Ethiopia

The other day I tried to capture the essence of the apartment where Patrick and Aaron live.  It is a quirky little place in the center of town, it is the Ethiopian consulate building and they rent out apartments in the building.  So many good memories in this apartment!  Pictures will follow shortly....

Stepping onto HaNevi’im street, the ambiance changes.  It is a perceptible change, although you have to be aware in order to notice how the usual groups of Jews, Arabs, and tourists are now mingled with another identity; that of the Ethiopians.  Seemingly out of place, they welcome you to their territory, a little piece of their country in the midst of Jerusalem.  You know you’ve reached it when the porcelain lion bearing a cross, set against a blue background, peers out through the trees and the gate.  Only then do you turn from the bustling street and step down into unique and diverse world that is the Ethiopian consulate. 

Walking through the door (always open), “Harry Potter” is the first to greet you.  Harry Potter is the Ethiopian man living under the stairs, with a floral sheet hastily draped up to section off his couch and mattress and create some semblance of privacy.  Moving past Harry Potter, you turn onto the stairs, but not before passing the gate into the little courtyard that is a part of someone’s home.  There are often small parties, 20-something year olds sitting around drinking, talking, laughing, and listening to music coming from the guitar player.  Several of the apartment’s windows face into this courtyard, and as the windows are constantly open, their celebrations and music become ours to enjoy as well. 

Up one flight of stairs, you’ve reached the door of the apartment, marked by a simple

undecorated dream catcher to ward off evil.  If you turn around, you can see the Ethiopian woman in the apartment next door in her kitchen.  She is always there with her pots and frying pans, seemingly in a perpetual state of cooking.  Often the aroma of tonight’s dinner will fill the stairwell, enticing you to knock on their door and beg to join.

But resisting the temptation, you finally enter the apartment and first see a long corridor.  The walls are painted with block stripes of red, yellow, and green in honor of the Ethiopian flag, and if this isn’t clear enough, there is a giant map of Ethiopia plastered on the wall in front of the lone couch in the apartment.  The five rooms are occupied by American, French, German, and Israeli tenants, all coming together to share a bathroom and a kitchen.  Shelves, tables, and corners also testify to the cultural diversity of the apartment; they are filled with books in various languages, languages that go far beyond the current tenants and you can’t help but wonder how many years ago that book’s owner left it sitting there. 

Various smells greet you as well, often it is the smoke in the kitchen from the French and Israeli girl’s cigarettes.  There is something about the creaky doors and tiled floors that draws me back to the apartments in Italy and I almost expect to turn down the hallway and smell fresh bread from the bakery downstairs.  The black mold that envelops the bathroom ceiling, the odd assortment of cheap furniture, and the constant battle to find and destroy mosquitoes buzzing around; I feel like I could easily be in Sicily or Rome.  But the chatter in Hebrew and the billows of incense pouring through the open windows from an apartment upstairs remind me of exactly which exotic place I live in; not Italy but Israel. 

              Most of all, the rooms contain the ghosts of the last month.  The Sabbath gourmet meals of eggplant parmesan, stuffed figs, fish, spaghetti, and sweet potato fries still linger in the kitchen.  The mattress on the floor retains the impressions of four people huddled together singing, sharing life stories, and pouring over scriptures. The couch in the hallway bears the weight of life’s typical hardships, having seen the change from light-hearted laughter to the final words of a breakup. But despite the eccentricity, or maybe in part because of it, this “Ethiopia” is home, preserving all of the elements of a family and retaining it’s sacredness because of things experienced, learned, and changed within its walls.