Coptic Pope Shenouda died yesterday. Head of the largest Christian Church in the Middle East, Pope Shenouda had to steer the church through rocky times and time again, even being exiled, he managed to serve as the bulwark and protector of the Christian minority in a muslim nation. Today the pope was placed on his throne as people came to pay their respects. He will be buried soon. It might be news to you that the title "pope" was first used by the Coptic Patriarch and then later assumed also by the Bishop of Rome. In Jerusalem, Coptic and Ethiopic christians have been mourning and carrying pictures of the pope in the streets.
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| Very well done |
The weather has become so very cold, everyone is complaining. The wind is not biting or cutting - it slices right through bone and sinew. It's nothing like we've experienced in these past 10 years. Yesterday evening I went out with a friend to a bistro that caters for orthodox Jews. Photos of rabbis hung on the wall. All the patrons were in black and white. It was very funny, I thought at one moment. Anyway I had a forbidden piece of cappuccino cheesecake which tasted really good .... I took it only because my friend said he'd share half with me. Luckily he took most of it, thus saving me from a bad reaction of diabetes.
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| Cactus parade |
Today I had to go to Tel Aviv to retrieve a document ... but the office was not opened. Walked down the Boulevard, had an orange juice at my usual Arcaffe. Haven't been here for so many months. The Boulevard still looked familiar, though very cold from the strong winds. The koi were still in the pond in the middle of the Boulevard. Caffes and restaurants were less crowded, and the few patrons huddled indoors. Al fresco dining was out. Few trees had their leaves on ... and a lovely bed of cacti in front of a typical Telavivian bauhouse caught y attention. An ordered parade of rounded thorns - so emblematic of the bureaucratic and human foibles that make the retrieval of my documents an impossible task.
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