Living in New York City means dating everyone you know. If you deign to monopolize another individual’s time in the midst of the city’s boundless stimulus and allure, you had better have an ostensible event around which to program your socializing -- a show, a new restaurant, an art opening, a party. Without such a pretext, you might meet someone for a “coffee” before 5pm, or a “drink” (for pre-approved companions, maybe even “drinks”) after, but don’t count on more than an hour of their time; if they signed up for a “coffee” with you, they likely have a “drink” scheduled after that, if a “drink” then likely a separate dinner. The unspoken hour rule applies to new friends as well as lovers. Which is fine. It can be nerve-wracking; you have a short time to convince your interlocutor that you merit a repeat performance. On the other hand, you experience people’s best attempts to entertain you, and if the conversation doesn’t take off, you only have to suffer through a short stint of boredom.
Even my close friends I hesitate to invite to my home with no entertainment agenda, or at least the promise of an elaborate, home-cooked meal. Who actually likes me enough to schlep all the way out to Bed-Stuy just to sit on my couch? I’d rather not find out.
Those of you who have lived in the Middle East may see where I’m going with this. The Arab World is in some ways New York City’s social opposite. “Just sitting on couches” is what it’s all about. A grand generalization indeed, but the following account of a day in Jericho does exemplify many, many others.
I procrastinate for days before calling up a Palestinian teacher I met in Jericho last March. We spoke only briefly then, during my teacher group’s hour-long visit to the school where he teaches mathematics. Still, we exchanged emails, and he knew I was in Palestine, so it would be rude not to call. I wait until my final afternoon in the West Bank. Why? Maybe because even knowing that this person does not expect to be invited to an indie rock show or a drink at a hip bar, I feel shy calling someone I barely know and suggesting that we just “hang out”. If I’m honest with myself though, my anxiety stems more from the knowledge that there is no guarantee that this agenda-less meeting will last only an hour, and dread the social internment of uncertain duration which I am about to endure with this stranger. But I call, am invited over immediately, and catch the next ser-vees to Jericho. The get-together has already begun: my companion-to-be calls three times during the 50-minute journey east from Ramallah. Yes, I am still on the ser-vees, I assure him, as we hurtle past the barbed-wire-encircled Israeli settlements through the increasingly desertified hills down to the lowest point on Earth.
Unlike sloping Ramallah, Jericho is flat, the sandy streets lined with palm trees and kitschy souvenir shops. It feels like a depressed, off-season beach town rather than the world’s oldest city. My host is waiting for me in his car where I get off the ser-vees. His name is Luai.
“You have been to Jericho? No? I will show you. But first you must come to our home. ” Was he from Jericho originally? No, from Jerusalem, but his father had come here in 1967. “Even after that, I used to go to Jerusalem, to buy clothing, special foods, to go to the doctor. Then after the Intifada all that changed. I can’t go back unless I have a permit, and they don’t give shopping permits, ha ha. This is my family’s street now. This is my brother’s house, he is a director at Arab Bank . . . and this is my sister’s, she is a school administrator . . . and my other sister, there on the second floor . . . and below hers is our house!” This row of connected but good-sized stone houses with small gardens suggests that Luai’s family is well-to-do by Palestinian standards. We pull into his driveway and he ushers me through the door.
The customary square of stiff, gilded furniture awaits us, but the mood in this traditional Arab living room feels less staid than usual. The obligatory polyester curtains are drawn, but allow in a bit of afternoon sun, which warms the obligatory fluorescents. This unexpected presence of natural light indoors (usually a no-no in traditional Arab homes) combines with the brisk circulation of air under a strong ceiling fan to create a beachy atmosphere. That, and the children’s toys strewn here and there. One by one, Luai’s five offspring (ages nine months through nine years) are presented to me, each shyer than the next. His wife, a black-haired woman with tough golden skin and sparkling, heavily made-up eyes bustles out, kisses my cheeks and insists on my moving to the most advantageous location under the fan. “Are you hungry?” I wasn’t. I had thought that arriving at 3pm would be late enough that I wouldn’t need to worry about fending off lunch. “Of course, we waited for you to eat!” Leena (her name) exclaimed. “Now sit here, it’s cooler. The food will be ready in a minute.”
In the meantime, I must make small-talk with Luai while Leena slaves in the kitchen. We discuss, of course, the situation in Palestine. True, you don’t really have to worry about finding an hour of stuff to talk about here. Everyone you meet has ten times that in stories of life under occupation. One of Luai’s daughters proves bolder than the others. She is striking, in a gauzy pink dress, sparkling heart-shaped earrings, and wavy black hair. As Luai points out pictures of deceased relatives enshrined around the room in glittery frames, she darts closer to me, staring as I murmur bland condolences. Leena pops in and out, setting a table behind the square of sofas, interrupting her husband to ask me questions and repeating how much she hopes I like the food. One would think she had been planning this meal for weeks, although my phone call an hour and a half ago was the first she had heard of her hostessing obligation, and of me.
When we sit, Luai’s mother, who lives there, emerges from the bedroom, her balding brown hair kinked from sleep. She begins asking the same battery of questions, but now I have to compete with Leena and Luai to answer them. She speaks quietly and is hard of hearing, so our conversation proceeds in fits and starts. Meanwhile, Leena frets that I don’t like the food and I redouble my efforts to show enthusiasm while still eating slowly (lest I be re-served). It is good -- freekeh (a grain) with spiced ground meat, tomato-cucumber salad, and yogurt. The mother-in-law condemns the dish as salty, but cleans her plate. (Leena does not re-serve her.)
The family flutters around me. As usual in these situations, I feel like an overgrown child, unable or at least untrusted to dictate my own actions. I remain in my seat, awaiting further instructions. This earns me the glass of Coca-Cola I have refused at least four times. “It’s so strange, you foreigners, all you ever want to drink is water!” titters Leena as she fills my glass to the brim with lukewarm Coke. I smile politely and take a sip. She beams approvingly.
The kids peel off and split into gendered play, the girls patty-caking, the boys hunting each other with plastic guns. The matriarch excuses herself to catch the next installment of a Turkish soap opera. Leena serves coffee, and she, Luai and I remain at the table, chatting. That is, both Luai and Leena simultaneously engage me on unrelated topics. Leena discusses with equal enthusiasm the joys of motherhood and the frustration of being left behind while Luai goes on work trips. Luai jokes about how he doesn’t wear a wedding ring outside the house so no one will know he is married. Ha, ha. I try to dole out responses evenly and offer relevant stories about myself. But because of the constant interruptions I never really get going and, again as usual, am trying to talk so fast that I keep making mistakes. But my hosts carry on blithely, as if this is the most fun they’ve had in years. So I kind of have fun too.
Once lunch has officially wound down, Leena retires to the kitchen and Luai takes me outside to see his garden. In the cracked earth, a variety of plants cling to life. He quizzes me on the plant names and is as pleased when I don’t know them as when I do, as this affords the new farmer a chance to ID them. The sun has sunk lower in the sky. Unsure how many hours have passed, I begin planning a graceful exit. Surely I have intruded on these people long enough.
“Now, you must meet my sister!” Er, does she know we’re coming? Might she have had something else planned for the afternoon? Luai knocks on the door, his silent children alternately gathering around his knees and scattering through the yard. A bleary-eyed woman appears behind the screen door in her bathrobe. “Usually we take naps in the afternoon,” Luai explains her appearance cheerily. No time to excuse myself and apologize for interrupting her repose; I am pushed from behind and herded through the door, this time into someone’s bedroom. We sit in chairs around the bed and I begin my feeble attempts to avoid more coffee. Another sister appears, also bathrobed, but skinnier and more glamorous, her face fully made up like Leena. Their teenage children are summoned, including one daughter who used to live in America. The adults command her to discuss her time there with me. I try to communicate to her with my eyes that I understand how annoying this is. But she is happy to oblige. I ask whether she misses the US. “Here is better!” she says glibly. Well, I thought, sipping my second coffee in the serenity of the fluorescent-lit bedroom, maybe it is. Still, I am hardly providing these poor people enough entertainment to merit rising from their naps.
Luai stands abruptly and announces that we are moving on now to meet his brother. Wails of protest meet this proposition. Luai is unperturbed, determined to introduce me to his whole family this very afternoon. Out we go, to knock on the next door down. The brother’s elementary-aged daughter lets us in and sets us up in his purposefully garish living room. He is a bank director, Luai reminds me, and clearly the prodigal son of the family. Apparently his relative riches have not affected his piety; framed, gold-on-black-felt Quranic verses adorn every wall, and his wife does not appear in a bathrobe. More Coke appears though, even before the brother, who must still be emerging from his nap. He makes his entrance at last, greets me cordially, and calls for coffee. I don’t argue this time. Good thing they’re small. He and Luai chat, and every once in awhile my newest acquaintance throws me a polite question. What were my hobbies? He chuckles at my mention of yoga and announces that he couldn’t imagine just sitting still like that. I resist the urge to observe that sitting still seems to be all folks do around here. Perhaps it’s just the thought of doing it without coffee that he finds so unappealing. We do not pursue the conversation.
At last I insist that it’s time I was leaving and suffer the protestations of my now multiple hosts. “Sleep here, with us,” coos the glamorous sister. “But when will you visit again?” frets Leena. What to say? That my real life, full of people I actually know, is waiting? That I will likely never be back? Leaving an Arab family always feels like a kind of betrayal, like they’ve let you in to the most intimate recesses of their lives and after accepting their hospitality you are callously stepping out again. But I never asked for their generosity, I counter my own pangs of remorse, and they made it impossible for me to refuse! I was just going along with it, trying to make them feel comfortable. Yes, I counter again, but now that you’ve shared this intimacy with them you are bound to them, whether you like it or not. But what if they don’t even want me to stay? What if they just did all of this because they thought they had to, and as soon as I leave they say or at least think, Whew, enough of that boring weirdo? Maybe I’m really doing them a favor by being callous enough to reject their offers and leave.
I’ll never know. What I do know is that if I come back to Jericho someday, Luai and his family will open their doors just as wide, whether due to a sense of duty or to actual enjoyment of my company. I’m the only one out of everyone concerned who cares which it actually is. Because this is something we don’t do in New York, welcome people in out of a sheer sense of duty. And while the physical experience of this unconditional acceptance can be awkward, there is something so civilized about it. Truly treating everyone who comes your way with equal respect, never letting on that their presence might be a burden, never ducking out with the excuse of another rendez-vous. That I find such openness stifling is food for thought indeed.
Before dropping me off at the ser-vees station, Luai and a friend who had dropped in at his brother’s squeeze in a whirlwind tour of Jericho. We stand for a few minutes looking out over the ruins of an eighth-century palace, then stroll through an abandoned souvenir plaza, where a lone employee slips me one more free, sugary drink and insists on rubbing Dead Sea mud into my hands. “Such a shame you couldn’t stay longer, Jericho has so much history!” regrets Luai. “Some day,” I murmur. I wonder who his next “date” will be, and whether she will stick around to see the rest.
