The “Shouk” – Machane Yehuda Market – has a rhythm of its own. It stirs awake just as the first sleepy commuters stop for a coffee with a delicious croissant, filled with sweet cheese, chocolate, or halva. It pumps itself alive when the first vegetable merchants tip over the cardboard boxes they brought from the Israel’s fertile South, and the exotic fruit sellers arrive from the cooler North, and start arranging neat boxes of blueberries, raspberries, dragonfruit and starfruit in a way that makes older people remember their first Tetris.
It has a weekly rhythm, too. On Sunday, the meat and fish counters remain closed…the market slumbers. The quirky little bars open for just a few customers, and close early. Every Thursday, the Shouk starts buzzing almost at dawn, and finishes dancing long after midnight. The smell of sweet dough fills a customer’s nostrils and leads him, unwavering, to the bakeries, spilling over with sticky chocolate rogalach, cheese cakes of all kinds, savoury breads and everything in between, and any resistance is futile. The dry fruit and nut sellers chase after slim Japanese tourists with pieces of halva and bad English, after those point their sophisticated photography equipment at all the sweet and sticky wares. At least two shops grind coffee on the spot, and the customers are seduced into a semi-conscious shopping spree. Large groups of Americans stampede through the alleyways, spending an average Israeli salary on nothing much, and communicating so loudly that even the sellers, hoarse from yelling their prices, are amused. Older ladies come through the stalls staggering under the weight of their purchases; Ethiopian women with babies tied onto their backs add the weight of shopping bags onto the weight of the sling, as both seem to be cutting deep into their shoulders. Young Bedouins flirt with the customers, carry weights beyond human capability, and yell so loudly that no competitor could be heard – all at the same time. The smoked meat and salami stall attracts elderly Germans in shorts, brandishing professional cameras. Luckily, there is cold beer right next door. Tiny Philippine women push the frail nonagenarians in their wheelchairs, people whose names would once make the enemies of Israel shake in their boots, who now cannot recall them – just as the country can’t. The water used to rinse the fish as it is being cut up runs down the pavement, directly into the sewage system, stinking up everything in its way if the day is hot. Then, as the heat begins to recede, the tourists leave, and the customers from the nearby neighbourhoods start wandering in, pulling red and blue chequered trolley bags after them, just as the prices drop towards the closing time, and broken English evaporates from above the stalls.
On one such Thursday, two children were seen walking very determinedly towards the Shouk. The older girl, about eight years old, was pulling a younger brother after her with one hand, and a chequered trolley – with the other. Both were dressed in the regular manner of religious Jews, the boy had a large brown kippa on his head, and the girl wore a long-sleeved shirt and a long skirt. “But I don’t wanna go…” – his sobs were already quieting down, and he trudged along out of sheer habit. Once they got into the central alleyway, the girl expertly bypassed the beggar at the entrance (“The Rabbanut and the government are in it together! Together, I’m telling you!” – he was announcing to all and sundry. “We keep on electing them since the 80, but they are a regular cartel! A cartel, I am telling you!”) He shook the tin box full of coins in their direction, but soon was diverted by a group of tourists from the North. (“Haifa! You’re all stinking commies! The red Haifa!”) The tourists ignored him, but some reluctantly placed more coins in his box, just to keep him quiet. (“Hey! You are the wise men of Chelm! Elija the Prophet will pop you like a balloon! All the Leftist university self-haters!”) – he yelled after the educated-looking couple, who seemed a bit confused by the commotion and hurried away as fast as they could.
The girl kept on pulling both the boy and the trolley, and soon they passed the next seller (“Our prices are coming down-down-down- at you!) With every “down” his head bent lower towards his wares – bags of bread rolls and pita bread, chocolate and apple cakes, and plastic boxes filled with rogalach. Then he began his chant anew. Right by him there sat another beggar, a more sophisticated one. A withered crone dressed in a bridal headdress always sat there, collecting coins for young penniless brides. By her side, a tiny, but powerful speaker was blasting traditional Jewish wedding songs. On the other side, a vendor selling herring and pickled olives called over to the emaciated-looking porter, who was pushing a three-meter-long trolley full of compressed cardboard boxes. “Come on, I’m drowning over here! What’s wrong with you today? Out of strength, huh?”
The porter stopped and stared, then admitted reluctantly: “Yeah… I’m dieting.”
Two meters down, the next beggar heard him. A corpulent woman with three chins and diabetic sores on her bare feet, dressed in a dirty sweatshirt despite the sweltering heat, began laughing. It wasn’t just any laugh, though. It involved her whole body. Fist, her face and chin began shaking, then her shoulders, then her enormous belly shook in spasms of glorious pure laughter, the kind that cleanses the soul through the eyes. “He… is… dieting…” – she managed, then shook even more violently, nearly rolling backwards with her tiny chair. The herrings man shrugged, then tossed the cardboard boxes somewhere behind his back. “We don’t keep weaklings, Mahmoud.” The porter nodded solemnly, still staring at the laughing woman. “Fine.” – he picked up a roll from the man’s counter and just bit into it with what looked like all his thirty-two teeth at once.
Unnoticed by any of them, the girl and the boy ducked under an empty counter, onto which everyone else was tossing their refuse of the day – rotting apples, addled corn, blackened celery, bread rolls that had fallen on the floor. Now they were hidden from everyone, and could only see people’s legs and feet. Yet, as they were shocked to discover, they hadn’t been the only ones to think of it. There was another little boy already sitting there, and filling his trolley with bits and pieces. Right then he was busy trying to stuff in a whole cabbage, his long blond ‘peyos’ swinging right and left. His trolly wasn’t the same as theirs – it was an old baby carriage, with a large plastic box fitted in instead of the baby’s seat, and he was pushing the cabbage into the net underneath it. Quicky, before the boy was finished, the girl grabbed a few apples from the top and shoved them into her trolley. He turned around at the noise, and frowned. “I found this place first.” – he stated. “So?” – the girl replied. – “It’s a mitzva to share.” Something landed on top of them with a thud, and all three jumped up to see what it was. Four beetroots, one of them cracked in half. The girl grabbed them first, and quickly stowed them away in her trolley. Silence sat between them for a while. “I want a drink” – the little boy sighed, at last. “Go ask Dudu. You know he always has cups, and a tap.” Dudu was the fishmonger, but to get to him, the little boy would have to cross about ten meters of the crowd, and he was afraid of not finding his sister afterwards. “You go… Natasha, nu please…” – the last two words were said in Russian.
“Natasha? What kind of a name is that?” – the blonde boy wondered. “It means “abandoned” in Hebrew. You know, like your mother dumped you, and that’s why you’re now collecting rotten vegetables.”
“As if you’re not doing exactly the same” – Natasha snorted at him, then turned away angrily. “My name is Neta, actually. And this is David.” She pronounced it “Daveed”, the Russian way.
“So why did he call you Natasha?” – the boy wondered again. “I am Shraga, by the way. It means ‘flame’ in Aramaic, and it’s because my family had a fire from Chanuka candles right after I was born, so they saw it as a sign that I will learn Torah well.”
“Not every name is special like yours,” – Natasha, or Neta, argued, and Shraga had to agree. “Nobody abandoned us.”
“Me neither. It’s just that there are sixteen of us, and … nu, we need a lot of food. My sister is coming soon.”
David nagged her again for water, and she clambered out of their haven to go and ask Dudu the fishmonger for three cups, which she carried back very carefully, successfully manoeuvring between the shoppers, right until she let out a startled gasp. In front of her stood a tall woman with a black bag decorated with a hammer and a sickle, and the letters for “Moscow” in Russian. Her jet-black hair was cascading onto her shoulders and an unnaturally prominent chest, which drew in the looks of passers-by of box sexes. Pompous boots with high heels made her tower over most other shouk visitors. A similar-looking teenage daughter was leaning on her arm. “What is this urchin doing here?” – the woman thundered in Russian, just as Neta dropped all three cups at her feet, soaking both herself and the woman. “I thought you and your family were both happily gone to hell!” – her voice was so high-pitched and shrieking, that little David, still hiding under the counter, closed his ears with his palms. “No, we’ve gone home, Larisa Petrovna. But what you are doing here, I wonder. I thought you hated us all.” – Neta answered, bending down to pick up the cups, just as the woman delivered a precise kick on her knee, and Neta fell backwards, knocking her head on a front wheel of a bike, which a confused-looking black man with dreads was walking through the alleyway. “I live here, little urchin. And there is nothing you can do about it.” – she replied, lifting her head proudly. “You’ve got to know how to manage in this life…”
Her tirade was interrupted by screams. “Noooo!” “You don’t do that, no, you don’t!” “Don’t you touch the girl!” The whole Shouk was screaming. Shuki, the vendor who sold vegetables, and Nasser, who worked for the bakery, Mahmoud the porter, Tomer who sold pickles, and Avram who sold Judaica, all three beggars, and all the other vendors and visitors, were all yelling at the black-haired woman, who turned her back and fled, muttering something about “sneaky Jews” under her nose. The biker with dreads helped Neta get up, and the kind lady with a guide dog stood nearby until Dudu brought the kids three new cups of water. And then the river of the crowd resumed flowing, the porters carried on pushing the massive trolleys, the vendors began screaming again, as if no incident took place just seconds ago.
“Who was that?” – Shraga wondered. Neta was wiping her stinging tears with the back of her hand and couldn’t answer. So David did, instead. “She was our neighbour in Moscow. She absolutely hates Jews, I don’t know what she is doing here.” And he patted his sister awkwardly on the head. “She hated us especially, because we have a lot of kids. She used to call us ‘gypsies’ and …” – he stumbled, looking for a word in Hebrew.
“I understand.” –
Shraga nodded. “She is a regular shikse puritz.”
“A what?” – Neta asked.
“That’s in Yiddish. Means she is rich… and she’s not one of us.”
“Nope, she isn’t. She used to yell at us every time she saw anyone from our family, she called the police every time the baby cried…” – she squashed down another sob, and jumped up to catch some celery sticks that just landed on the empty counter above them. Then Shraga caught a peach, and David helped him pick up another one, which rolled away into the gutter.
“You’re a fool, David. You should’ve taken it,” – Neta said in Russian. – “Mama would’ve made a Charlotte cake for Shabbos.”
“You said yourself it was a mitzva to share.” – David protested, also in Russian. “You’ll see, we’ll get more peaches later.”
And that’s exactly how it was. Their trolley filled up as the afternoon wore on. Three avocados, five squashed peaches, ten pears, which the vendor simply put on the floor in front of them, and they shared it fairly with Shraga, and even a box of rogalach that spilled onto the floor. David grabbed one immediately, and was now nagging Neta for another cup of water. “I’ll go this time,” – Shraga offered. He managed to get back uneventfully, and then they all shared a piece of potato kugel, which the pickles vendor shoved at them under the counter.
The day was rolling towards sunset. The screaming vendors began losing their voices. The fish juices, rolling towards the gutter, began to give off an awful smell. It was almost closing time. Dudu bent down under the counter, and handed Neta a package with some frozen carp. Seeing Shraga, he felt bad, and went to bring another package. The old beggar removed her bridal crown and folded it away into her trolley. Now it was time for her to go shopping, as well. The first beggar had been quiet for a while, now he was having a chat with a younger man, who kept on wincing and clutching at his heart. On his right wrist there was one of those bracelets that inform the ambulance team of the patient’s condition in case of emergencies. “God hasn’t made a disease which a good shot of Arak cannot cure!” – he declared, pushing a plastic cup at the man. “Uncle Rahamim, I’m not allowed alcohol, I told you!” – the man protested. “Just take! It’s been blessed by the holy Abuchatzira family, I don’t remember exactly by whom. One of the grandchildren. It’ll cure you. You’ll see.” The man gave in and sipped the burning liquid cautiously, allowing a huge smile to spread on his face. “Oh, but this is good, uncle!” One of the vendors handed him a packet of sunflower seeds, saying “You should have a full recovery, Amos!” On the other side of the street, beyond the railway line, a big white van stopped in the area where no cars had been allowed for decades, and four Nah-nah dancers got out. They clambered on top the van and started dancing in coils of sweet marijuana smoke, their peot and tzitzit flying with every move. As always, they immediately attracted a crowd. Coins began falling into the large metal bucket they placed in front of the van. Almost at once, two policemen mounted on massive shaggy horses rode up, their faces almost level with the chassidim on top of the van. Asking them to move had no effect, and the policemen rode off in search of support.
Under the counter, Neta was stretching her aching legs. Really, it was long past the time when her mother was supposed to come and take them home. She hoped nothing had happened to her. David was whining again, this time saying that he needed the bathroom. Shraga took him through a crack in the wall to the neglected parking lot beyond, where the thick grass allowed the boys to relieve themselves unseen. Judging by the smell of the place, they were not the first ones to think of it. Just as they slipped quietly back under, the ground under them shook with a distant explosion, and they heard a deafening “boom.” The Shouk went absolutely silent, as if it was completely empty on a Saturday afternoon, and only the Nah-nah music continued playing for a few more seconds, like in a surreal nightmare. Then, the sirens came to life. Wailing came from all directions at once, speeding towards the place where innocent Jerusalemites were now writhing in puddles of their own blood, some of them taking their last breaths on this earth. “Where? Where?” – everyone demanded to know. “King George street!” – someone spat out. The shoppers ran towards the opposite exit of the market, the one opening up at Agrippas street. “May they all burn in hell, the seed of Amalek!” – the beggar at the entrance to the Shouk poured more arak for his nephew, who tipped it into his throat in one go. “Amen, uncle! May God make all the snakes disappear!” Then, he lowered himself carefully onto the bare ground, staring up at the pigeon-infested ceiling of the Shouk. For the first time in years, the fear of death let go of him, and he saw a beautiful turquoise angel floating in the air in front of him. He briefly wondered if it was a pigeon, then decided against it. It was so wonderful not to worry about anything at all. “Amos! Amos!” – his uncle was shaking him. The angel beckoned.
The three children sat under the counter, frozen in horror. All around them, the vendors were closing shop, pouring buckets of unsold produce on top of them, but now they did not care. The Shouk was emptying out, and two police cars stopped at the front and at the back each, letting people out, but not in. “How will our mothers find us?” – Shraga wondered. “I cannot carry all this alone!”
“We can’t, either. We live all the way in Ramot, you know. The buildings that look like beehives – there.” – David contributed. “It’s a long bus ride.”
At the opposite ends of the Shouk, two women were arguing with the police, both out of breath from running. Bayla’s small pill-shaped hat on top of her wig was sitting askance, she was wringing her eczema-blighted hands, crying to be allowed to look for her son, who was definitely inside. At last, the police woman relented and let her through, immediately stopping a dozen more citizens who wished to follow suit. The sun was setting, and a cool blast of wind carried in the sounds of the concert from the Sacher garden, the smell of a BBQ all the way from the Jerusalem Forest by Har Nof, and the emotional voice of the radio host, counting the dead and the wounded, from somewhere right on top of the Shouk. The last wailing ambulance sped away, carrying the wounded to hospitals, and all was quiet again, eery and sad silence settling over the city.
Elena was not as lucky as Bayla, and the police did not heed to her rumblings in a very poor Hebrew, so she had to get in from a less known entrance, bypass a dozen restaurants and pubs, and only then she managed to get to her children. The torn shoelace on her right sneaker untied again, and she was forced to stop for that, as well. Neta and David jumped on her, crying and overjoyed. “You’re alive, mama! And wait till you hear whom I saw today!”
“Not only I am alive, but we’ll have a Shabbos worthy of kings!” – and she began gathering up more vegetables from on top of the counter into the bags she brought. Just then, Bayla arrived to pick up Shraga, who jumped out towards her, blabbering in quick Yiddish about the events of the day. The two women measured each other head to toe in the now fully empty alleyway, immediately estimating the other’s religious affiliation, social status and more, in the way that only Jerusalem mothers can. Despite them both being devotedly religious, normally they wouldn’t have even two words to say to each other, but today the words came up without any effort. “Shabbat shalom,” – Elena wished. – “And to you all!” – Bayla responded. “I see you’re new here, if you need any information, you know… schools… shopping…” – she stumbled. Confused by the soft Yiddish accent and her own raging emotions, Elena nudged her daughter for translation. “Thank you, thank you,” – she managed then, and the two mothers turned in different directions at the exit from the Shouk. Shraga looked back and winked at Neta, just as dozens of policemen began a thorough search of the market.
“See you next week,” – he mouthed.
Neta nodded to show that she understood.
Every Thursday, the Shouk starts buzzing early…
