Just walking around in Jaffa with my friend Shahar

Shahar bought a new tiny "lumix"camera, so we had to go and try it out, walking around in late afternoon Ajami, when the sunlight turns even old iron into gold.

Shahar has two pampered cats, his flatmate another 3. I'm allergic to cat-hair, so visiting the premises is usually a problematic asthma related experience.

But i like cats a lot, especially the Jaffa street cats of great courage and of course the stone cat at the cat fountain in one of my favourite tiny public gardens in Jaffa.

Sitting down for a rest and a chat in a quiet corner in another one of Jaffa's little public gardens, a weird and rather tall guy came over, carrying a big iron thing in his hands. He sat down quite close by and we realized something was not entirely OK with the guy. We decided to take no chances and got up. While we were walking out of the garden he threw the iron thing he had been carrying at us, missing my leg. He followed us for a while, but the streets, already dark by that time, were busy.
A somewhat unpleasant ending to a nice walking tour.

Julia's in hiding

Romeo-who-turned-out-to-be-Julia, is in hiding, with her 3 quickly growing kittens.
Two days ago, the kitten corner below the stairs was empty. We (all neighbours of our building, amongst ourselves we refer to the kittens as "the grandchildren") were all very worried, but then found out that Julia has moved her three kittens to a new hiding place, behind a mountain of junk left there by my neighbours.
The neighbour twin-girls feed Julia daily and she seems to be doing well. I can no longer see all three kittens, but now and then Julia walks around with one of them in her mouth, a different one each time, so all three are alive, developing well and thriving.

It all started with Romeo... some good Jaffa news

First there were the rats, a lot of them and they took up residence in our staircase. Now, i truly believe in the importance of squatting as a valid alternative in a time of too little public housing and am open-minded as to the exact identity of my neighbors, as long as they're peaceful.
But rats.... mmm, gotta be honest, i DO have a problem with them.
They would drive my neighbor's big & mean rotweiler in the yard crazy, but he didn't do much about them, as the rats knew the length of said rotweiler's chain only too well.
Enter Romeo; Street cat with a squatter's mentality as well as good at dealing with rats. Only, Romeo got kind of fat, very fat.
Romeo had been so named by the neighbor's twin daughters and i never really thought much about it. They took care of him and gave him a cat box at the bottom of our cluttered stairwell, right next to my-shiny-red-not-so-new-anymore bike. Occasionally Romeo would enter my flat, when i left the door open. I love cats but am allergic to them. He really was getting VERY fat. i started suspecting something was not all it was supposed to be in the feline gender department
Until today: Everybody is downstairs, where eh Ro- no, Julia is giving birth. So far we have 2 kittens, and more appear to be on the way. Julia's cleaning them.

We have a family now.


22.00 update: there are three kittens, all are doing well, Marzipan you have competition!!

Jaffa Cats - the pampered ones and their competition

Some of Jaffa's cats are quite lucky, lucky to have been born in the city's wealthier & gentrified areas, where good souls feed them on a daily base & take them to the vet, whenever that need arises.
They can be recognized quite easily: big, well fed, self assured. They don't run away when you come close to them, jumping and hiding in the closest bin.
They gather at the correct hour when they know the food will be arriving in its steady spot, in throw away containers.
They even allow themselves to be picky, not eating everything on offer.
You can stroke them, they are quite used to human attention, in fact seem to like it.

I made a few portraits of those cat feeders, many of them women living in the area.
Yesterday i noticed a homeless guy picking up a piece a chicken from one of the cat trays, after the good, well meaning, cat-feeding lady had left her charges.
Hunger makes people do things. I wonder if the cat lady knows her charges have competition. The cats accepted him as "one of them", i might say. No hissing, no scratching, they are well fed and certain of their daily dinner.
Unlike the competition, the homeless guy, obviously hungry and not so certain of his daily dinner.

Jaffa, winter 2006

The Godfather of all Cats - Cats of Jaffa, Part 2

Once upon a time, there was a market in Ajami in Jaffa. Actually, there were quite a few markets but over time they were closed, usually not in a peaceful way. The last remaining true market, was closed and then destroyed by the municipality about one year ago.

There is ofcourse that 'thing" called "flea market", which IS fun, but it's for tourists from north Tel Aviv and beyond. (Although historically speaking, it was "souk a'dir", the "monastry's market", which was a meat market, before 1948). Most of Jaffa's residents do not frequent the fleamarket that much, although quite a few are employed in it. Many of today's business owners do not live in Jaffa.

The Ajami market was also known as "souk al yehud" or "shouk ha'etrog" (the Jewish market or the Etrog Market). It was a wonderful market, selling mostly fruit and vegetables, fresh green herbs, pots & pans, shoes, sweets, pulses, nuts and then there was a tiny stall where a very old peasant woman sold eggs. People came from all over Jaffa, Tel Aviv as well as Bat Yam to buy whatever they needed. The big busy market day was friday morning.
Good produce, great prices and a wonderful atmosphere were all part of what makes a market a good market.
But in Jaffa, as always in Jaffa, there are other interests, and property developers put their interest on the market area, a large piece of land, between Yefet street and the sea, close to the "Al Rahim" house (today the French embassy) and the Arab Jewish Community Center, in short, prime proerty in gentrifying Jaffa.

In Jaffa the saying goes, Daoud Tufah (for the Arabic challenged: Dudi Apel, a rich fatcat with, so they say, mafia connections, i have no idea what's true and what isn't) bought the land in order to construct a shopping center and housing for the wealthy.
Threats, bribes and judicial orders killed our market.The market stalls were destroyed using big yellow bulldozers, lots of security guards and some police men. Then the municipality planted fully grown olive trees (where did those come from? Who uprooted them and why?) in order to prevent construction by anyone else but the new owners of the land.

The market stall owners dispersed, some of them opening small stores along Yefet street (Gabriel's vegetable store, the chocolate & sweet store opposite Cafe Paul, to mention a few), others took their produce to the streets, by means of horse drawn carts).

The products at the stores are more expensive than those at the market. Jaffa's elderly and more now take bus nr. 10 to the Carmel market or nr.46 to the area of the old central bus station, where fruit and vegetables are cheap. Indeed some of the old market employees are employed in this area today, receving a msall salary for the work they once did as owners of their own little business.

Yet the REAL owners of the Ajami shouk are still there: the fatcat-lead bunch of wild cats living of the big green garbage container close to the well known "Abu Hilwe" butchery and "Marwan's" restaurant. Two businesses, located in Mendes France street, once gracing our market's main entry.
Being a vegatarian, i don't exactly frequent either store, but my friends say the quality of the produce is as excellent as once the fruit and vegetables sold on our market.
The cats are led by a slow moving extremely strong menacing monster, shown on above picture.
No, these cats do not have names. They are wild and defend their territory by all available means and in Jaffa that means anything, a lot, mean, fierce, "fair game" is for pussies.

Quite clearly they are on the Abu Hilwe and Marwan payroll. As their green container headquarter's located quite close to the home for the elderly (the ugliest building on Yefet, the high pink appartment tower), there apears to exist a strange agreement between one of the elderly Russian speaking ladies and the cat leadership. She provides water on hot days, the stalinesque cat leader allows her to stroke his head a few strokes at the time.

But then, when you are the true leader, you can allow yourself an indulgence now and then.

Jaffa Cat Gangs and Their Territories

Jaffa's cats are a breed apart, that is, the street cats. Not the pampered domestic creatures trying to pass as true felines. Affected actors, that's what they are. (and, to quote our friend A, a fairly well known movie & TV director, "being an actor is not a profession, it's a mental problem")

It's the true leaders of the street., i am talking about: mean, fierce and afraid of nothing.
Al Ajami has various cat territories, well defined and defended by the leading gangs occupying them.
Military language you think? Well yes, nothing else fits them (except for perhaps the scientific mumbo jumbo of the criminological creed).
Not unlike our human gangs, the street cats know their place: right at the top of the food chain.
For starters of my planned weekly series, i am presenting this seemingly cute creature.
As the my 4 regular readers of this blog are not all from Jaffa, and perhaps quite unfamiliar with our specific wildlife form of mutant power tigers, i'll start with the less menacing ones, not to scare you away.
Name: r u joking? Names r 4 home-hussies
Territory: the cat garden in Rabbi Hananina street, behind the "Freres" school.
Age: still quite young, but as most street cats die very young, this one is a survivor.
Character: mean (i know , i know, it looks nice & cuddly, but i also saw it when a strange cat had the audicity to enter the Hanina cat garden)
Preferred food: mice, rats, food left by cat loving residents of the street (or maybe that's protection money, you do NOT want to mess with the tigers of the cat garden, this is Jaffa after all).
Conspiracy suspicion: Rabbi Hanina street is one of Jaffa's wealthiest streets, preferred by new migrants from France and wealthy Jewish residents (originally from north Tel Aviv), who love the romanticism of Jaffa. In short, a pretty street inhabited by the wealthy,. who go for the "authentic but lite" version of Jaffa, "Jaffa diet" so to say, and a great favorite with Jaffa's thieves. Are the cats the informers? Are they on the payroll of the thieves?
Nah, they are on both sides' payrolls, so they are quite well fed and even have their own statue in the form of a cat-fountain right in the middle of cat garden.

Early morning Adjami

Adjami is a little like a village, a fishermen's village, right in the middle of the city. People keep chickens, horses, donkeys and the occasional camel.

And dogs, there are lots of dogs of course.
We have an alley called, unofficially, "rotweiler avenue". No further explanation needed.

The feline species is well represented. Stray cats live mostly around the butchers and fish stores. There used to be a market, but the municipality closed it some weeks ago for doubtful reasons. Since then, no more cat food there.
And, what's worse, we are stuck without a market. But i wasn't talking about our lack of municipal services right now. Jaffa cats are thin, clever, and there is nothing nice and cuddly about them. Tough and streetwise would be a more apt description. But even the toughest of the Jaffa cats doesn't dare fool around with that other species, the Jaffa egglaying community.

So we're talking chickens, or rather cockerels or, to be more precise, the king of cockerels. The undoubted leader of the neighborhood egglaying gang. They all keep strange hours. But one of them really upsets my neighbor, an elderly patriarch, left speechless due to an operation on his vocal cords.
Said cockerel wakes the patriarch, standing below the bedroom window according to old fashioned village manners starting from about 3 A.M. , at least an hour before the muezzin's early morning prayer call.

The shutters are thrown open a few minutes after the onset of the early morning concert.
It' s pleasant and cool at this hour. The patriarch, in his striped pijamas, goes out to the balcony, where he keeps a stash of floor tiles, specifically for the purpose. (or maybe they were brought there a long time ago for a purpose no one remembers). He starts insulting the cockerel (in the quiet of the night it is actually posibble to make out some of the things he says in his voiceless raspy voice).
The cockerel, unimpressed, continues.
This is the moment when the tiles start flying into the noisy animal's direction.
I don't know if the patriarch misses him due to bad eyesight, or perhaps the-great-cockerel-god protects this particularly noisy one from any danger. Or maybe the patriarch is a really good shot and just want to stop the racket without hurting anyone.

Early morning, still cool, time for my first espresso. Another day.