Back in the Shuk like coronavirus never even happened

I’ll be back soon, though.

By DANYA KAUFMANN

JULY 8, 2020 21:48

SOME Shuk stores did not survive the lockdown period. (photo credit: BARRY DAVIS) — SOME Shuk stores did not survive the lockdown period.

(photo credit: BARRY DAVIS)

As the quarantine wore on and my coffee supply dwindled, it dawned on me that I might never get a refill; I might never be back in the shuk. How could I go back to eating dates handed to me by dirty fingers – fingers that had just handled my money and swatted away flies? How could I go back to brushing against bodies on my way to buy challah? After Corona, who would ever want to go back to the shuk?

Machane Yehuda Market, Jerusalem; Before Corona

I wheel my old-lady plaid trolley cart to the twin herb stands on the corner. Long green onions and bunches of parsley, cilantro, basil and mint spill from the shelves, lush and moist like little rainforests in the shuk. The vendors’ merchandise is identical, so they fight for customers with charm. I choose the one who doesn’t call me motek, sweetie.

I’ve bought almost all my vegetables already, except carrots. Carrots I buy from the Carrot Man. He wears a kippa on his balding head and can hardly hear. He told me once, softly and proudly, about his son in the army. I leaned forward over the carrots to hear.

On my way out of the “Iraqi shuk,” which we locals tell ourselves is cheaper than the rest of the shuk, I stop to buy the same wrinkled Moroccan olives I do every time. Then I ask for "a chunk of feta for 15,” so the guy won’t “accidentally” give me the more expensive kind.

It must have been an hour already; I should go home. But instead I do the unthinkable and drag my bulging trolley into the covered part of the shuk, now crowded with the usual pre-Shabbat rush.

I’ll just buy a challah and leave.

I wedge myself between the shoppers and quickly become part of the mob. Heads with kippot and with printed scarves wrapped like turbans; heads with cowboy hats and with blue hair, with little hair, no hair and wigs. Heads and bodies, inching along like lava to the steady beat of “Two for ten,” and “Rak Hayom! Only today!”

On my left is the Casino de Paris, where Yoav and I went on our notorious second date. I scrutinized his freckles, irritated by his invasive questions. What was my ugliest, darkest personality trait, he asked? I laughed – what else could I do? Had he never learned that most fundamental rule of dating, keep it light? I looked around at the hipster students with their torn jeans and canvas bags, and waited for our date to end.

I buy my challah at Teller Bakery and slip back into the slowly moving mass. We pass the “Halva Kingdom” and the boy holding a plate of samples. Always a boy, always coffee-flavored halva - and always, I taste. I let the rich, crumbling sweetness fill my mouth, and for a moment forget how claustrophobic I feel.

Someone pushes me from behind and I turn to glare. The shuk was designed with Israelis in mind; the only way out is to push.

One night, when Liron and I were students, we heard the Hebrew reggaeton song “Ba La Lirkod,” and started dancing, right here under the warm, bright lights of the Halva Kingdom. A few guys watched us and smiled and we swayed, watching them watch.

Liron worked in the kitchen in one of the bars in the shuk, and I visited her often. The kitchen was just a counter, sink and small oven at the back of the dark bar, near the tiny bathroom. She had a cloth tied on her head like the woman in the “We Can Do It” sign - and we felt, more than ever, like we could.

We whispered about guys while she finished pouring maple cake batter into the pan, and then, if she could take a break, sat outside on the rickety chairs. Wine and beer in hand, we kept whispering: Should she go out with Aviv? Even after that night with Omer? Aviv was Omer’s boss. And hers, too.

A man wheeling crates of avocados yells “Excuse me!” as he plows through. We scramble to the sides so he won’t run over our toes.

Roasters on my right. Adi and Daniella and I sat here in sundresses on Friday afternoons, waving to friends passing by. Adi insisted they had the best coffee in town, but we all knew why we were there. Adi ordered for the three of us from the cute guy at the counter, as Daniella and I stifled laughs and avoided eye contact. We must have done a good job, because Adi eventually started dating the Coffee Man. Then she moved to Tel Aviv like everyone else, sans Coffee Man.

The smell of freshly ground coffee fuses with the smell of fish, sweat and feet: feet in leather sandals, feet in silver sneakers, feet in black Skechers to complete an all-black haredi look. I have to get out.

Ahead, I can see the shining asphalt of Agrippas Street and just before it Tzidkiyahu Salads, with its oily eggplants and matbucha and hummus and spicy carrot salad. We are bumping into each other stupidly now, like ants, listening to tour guides, buying, selling, drinking, eating, coming in, going out.

And, finally, air. The polluted air of buses crawling along Aprippas, but air. I pause, shake out my arm and take the cart with my other hand. I am out.

I’ll be back soon, though. I’ll think of an excuse.

Machane Yehuda Market, May 2020

It wasn’t soon. After three months of quarantine and online shopping, I walk toward the shuk, hoping it won’t be too crowded. Masked, I scan the scene and look for Corona. I don’t see any. Two girls in orange vests are sitting at the entrance taking people’s temperature dispassionately. As I take my first cautious steps into the shuk, a man in a golf-cart-type vehicle with two dogs sitting beside him drives straight towards me, fast.

Back in business.

The shuk is bustling. I had been eulogizing it already, certain that Corona would either kill it or change it beyond recognition. But the shuk seems… unscathed. It’s less crowded, for sure. And many people are wearing masks (not all, of course – even though it’s the law). But on a closer look I notice how many of them have slid the mask down to their chins, like blue beards.

I see a blue-chinned couple eating ice cream. Boys slurping purple-blue slush from rainbow-colored straws. I pass the Halva boy, but this time I don’t taste.

“Sweet but Psycho” is blasting from the speakers at Roasters. There’s a plastic barrier on the counter, with a slit at the bottom for passing money. But I order my iced coffee the way everyone else does: I poke my head around the plastic sheet, and the woman at the counter pokes her head around to meet mine. We are following the rules – Middle Eastern style.

A man and bleach-blonde woman walk pass the knafe stand hand in hand. Behind trays of sweet goat cheese with strands of kadaif on top, the vendor yells, “Not gonna buy a knafe for your girl?” They turn and laugh.

I was wrong. Splendidly wrong – the shuk is pretty much the same as always. Within a few weeks, it seems, we’ll forget Corona ever happened.

Is it because a shuk that’s survived years of bombings, stabbings and terror isn’t fazed by a measly global pandemic? Or is it because in an age of social distancing and isolation, we secretly want to be on top of each other, in a crowd, eating food handed to us by human fingers?

Or is it because after we’ve [finally] discovered online shopping and getting what we want quickly and cheaply – what we really want is this claustrophobic cacophony, this balagan, this absolute mess? In an era of efficiency and productivity, are we just looking for a way to waste all that time we saved – tasting every kind of olive only so we can buy the ones we always buy? Being courted to buy parsley and talking to the man who sells our carrots? Getting lost in a sea of strangers, feeling a part of something, and buying our food in the most roundabout and inefficient way there is?

On my way out, I pass the girls in the orange vests taking everyone’s temperature.

They’re sitting by the Belgian waffle place where my friends and I once stuffed white-chocolate-berry-hazelnut waffles into our mouths. Where I went on a date with Shai and thought I loved him, and where I went on another date with Yoav and really did. Yoav of the notorious second date – and of the last three and a half years. He let me get away with not answering his question; I let him get away with asking.

Those girls in the orange vests. Neither one, I realize now, is wearing a mask.

But maybe that’s why I keep coming back. I don’t want sterile. I want the mess.