March 1, 2003
The alarm clock we lent to Joanna turned out to be unreliable, but she managed to wake up in time to catch her taxi down to Jerusalem. Meanwhile, we headed off to school as usual. Marthame's two-day absence each week means more work around the school when he gets back, trying to sandwich it in between classes.
The “landfill” road into Jenin.
Today, Marthame went off to Jenin to run some errands and pay some bills. Going to Jenin is always an adventure, since we never know which way is open. Marthame grabbed a taxi at the Zababdeh garage headed toward tariq al-mazbale (the landfill road). This way leads the taxis to a road that bisects the local landfill, from which commuters need to walk to taxis waiting on the other side. Someone decided that the name "landfill road" was unattractive and humorously re-named it tariq al-muntaza (the resort road). Unfortunately, the former is more accurate. Marthame walked towards the other side, stepping in mud up to his ankles, turning his once black shoes to brown. In Jenin, the combination of destruction and excessive rains left rivers of ankle-high running down the middle of the street, perfect for cleaning Marthame's shoes. When Marthame arrived at the bank, someone noticed his shoes (people notice shoes here) and said, "Have you been four-wheeling?"
In addition to running errands for ourselves and for some of the priests, Marthame picked up our "gift" from the Palestinian cellphone company for our years of faithful bill-paying (and also to keep us subscribed despite the massive service difficulties they have operating under the current circumstances): a pink clock with a green glow-in-the-dark face that plays tunes and animal noises when it chimes. Maybe it'll work better than the one Joanna used this morning. We have invented an adjective for such things, jenini (from Jenin). It means anything that's a little too pink, a little too sparkly, a little too cute.
The road back, fortunately, was not through the landfill, but we had to wait for our water tanks to fill before Marthame could wash today's gunk away.