Pickled Eggplants

pickled eggplants, pickled turnips, pickled peppers, pickled olives and pickled pickles

they’re tiny, and squishy and intensely purple and pink, like really really purple and pink and the sour acidic vinegary juice that they bounce around in, fills up every single pore and space of the tiny eggplants.  when your teeth pierce into the smooth skin of the eggplant, the pickled juice squirts in different directions inside of your mouth. it’s kind of sour, and like most pickled things (in my humble opinion) strangely addicting.  i love pickles.  but i never thought of the idea of pickling eggplants.  which is why the texture of it still surprises me when i eat it. eggplanty and pickly. 

and all of these tiny little intensely purple and pink bobble up and down in a big clear serving bowl in the assembly line of different varieties of garnishing items, at this local sanwich shop in the old city of Ramallah.  every day after school i stop by this place and ask for a ‘sanwish jaj” and they whip out a skewer of fresh chicken pieces seasoned and sprinkled with spices, each piece separated by a small unpeeld onion, ready to be placed sloppily by this sweaty fat arab man wearing a dirty apron on top of burning coals.  the smell is to die for.  in the States all of this smoke would definitely be a fire hazard.  but not here. Things are fresh, they are cooked right in front of you, and your nostrils are happy getting a delicious whiff of the slightly charrred and smoky sizzling chicken.

i had stopped by this shop on my new route back home from school after moving to a new apartment, and i was definitely pulled into this restaurant because of how good it smelled from the streets. it’s one of those really low key ‘messy’ eateries where people are sloppily running around, sweating and shouting and laughing and smiling at each other taking orders.  I had walked in , and I saw a large Arab woman, sweating under her hijab,wearing a black hoodie.  We exchanged a “marhapa” and “ahlain” and I told her what I wanted.  I had to patiently wait for a good 15 minutes for the sandwich making process to be completed, beginning from the skewer of raw meat and ending with the meat being stuffed inside a soft pita bread neatly slobbered with hummus, turkish salad, pickled eggplants, salad with tahini and purple cabbage.  This woman was definitely running the place, ordering a bunch of young guys running around, slapping down a bowl of hummus, making a circular and smooth dent in the hummus bowl with the back of a spoon and then sprinkiling olive oil on top of it with a powdered dash of this tart, dark purple spice called Summak (which I had never known before) on top, and carrying 3 of those bowls to a small shanty table and chair set occupied by a group of men chowing down on restaurant regulars: falafel, muttabbal, bread, fresh, onions and tomatoes and skewers of meat.

i tried small talk with the lady the very first day i had gone in there and that only entertained her and made her laugh.  the next day i came back and i told her how much i loved her sandwiches, and her ear to ear grin complemented with a sweet “habibty” was followed by a big kiss planted on my cheeks.

Phone Calls and Pencil Shavings

i had a student cry for 25 minutes straight in class today as his friends tried to console him.  the level of his disrespect was absolutely unbearable and dealing with him makes me feel like i am inside of a mental asylum dealing with complete and utter insanity, where the only solution might be like some tranquilizing injection or something (for either me or them, I don’t know).  It makes me think of those weird reality tv shows in the States where unbelievably ill disciplined kids who are impossible to handle are sent to some army bootcamp.  and are made to cry with some big macho butch army man screaming at their faces.  so this kid, who shall remain unnamed, would burst out in songs, singling all the words on all ofl the posters around him (mostly French verb conjugation charts), talking to him would be useless because he would refuse to look at you and keep on making faces and go under his chair, come back up, kick the kid next to him, throw his sharpener, play with all of his supplies and of course not have any of his books or notebooks out on his desk, and asking him nicely at least four or five times meant absolutely nothing to him and he would just continue doing whatever it is he wanted to do.  threatening to take off his class points meant nothing to him.  being sent to the principal’s office meant nothing to him.  so i told him that i would call his mom from my phone in class.  he didnt believe me.  i called his mom and told her that her son would like to speak to him.  he couldnt believe that i did it, so he sat rocking in his chair with both of his index fingers stuck in his ear, because he didnt want the phone reciever anywhere near him and he didnt want to talk to her.  so he started screaming.  too bad his mom heard that on the phone.


and so for the next 25 minutes he cried with his head down as his friend next to him rubbed his head and consoled him.



i saw one of my student’s mom after school today who is convinced that there is nothing wrong with her son.  and really really convinced that he is a perfect student and that the only problem with him is this OTHER kid who doesnt leave her son alone.  she’s met me before and I’ve told her each time “no your son isn’t doing well.  he spends all of his time playing in class” “it’s Mohammad Habib!” (this infamously ‘bad’ kid in class who in all seriousness should be kicked out of school) and I would have to tell her, well no it’s not always the other kids thats the problem, your son doesnt do any of the work and his grades reflect that.  She would always have this awful look on her face when I would say that, as if I just slapped her.


Today she came to see me, and came in storming saying “Mohammad Habib doesnt let my son study! he sits behind him, pokes him, and then dumps all his pencil shavings on my son’s head! I dont know what to do!”
That’s funny...I would think to myself.  I dont think these two kids ever even fight in class.  her son is always poking this other kid and talking and walking around all over the classroom.  She wanted to see her son’s final mid term grade.  he had  70, and she gasped.  and kept on insisting that it’s such a shame because at home he knows English so well.  Even his dad says so.  What could possibly be the problem, for him to get a 11/25 on his test? or a 2/5, or a 1/10? It’s the OTHER kid’s fault!
After 10 minutes of fumbling around, she started crying.  And there I was.  standing in front of a crying mother who was so severly upset at this mark staring at her face which seemed to shatter her world.  she left with her eyeliner mark traced down the side of her nose.  her son wasnt even in the room while all of this was happening, he had long gone after the bell had rung to go play outside.