the people we meet

The People we meet.

By David Verveer

The loud lady:
It was late in the morning, the doctors and nurses had finished their rounds, and the patients were left alone to rest and recuperate. The visitors sat in the chairs by the beds, and more or less joint in the slumber party, suddenly we heard a rather monotone voice of a lady, reading to someone the head lines of the daily newspaper. She read a few sentences and then explained it to somebody near her. Of course, we did not see her only heard her from the corridor or room next door. The item she read, dealt with a tragedy of a women, who after given birth to a twin suddenly died (apparently from an inner bleeding). You could hear from the way she read it and explained that she was very experienced in the task of reading the news to the person near her. The problem was that her monotone loud voice and the explanation of the text were irritating the patients of the floor, who did not want to hear somebody else's problems, and preferred to deal with their own lot, which had landed them in hospital.
Eventually a mother visiting her daughter after an operation, got fed up, and went to the reading lady to tell her to shut up, which she did by apologizing and indeed for the next half an hour it was quiet on the floor.

Of course, visitors can not sit near their relatives without sometimes to get up and walk around in the corridor, or going to the coffee shop outside, and during such escapade we met the reading lady in question. She was extremely slim, in my eyes rather old (but according her story only in the early sixties), brought to the hospital by the emergency health services, due to an enlarged liver). Het husband, who was illiterate (cleaning the streets of our fair city) accompagnied her, as he was totally incapable of looking after himself. She told me, the last time they put her in hospital, he stayed home alone, and because it was Sabbath and he is religious, he walked by foot some ten kilometers, till he reached the hospital, where he waited near the gate as he did know how to find her, Of course, nobody gave him anything to eat, and in the end he fainted, which saved him from dyeing in the lobby of the hospital.

This time, she insisted that they took her husband as well, or else she would not go into the ambulance. The husband, totally depended on his wife, not only for information, or maintenance, but incapable to take care of him self, to prepare a cup of coffee or a sandwich, follows her around like a dog. I hope, the hospital can take care of the poor woman, as the man is a simpleton in the worst grade of stupidity, and the woman, a saint, and I am a little bid embarrassed that her explaining the news from the daily to her husband somehow irritated me.

It is true, that we do not notice the simple people around us, sweeping the street, or becoming politicians as an elected member of parliament, we know, those people exist, but never really have contact with them, unless you are confronted with them, in public places like the hospital floor. They say, we should know our enemy, but in fact, we don't know anybody who is not member of our selected surroundings, and who is outside our circle of acquaintances, and if you realize that in practically, a person is capable only to know a very limited amount of people good, it is no wonder that we do not see the people on the edges.

The Arab family
Apparently the mother was hospitalized for observation, and her daughter and son, with wife and grandson came to visit her. The child, around one year old, most of the time slept in his wagon. It was obvious that the family were Muslims, as the girls and mother wore veils to cover their hair. Their conversation was in Arabic, but like all Arabs in Israel, they throw into their conversation many Israeli words and expressions, and the result in a mixture of both languages.

They were carrying mobile phones, and I was curious in what language the phone was arranged, as here in Israel you can choose between Hebrew, English, Arabic, Russian, French or German. However, they replied that their interface was in Hebrew, I asked the why they had chosen Hebrew instead of Arabic, and it seems that the Arabic they speak is unlike the written Arabic, and even their SMS's they send in their spoken Arabic with Hebrew letters.

There are several Arab television stations available in our area, but mostly the local families look at the popular Israeli stations, without much interest in political issues. Surrounding the town Kfar Saba, were I live are large concentrations of Israeli Arab towns and villages, with most of the families having relations on the other side of the Green line (the border between Israel and the Palestinians), created in 1948 and later the border between the occupied territories and Israel and more or less the route of the Separation Wall. The Palestinians on the other side of the border are not permitted entering Israel without special permit, nor are allowed to work here. Of course, our Israeli Arabs, who were lucky anough to remain inside our jurisdiction, have full Israeli citizenship with all rights and duties as the Jews.

I won't say that there is no discrimination in Israel, because that is untrue, most of it is caused by the peoples behavior, as the laws try to wipe out as much as possible, the differences between the people. Funny enough, the Israeli Arabs discriminate against there own kin, and even though, complain about the Israelis, they refuse to be seen as Palestinian Palestinians, the are Israeli, and do not want to endanger their status.. The interaction between our Arabs and those of the Palestinians is relatively cool, and if they would not have had such stupid politicians, they would have been totally integrated into the society. And we, the Israeli, we keep to our own, we know not many people outside our caste, we look upon the popular television game, "the big brother", as games for the lower classes, we are snobs, playing on an entire different level, and are surprised when once in the 2 to 4 years, we lose the elections to precisely those people, getting so popular in "the big brother".

Also our Arabs look at "the big brother" and had even a (Christian) Arab girl participating, who was outvoted as she wanted to leave, getting fed up with the low politically popularity games played by the participants and the television management.

Now remains only one question, why did I write all this? I wanted to bring to your attention that irrelevant where you live, who are or were your parents, what color you have, you will have to live your own kind of life, don't envy the other, as also the fortunate people can die of cancer, suffer and find that nobody cares for them, if they are not out of the same nest.