Turkey).

In the case of a Euro, I like almost every country and the championship turns into a chain of reminices. My beloved Sweden may be far from me, but all of its Euro 2008 history is still ahead of it. I'll cheer for you, Sweden, and dream of your deep forests and pretty towns and Pippi longstocking, and look for a bottle of Pripps Blå to drink with your goals, and complain about not being Swedish, and drink more Pripps Blå, and more, and not even care who wins in the end.