My mother often leaves things to the last minute
This often resulted in us staying in interesting places - a good example is the first time I went to Israel ever when I was but 9 years old. She hadn't told our cousins what time our flight would be arriving, and as it turned out, we arrived in the wee small hours of the night. The shuttle bus dropped us, the only passengers, off at the central bus station. It was the middle of the night. The entire place was closed, the streets were deserted and it is one of the shittiest places to be stuck in Tel Aviv. We spent the stultifyingly humid night on the street on top of our cases while giant flying cockroaches and mangy feral cats jumped around us...

Now that I am older, this leaving things to the last minute has evolved into a 'please please sort out everything for me while I wait here guilt enducingly and pathetically to do so' arrangement, which usually leaves me stressed as hell because no one can put her up, all the hotels are too expensive, etc etc.


When I was studying abroad back in Old Jerusalem, she decided to visit me. She had a place on a TWO week conference which was how she would be able to stay out for THREE weeks, and it was nice because they provided a hotel. Three weeks. The first week was unprovided for as the conference wouldn't have started, and so I spent a great deal of time panicking because I hadn't been able to find anywhere that wasn't extortionate to put my mother up (bearing in mind that my day of timetabled study went from 8:30 am to 10pm). It got to the point where it was two days before she was due to come and I still had no place for her. I was stressed and aggravated, and several of the staff were helping me out and happened to mention to another teacher what was going on. She immediately offered her apartment. Brilliant! Not only that, but beside speaking Hebrew, she was also originally French, so both my mother and I would be happy chatting to her in both*. One small detail - this teacher lives in Ir David, an exclusively Arab part of Jerusalem where we weren't allowed to go because it was so dangerous. Totally Arab except that is, for this one tiny apartment block in which some Jewish families live. It was set up by radical settlers who are determined to have Jews living in Arab areas too. The spirit of contrariness it takes to deliberately live in a place when you actually can't normally leave your house is beyond me. They can only go in and out of their apartment block with an armed guard in a jeep which you call for before, and they take you straight from the door until you're out of Ir David. Well, my mum was just going to have a more interesting stay than usual...

I accompanied her the first time we went so that I could help her unpack and get her stuff sorted. We rang for the armed guard and they decided to rendezvous at the Western Wall. They picked us up, and we set off down the road towards East Jerusalem. Suddenly, the jeep made a sharp turn off the road to the right, and we were driving at 50mph down an unsurfaced road deep, deep down into the heart of the valley. As we jolted along, the sides of the valley rose around us, the green lights of the mosques glowing like beacons. I just sat there thinking "Shit! This is so hardcore....whoah...." while my mum sat smiling rather blithely not having much idea where we actually were. Soon, we got to the bottom of the valley, then did 50 round a hairpin bend and were jolting rapidly forwards rising up the side of the valley until we stopped outside a tall narrow apartment block. There was a reinforced steel front door.

My mum steps out and starts to wander off

"So darling, how do we know which house is theirs?"

"It's the one right ahead where the armed guards are standing, just go straight there it's the only Jewish house here at all, just don't go for a walk, ok?"

The Jeep took me back to the old city and I finally caught up on some of the sleep I'd been missing after trying to sort out the whole visit.





*I always mix up my French and Hebrew, which was not helped by the fact that my (utterly utterly brilliant and legendary) French teacher was Tunisian Arab. I therefore speak French with and Israeli-Arab accent, and speak Hebrew with a slight French accent!
( Hampster Squared has stuff at www.tilla.co.uk, Thu 17 Jan 2008, 23:33, Reply)