Foot-in-Mouth, East Jerusalem Style #296
So I was chasing a colleague for some information as he was running out the door- he was off, it transpired, to Friday prayers.
What felt like hours later, he was still nowhere to be seen. "What's taking him so darn long?" I grumbled, not without some mock-irritation/sarcasm. "Where's he gone to pray, exactly? Al-Aqsa?!?"
Silence. Affirmative, apparently. Who knew my powers of deduction were so impressively spot on?
I have a feeling that my stakes in the degrees-of-separation game just took a whole new swing.
What felt like hours later, he was still nowhere to be seen. "What's taking him so darn long?" I grumbled, not without some mock-irritation/sarcasm. "Where's he gone to pray, exactly? Al-Aqsa?!?"
Silence. Affirmative, apparently. Who knew my powers of deduction were so impressively spot on?
I have a feeling that my stakes in the degrees-of-separation game just took a whole new swing.
posted by tafka PP @ 12:07 PM
15 Comments:
At 3:56 PM,
Anonymous said…
Are you telling us this just to make us fear for your safety? Does your mother read your blog????
At 4:55 PM,
Anonymous said…
Haven't got the faintest idea what you're talking about.
At 7:12 PM,
kasamba said…
Whoa!!!!!
Did he never drop clues before????
At 9:34 PM,
MC Aryeh said…
I always suspected you had massive powers of deduction...
At 2:45 AM,
Karma said…
Co-existence requires mishaps. You should feel proud of yourself for having the courage to be there, doing what you do, and not ashamed that being with different people comfortably requires sometimes saying things you shouldn't say.
At 11:50 AM,
Liza said…
Ooops. Still, it wasn't exactly an "un-PC" comment, just sarcasm that may have missed the target.
Even more worrying though - you work on Fridays? Ugh!
At 1:14 PM,
tafka PP said…
DH- My mother is far more devil-may-care than me. And don't be scared.
Sane- Sorry: The very famous Al-Aqsa mosque (Dome of the Rock- for which the last "intifada" was named) is- being the holiest site for Muslims in the country- associated with, and frequented by, some very radical Islamic local "characters," shall we say. For this reason, Israeli security routinely bans male attendees under 40 there on Fridays (holy prayer day- its a big religious kudos to pray there on a Friday, apparently. If you're a Muslim male, that is.) So it basically has a longstanding image of all these firebrand, militant clerics, ergo the last thing I'd expect my mild-mannered colleague to be doing would be hanging out there.
Kasamba- no. But you learn something new every day...
MCA- Well your suspicions have been proved correct- in this case at least... I still can't understand Sudoku!
Karma- thank you. Miss you and your wisdom...
Liza- I know, could have been much worse! And I do try to make it every other Friday to reduce the "ugh" factor.
At 12:28 PM,
Sarah Likes Green said…
these days you sometimes would never guess things about certain people... until you accidentally do.
At 6:32 PM,
Anonymous said…
I don't actually follow the point of this post, so your friend is a Muslim and prays at Al Aksa, big deal..
Or have I missed the point?
At 7:16 PM,
tafka PP said…
Sarah- indeed. And there's always more to learn...
Odog- no I don't think you have missed the point at all: I have plenty of Muslim friends here and in the UK- I just hadn't yet personally met anyone who prays at Al Aqsa on Fridays. And on the one hand, yes, you are right, it is no big deal... But on the other hand, we've all got notions about the "other" which are incorrect, much as we may try otherwise. And so these unplanned mini-revelations are massive stereotype-shatterers (And I think I'm the first Jewish woman he's ever spoken to, incidentally) and so for that reason, I choose to share.
Aside from the heal-the-rift aspirations, it was also quite funny, at least at the time... I'm sure you could think of an equivalent inner raising-eyebrow moment for your office- not that I've a clue where you work :)
At 11:12 PM,
Anonymous said…
You work with Arabs who pray at Al-Aqsa.
I work with religious settlers from Beit-El and Gush-Etzion.
We should swap for a couple of weeks. It would do good for me. I never really had very close contact with Arabs, except my dentist and people who sell me hummus. It would make me tolerant in practice and not just in theory.
veavdzuy
At 12:03 PM,
Anonymous said…
An interesting post on CiF with remarkably restrained comments for a change.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sunny_hundal/2006/09/my_religion_and_my_turf_war.html
Yellow Boy
At 6:45 PM,
BagelUndertheCouch said…
my heart is happy that you would notice, and my heart is frightened, because if i did decide to post in french, everyone would see how crap my french is. no...english it is, i guess.
At 2:15 PM,
Anonymous said…
hey PP,
I can dig your point.
by the way, my work office is in Bethlehem.
hope you are well...
At 3:16 PM,
tafka PP said…
Aharoni- nice idea, except that unfortunately I'm useless in all tech directions... btw- if you work with any Anglo-Saxons, they probably have blogs too!
YB- Indeed. How refreshing. And I particularly liked his "Religion= Wikipedia" analogy...
BUTC- One's French is always better than one thinks, in my experience.
Odog- glad you dig: We're waving at you from the other side of the other side.
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