Magen Is Taking Over

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Hey,
It’s Magen, for anyone who don’t know the name I’m maoz’s lil bro and now a proud resident of the FAI. A brief history of my doings last year: I got off the army service around mid march, after 3 long years, joined the family business of greenhouses until last weekend, and for the last 5 days I’m in Nazareth, trying to find my place in this unique city. I’m going to be here for the next few months and manage the place so that Maoz will have more time to take care of his growing family, and concentrate more on the marketing aspects of the inn. So… since now I live here I think I’ll take over Maoz’s blog for a while…
The last weekend (28.11.05) was very special for us at the Fauzi Azar Inn, all the rooms were occupied by family members from our father’s side. Some of the 30+ guests were at the inn for the first time and they were very excited and enjoyed themselves a lot. Personally I had liked the different meeting with my bigger family, since usually we only meet at weddings and there’s no real communication in those. They had a guided tour in Nazareth during Saturday and the last family members left the house around 19:30.

After everyone left and I was all by myself for the first time at the Inn, I’ve started to feel a bit lonely; it reminded me of the feeling I had while traveling in other countries by my own. Plus, because of Ramadan, and it coming to and end, the kids of the neighborhood are making a lot of noise during the evenings using TNT middle weight bombs, which they call firecrackers. It is very strange for me to live in a crowded built place, since I’ve always lived in small villages and could never have heard the neighbors chewing dinner, I guess I’ll just have to get used to it.

Luckily we’ve had some nice guests during the last 2 nights, on Sunday a group of 4 med school graduates, an English guy and an American. Taking care of the guests and sitting around the living room with them is great, I look forward to have more and more guests in the future.

It’s quite amazing to see how Maoz is dealing with the local environment, when we walk around the market he’s got time for the smallest merchant and in the evening he’s having a short conversation with the mayor. He’s working hard but I think he’s earning the respect of the people of Nazareth, which means a lot.

Spending the nights at the Inn sometimes turns into an interesting adventure, since the door is always open, and you don’t know who’s going to come. During the few days I was here, we had a visit from a confused local Arabic poet (she is going to be our Arabic teacher and will probably get a whole paragraph on the next blog entry) who wrote a play while sitting a few hours in the main hall. The day after came a British couple, both are physics scientists, and they’re here as guests of the Nazareth tourism foundation giving lectures for school pupils in the city. The woman was a rather large black woman, much like a gospel singer, and the man was white, thin and wearing glasses looking like a dried Bill Gates. The woman kept saying “OH, YES” very exaggeratedly (?this word is complimentary from Microsoft), and from one “OH, YES” to another “OH, YES”, I figured she must be one of the two, either very dumb or a genius incapable of normal human contact, I’d bet on the second option. Another interesting visit was when the local police force showed up with one of the stronger persons in the old city (one might say from the local mafia). There were 5 officers and him, and it wasn’t quite clear who’s under who’s law. Maoz did most of the talking and it ended up with the big guy asking us to come and visit his house, maybe he’d like to guest tourists also.

So, getting to current time, our largest group yet, almost 50 people came to the FAI last night. The group is engaged in a political march for peace, which they started from near Tiberius (The Sea Of Galilee) and will go through Israel and the Occupied Territories all the way to Jerusalem. They are staying at the FAI for 2 nights and tomorrow will get up early (they say it’ll be 5am) and start making their way to Kibbutz Megiddo, about 20k from Nazareth. Although we haven’t got 50 beds to host them, they’ve managed the last night, sleeping on mattresses and on the mat covered yard.

The day of their arrival started with stormy weather, Maoz and I thought it’ll be nice to greet them with a hot soup so Yuri (Vladi’s brother) made an excellent one. The effort was much appreciated. Hosting so many guests at once is a very tiring work and I was stressed much of the time. Most of them were very polite Germans so when ever someone needed something out of me it started with:”May I ask only one question?” and than would follow the second question:”Can you help me carry the things from the car/ make another soup/ show me the way to the market/ fix my computer /find my luggage which was lost somewhere above Spain?” Do you remember how “The Wolf” played by De-Niro in Pulp Fiction is describing his job? That was the kind of mood I was in.

I think I’ll never get to current time because it is always changing (without getting into the river issue even once), while writing the last part of the Blog last night, Maoz called at around 11pm and told me that there’re 4 Americans looking for a place to stay, so I had to solve that to. I must say I’m starting to like it here, it’s an ongoing adventure.

I’ll wrap things up by telling you we are hosting a family of 12 celebrating their parents’ 40th anniversary, they’re very nice and didn’t mind the few drops of water that came from the painted ceiling during a very heavy rain last night. Don’t worry; we are going to fix that tomorrow, Insh’alha.
Love,
Magen Inon

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