Tel Aviv Diary - January 28-February 1, 2013 - Karen Alkalay-Gut
January 28, 2013 Here's a poem called the Market I read in Machane Yehuda Market 2 years ago and here it is in English
January 29, 2013 As we were driving this morning to Ichilov for Ezi's bimonthly treatment, the radio was blasting warnings to stay away from hospitals, that they are overrun with flu victims. We had no choice so took a circular route in the hospital to the cancer ward that avoiding the emergency and internal medicine wards. That was crowded as well, the two nurses caring carefully for almost 20 people all at once,short-tempered that one of the nurses was out with the flu but as careful as ever to make sure that the patients had their exact and proper treatment. They skipped a few steps but knew exactly what steps could be skipped and what couldn't. What was missing was what is often missing here - a guide. A new patient walks into the room with his wife, stands at the door, without knowing what to do. No one pays attention to him in his pain, busy with the self, the individual pain and caregiving. I am sitting to far away from the door, and any way what do I know. After she has finishing sticking a needle of mabthera into a bag of saline solution, the nurse turns to them and points them to a single treatment chair I hadn't even noticed was there. It turns out the nurses know exactly who will show up at the door and what their treatment is and they keep certain people away from others - depending on what they need, but it looked like total chaos. Apropos chemistry and chaos, there seems to be something going on here behind the scenes in response to the possibility of chemical warfare against this country. I can't say exactly, but the air around here feels like the nurses in the lymphoma ward. January 30, 2013 So maybe we bombed some chemical weapons on their way to Hizballah in Lebanon. I don't know. Maybe somebody else bombed something else. But sometimes when it looks like no one is aware or in control, somebody is. On a different subject, most of my friends who are grandmothers have been enlisted in some way to lighten the ever-increasing load upon mothers in our society. When I was a mother of young children here, we had helpful neighbors, children went outside to play and walked to school on their own. Nannies and babysitters were plentiful and cheap, and a career was not hard to maintain by both parents. Working hours were reasonable, at least bearable. It is not true today. January 31, 2013 Ever try to do housework when there are war planes flying above? i certainly can't. I know where they are going and what they have to do and I sadly have to bless them on their way. February 1, 2013 Because it is a bit of a stormy day, we thought there would be fewer people at the market at the port (which many people call the "yuppie market" because of its uptown prices, but has some pretensions to quaintness), so we put on our FWG (foul weather gear) and drove over. I must not be a proper yuppy because from the moment we parked (20 shekel) to the moment we raced back to the car, the wind blowing us back, our heavy packages distorting our body, I was not feeling quaint. Oh yes the cheeses are nice and the vegetables are pretty (and fresh) but the crowding, the expense, the cold and apparently, my preference for the dirty chaotic carmel market, made this less than a perfect morning out. I will try it again early on a sunny Friday morning, hopefully before the other yuppies awaken.