“hafuch”
I love coffee but not just any coffee. What I really like is what we call in Israel “upside down coffee” or in short “Hafuch”. Sitting in any coffee house in Israel, and those are many all you have to say to the waiter is “I want café hafuch” and this master piece will appear on your table. It comes in a medium size white cup or preferably a glass with a thick layer of foam and if it is really done right imprinted in the white foam will be a sketch of a heart. “Hafuch” with a heart it doesn’t get any better than that.
The next best thing to the coffee is Israeli cafes. Most of them in the Mediterranean style stretch out on the sidewalks. With one cup of coffee you can claim ownership of any table you like and the right to sit there for as long as you feel.
My favorite café is on the corner of Shainkin St. in the center of Tel-Aviv just steps away from the beach. This corner café is not at all fancy and have just few dozen tables some inside and some perched on a very narrow deck. The tables are small and somewhat old and wobbly but the human landscape forever colorful and changing is absolutely worth it.
The current fashion in clothes is well represented in the small boutique windows but even better on the young women walking along the sidewalks on high hills or stylish boots. Imagination and panache parading like a fashion show against the Bauhaus style buildings with fading European grandeur of days gone by. Young mothers with their babies in a variety of strollers and carriers, hurried business men and an occasional dog on a leash. Sleek motorcycles are zooming around parked cars and the few cyclists trying to get by without being run over.
In the entrance to the street under the street lamp just steps away from the crossing sits the local beggar, always on his mattress with a blanket covering his legs. A small open box in front of him to remind the people passing by that he is not here just for fun; he is a working man and needs to make a living. The mattress cover and blanket are often of a matching pattern as is the pillow he leans against when he takes an occasional break or a sip of coffee from a small thermos. Even though I know it is sort of peeping I can’t take my eyes away from him. He is there every time in good weather as in the pouring rain. With one hand on his collection box, palm up in the classic request gesture and the other texting on his cell phone. A somewhat distorted picture of a business man, conducting his financial affairs.
Every time the light changes to green the mass of people crossing the street splits as they reach his small sidewalk hamlet and then merge again. Young men and women in their stylish clothes, old couples next to mothers and babies, cyclists and kids on roller skates, an occasional dog on a leash they all pass by him all day long.
From my table in the corner café I can see him texting on his state of the art cell phone and hear the intermittent ring of the coins landing in his box. I watch the people parting and merging as they are going around him never stopping or slowing down. If I was a painter, I think, this would make a great painting. I would title it “an upside down view” but being just a writer I take another sip from my cooling café hafuch and keep watching.
Ha, I like how in the end you tie up coffee, upside-downedness, the beggar, and the scene. I didn't see that coming but it's just right.
ReplyDeleteThat last graf also reinforces what I was already thinking: this is extremely static and picture-like for a piece supposedly concerned with action. It's a series of snapshots more than a movie.
Good snapshots, but all of them are really just a set-up for the paradox of the beggar and his two hands, one timeless, one 21st Century. That's the money material.
I'd be inclined to say that this piece can't really work until the beggar material is pressed, pushed, and exhausted. Did you ever give him a coin? Yes--what was that like? No--why not? What are your speculations and where do they lead?
A little lost here,
ReplyDeleteI don’t think I want to interact with the beggar and no, I did not give him a coin, just passed by him.
I am a coffee drinker (as if it was not clear…) and a spectator most of the time more than a participant.
The action in this piece is mostly inside my head watching the street and people around me. Still I thought there was quite a lot of action going on.
Okay, I don't want to create a situation where I'm pushing a writer to write the piece I'm imagining. Forget my suggestions.
ReplyDeleteYou have an image of yourself in a cafe, working on a different time schedule than people in a cold climate and indoors. You are public, yet private at your table, and as a coffee drinker are a natural watcher, observer, connoisseur of the passing scene. I see all that. It works on those terms very nicely, but--and here's where we will simply have to disagree and let it go--it remains to me very pictorial and static. Your observations are sharp and well-drawn, but I don't really see the action.
Ariela, I'm much happier getting an unusual topic, imaginative development, insight, vivid portraits--good writing, in other words--than I am in certifying that week 2 is done exactly as I imagined it. You've done the good writing part.
I reread my last essay and your remarks and I think I get what you mean. I am going to try again on this piece or maybe another and see if I can break my mold a little.
ReplyDelete