Sad

Fallen laurel tree

It's been a dreadful week of bad news one after another. This morning I received a message that a dear friend from the Armenian catholic community that I served for more than 5 years had died from a brain hemorrhage during an operation. It's doubly painful when she lived near my house and had asked to see last month but I could not reach her as the landowner of the block of apartments had locked the main door without a bell or intercom. It's very sad. Tomorrow is her funeral. Our small Armenian community will be present. 

And one of the last magnificent laurel trees outside New Gate have died and fallen from a rotten core. There were once 5 huge majestic laurels along that part of the City Wall but now with the death of this one, only two remain. The sparrows and bulbuls have nowhere else to build their nests. 

Empty streets

Everything here just seems to be so gloomy. Even the weather. It's gray, cloudy and chilly with humidity in the nights and early mornings. Few people in the streets under this tense situation. Police are everywhere ... even mounted police who are only deployed if there's a riot. 

Two volunteers from France and the Philippines had to cancel their flights here to help me in the library because of flight stoppages and restriction of travel by their governments. Both are expert librarians working in prestiges libraries with many years of experience. Now I'm stuck alone to work by myself.

Let's hope for better days ... Here it's only prayers. There's nothing else anyone of us can do.

Autumn

Dates on palms

As we head to autumn, the weather strangely has gone all hot again like mid-summer. 30 degrees or more. The nights are quite cool though ... but daytime is oppressive with the heat. The fruit trees are ripening their fruit for the autumn harvest. I see dates on the palm trees and pomegranates growing wild by the streets ... that's a sure sign of autumn and the Jewish New Year. In fact some shops are already selling ripe dates, grapes and guava ... all autumn fruit though it's still a bit too early. They're not very sweet too. The best fruit comes in October.

Mounted Police on watch

Security continues to be tight in and around the City. Youths are stopped and checked randomly. Streets are a lot more quieter. No one wants trouble. Life as it is, is difficult. War has made it worse. Food prices have skyrocketed. One kilo of tomatoes used to cost 3 to 5 shekels. Now it's 32 shekels ... almost US$10. People can't afford to eat normally now. Buying things nowadays are checked if it's absolutely worth buying or necessary or could be done without. Every cent is counted.  Because daily life is now becoming difficult, tensions among people are short and arguments and fights are more frequent.

There was a fierce exchange of fighting up in the north, but all is calm now. Let's hope negotiations are successful and peace returns.

Geez Youth

Tigrinian children at Mass

More bits of ceiling have collapsed in the rooms and corridor of the wing whose terrace is under renovation. And then on Friday night when I came home, there was no electricity in our entire wing. In the dark and receiving instructions over my handphone from our janitor, I had to grope through the main power box in our corridor to at least restore electricity to my room as I'm the only one staying in this bloc. I finally managed to do it after half an hour. Next morning our janitor came back to work and discovered one of the rooms had water (or asphalt) leaking down its roof and caused a short-circuit in the electric wires, thus resulting in the entire wing being blacked-out. The nightmare just gets worse.

Hymns with drum

Saturday morning was a consolation for me to celebrate Mass with the Geez Rite Catholics .... mainly Tigrinians who were celebrating the Feast of the Assumption. Every year on this feast, the youth group would offer Mass and sing in a lively liturgy. I loved it. This year they even had the huge drum which they played during the post-communion hymn. Unfortunately the feast was marred by riots in Tel Aviv when Eritrean and Tigrinians fought over political differences back in their hoe country ... killing one and injuring several. Because of the complicated political situation in their countries, our Catholics prefer to be called Geez Rite based on the ancient liturgical language. In fact our Catholics belong to Ethiopian, Eritrean and Tigrinian communities. 

Tensions in the north of the country flared last night when Lebanon and Israel exchanged missile attacks. Hopefully today there is calm and people can go to on in normal daily life. The disruptions from north and south is taking its toll even for some people here in the center ... psychologically. Nobody wins in a war; everyone and everyone absolutely suffers.

Nightmare

Cemented terrace at 4am

Last night was the nightmare to top everything. The workers on the terrace began to pump cement over the asphalt covering. Because our street is too narrow, the cement truck was parked some 50 meters down the road. A long pipe brought the cement not just to our door but up 5 floors to the terrace. And that was 8pm. They completed the work at 2.30am. And the pump was directly above my room. The noise and chaos went on all night and I couldn't sleep a wink. Workers shouting from above my room to 5 floors below and down the street. Fallen pipes and heavy equipment caused our ceiling to crack at various places. And nobody was supervising the work. I had only 2 hours of sleep as I had to go to the Ivrea convent for Mass at 5.30. Absolute nightmare.

Pieces of ceiling fall off

Now at 9am my head is still reeling from the noise and lack of sleep. But I can't afford to rest as there's a researcher coming to do last minute work on the martyrs of Damascus before their canonization in October. The library is officially closed for summer but under these circumstances, I have to let the researcher do his work. It's going to be one exhausting day. 

Stromata

Full moon

The full moon is slowly waning ... and that spells the coming of autumn. In fact the nights are much cooler now; and during the day, though hot at 29 degrees, a cool breeze blows through. Hopefully this will bring rain and snow this winter. We need it.

Renovation work on the terrace is a nightmare ... because there is no supervisor. Incompetent workers drilled holes through the roof into rooms below. I don't know how they'll repair that. When the rains come, we'll see if they had even been repaired at all. Workers steal food and drinks from our students' fridge. Wiped clean. Nothing left. 

Full sun

I've been losing my memory again ... not knowing where I am, what I'm doing ... I actually was lost twice during Mass yesterday morning. Not sure what triggered this. Maybe lack of magnesium. Anyway I've decided not to go anywhere except home and work. That'll keep me safe from getting lost in the streets.

I thought I'd spend my summer watching Dr. Who episodes ... but summer is almost over and I've hardly seen a full episode. Too much work. Unbelievable how time flies.

Talk

Eli the Scribe

A new week has begun. It's a full moon tonight and I want to snap a photo of it over Damascus Gate ... we'll see if I can do it tonight. It looked already fantastic yesterday night from my window.

Yesterday was another busy day. I organized a morning conference with local religious to meet with Eli, a jewish scribe. He demonstrated the tools of his trade and showed how a scroll is written by hand. Very interesting. Everyone liked it. It's a summer thing that I do for the local religious who don't go on home leave. It's a tiring hot summer with daily routine ... no break for them in the kitchen or hospital. So I provide little moments like this to refresh them and get them out of the house for half a day. Next month I think I'll get the group to go out and visit some nearby villages ... provided there's no war. These outlying villages can be hot spots for violence as the past decades have seen. And that's why nobody goes to visit them ... abandoning the memories of Old Testament events that took place there.

I'm being eaten alive by cat fleas. It's the 3rd time this week I've been to the pharmacy and they've given a stronger medicine each time. Why can't we have summer without cat fleas?

Weekend

MC sisters receiving
donations

It's the weekend again. The weather has been much more agreeable; hot with cool breeze during the day. Many trees and especially roses are recuperating from the past severe heat but sprouting new leaves and branches. That's a good sign that there's sufficient moisture during the night to enable sprouting.

Financial woes grow among the poor who have no jobs because tourists are not coming in sufficient numbers to make a difference. There are many requests from parents asking for help to sponsor their children for the new academic year that starts in September. Families are forced to reduce their daily expenditure, so cannot even afford clothes or food, let alone electric and water bills. We've been working hard to gather donations from parishes and distributing them to the poor through the help of the MC sisters.

My memory has been pretty fogged recently. Yesterday I totally lost all consciousness of time. Didn't know what day it was or why I went to a certain office. It was terribly confusing. I noticed that this happens whenever I change medicines or when I'm stressed. I'm just afraid I may get lost in the streets when it happens. Yesterday I thought I contracted covid again: fever, sore throat, running nose, diarrhea. I took lots of lemon juice, vitamin C, panadol and sunshine all morning. In the late afternoon I left much better. Today no signs of covid ... so I guess it was "just" a cold.

I noticed that the autumn equinox falls on Sept 22 and mid-autumn festival on the 19th. That's about a month's time. The year has passed very quickly. Soon it'll be Christmas again.