Twisted my ankle on a pile of rubble (and other perils of living in Palestine)

I was actually writing this blog post in my head yesterday as a pile of rubble felled me like a big tall tree in the streets of Ramallah. One minute I'm happily swinging my bag of veggies, planning a delicious soup and writing in my head about my new old man friends I've been hanging out with. The next minute I'm face down on the ground. I fell hard. Tall girls usually do.

There's two parts to this post. Part I is the pre-fall post, my glorious old man friends. These guys are so great. I met them when I went to buy sweets for my road trip-- I walked into a sweets shop (fairly drips with honey and orange blossom water) and three old men were sitting in the corner, smoking ergileh (hookah), drinking coffee and obviously chilling out for a Sunday man-chat. See now, I have a real love for old men. I think I have an old man soul. We always enjoy each other's company, old men and me. So obviously, they invited me to join them and I did. We sat for a bit, talking about the US and politics and life. One of them, whose name is Jad, is about a million years old. His wife just died-- turns out she was American, from Maryland, and lived here for 50+ years as a cultural and feminist force in the city. Jad's daughter is an activist and doctor. I told him it seemed he had a lot of powerful women in his life, and he smiled and said "I am lucky."

What a guy.

Anyhoo, these old men have now become my friends. It turns out they spend most days like that, hunched away in the corner of a sweets shop, smoking ergilah and talking about life. It reminds me so bittersweetly of Boston-- just sub out the hookah for three pints of Guinness and there you would have any average Dorchester pub. On my walk hope I pass them, and they always call out my name and I go in and have a coffee and talk some history, politics, art...whatever the subject of the day might be. It's the best part of my afternoon. I love it.

So, you can imagine the state of content bliss I was in after such a cozy conversation, swinging my bag o' veg and tromping along home. Then I got flattened.

This is where this post turns into Part II and becomes an inadvertent tribute to my mother. I managed to hobble home up four flights of stairs, knee bleeding through my jeans and ankle already swelling, solely because I put on what I call my 'single mom face'. It's the face I saw on my mom a million times growing up, the 'I'm-going-to-do-this-alone-because-I-have-no-other-choice-so-here-I-go' face. It's one powerful face.

This is the face I was wearing as I got home, got my bearings, hobbled to the pharmacy, spent 20 minutes miming to the guy before he understood I needed an ankle brace, found a hotel bathroom and cleaned and gauzed my knee. Then I sighed, shook it off, met some friends (God bless said friends [Karim] for inviting me to watch the game) and WATCHED THE CELTICS GAME WHILE DRINKING ARAK (Lebanese ouzo, potent and delicious) AND EATING HALLOUMI CHEESE.

Good-bad-good. Thanks for teaching me that face, Mom. A single lady in Palestine needs to pull it out from time to time. Love you to bits Happy Valentine's Day, all!