The Shuk

This morning I awoke early, my head totally stuffed up with a late-summer cold yet my spirit still determined to have an adventure. Last night I asked Eyal, one of the two Jerusalemites (a new word I just made up) I know, to come with me to the shuk--the open-air market near the city center--today for a little pre-Shabbat grocery shopping. I was envisioning a flowy skirt-over-pants Israeli style outfit, a is-she-religious-or-just-stylish? headscarf, a strong espresso and a trip downtown on the back of his motorbike to start my day but disappointingly, he called shortly after I got out of bed to tell me he was not coming with me after all.

Determined to escape our far-flung French Hill neighborhood and undaunted by the fact that as he always claims but never seems to do, Eyal is supposedly working on his graduate-school research, I put on a more sensible outfit and went outside to wait for the bus. Half an hour later I found myself on the midrehov, the main pedestrian mall downtown, walking through the Friday morning throngs on their way as I was to buy provisions for Shabbat.

I had forgotten that no matter what the weather is in the rest of the world, it is always 120 degrees inside the shuk and was quickly reminded as sweat began to roll down my back. Fully, shamefully aware that the vocabulary of Hebrew numbers and counting still eludes me, I shoved aside my derogatory self-perception as a Stupid American and took advantage of what I've always been quite surprised to be the honesty of the vendors when it comes to payment. At each stall I selected my vegetables and held them out to be weighed along with a palmful of coins from which the sellers one by one chose the correct amount, leaving me with lots of change and a renewed sense of faith in humanity since they could easily have taken advantage of the fact that I don't know the difference between hameshisrei and hameshim.

Half an hour and more than a kilo of pastries for Marzipan--among many other, healthier things--later I made a quick stop at Gazith to see if there were any cute Israeli shoes I couldn't live without before boarding the bus back to HaGiva Tsarfatit, French Hill. A quick run across the street to Mister Cheap, the supermarket, rounded out our supplies for the next few days and now I am ready to take a midday rest in preparation for Shabbat.