Already in Israel

(Continued from the previous post)

I take the train to Tel Aviv, I get down at the first station. Now I have to take a cab. When I get out I see a whole line of cabs and vans waiting for someone to get in. A man shouts at me from far away, taxi, taxi!! This reminds me to Turkish cab drivers, crazy to get clients. The fact is he already had clients as me, a young guy and a guy dressed as a soldier get into the car. He has a huge Turkish Eye collar holding from the rear-vision mirror. Curious. I wonder if he might have any connection to Turkey, or if it has become part of this Middle Eastern culture too. The architecture in this area reminds me to Greece. Only Hebrew signs remind me that I am in Israel. Houses are small and it is full of small shops everywhere.

The taxi driver is pretty curious. He sings every song that’s playing on the radio. At a certain moment he stops the car in the middle of a street, turns down de window and yells at another taxi driver: how’s it going Israel? The other one answers. We get into Jaffa. Here things are even dirtier and more disorganized than before. Is this a Western country are we sure? I got off on one of the main avenues of Jaffa. I see grocery shops, fruit shops of the kind Turks would have in Berlin, Arabs in Paris and Pakistanis in Barcelona. Here I’m not really sure about who’s running them.

After getting a rest and introducing myself to the office where I will work the next two months we go for lunch. Israeli Salad. Really? In Lebanon this is called Lebanese Salad, in Palestine Palestinian Salad… And they’re all the same!!!! Why do I have the feeling this is not so culturally different to Arab countries and not so Western as many insist in portraying it?