THE BUTCHER'S BEDROOM

Now that I live in Ramallah, Palestine, I have a butcher. His name is Bashir and his meat shop is tiny, like most stores that line the streets and alleys of this small Arab town. He sells beef and lamb only, and custom-cuts the meat right off the carcasses hanging in the window and you get the thrill of watching it.

A poster with American-style beef cuts decorates one wall, an old and faded picture of a flock of sheep and their gentle-faced, white-robed shepherd adorns another, hanging slightly crooked. A third piece of art provides the finishing touch--a painting of the Virgin Mary looking vacantly at the beef cuts on the opposite wall.

Bashir is drop-dead gorgeous--thick, dark hair, dark eyes, great teeth, strong chin, mid-thirties. He’d be a perfect hero for one of the romance novels I write for a living, and this exotic little Arab town would make a wonderfully romantic setting. Unfortunately, my publisher would never approve of my butcher. Bashir is a Palestinian. Readers might think he’s a terrorist.

Bashir speaks a fractured English, which is nonetheless easy to understand and we manage to have some Meaningful Discussions as he severs, cleaves and chops away. He learned English in school, and from some other sources as well; he knows some interesting words.

One afternoon, having worn myself out romance-writing, I stroll into town to purchase a leg of lamb for a barbecue dinner I’m putting on the following Saturday night. I enter his shop just as two Muslim women exit with their purchases. They’re wearing ankle-length thin overcoats that cover their clothing and white scarves that hide their hair. For clarification, let me tell you that many women in this town are not covered up in this fashion, and neither am I.

“Marhaba,” I say as I take the two steps up to the wooden meat counter. Bashir gives me a dazzling smile, as if he has been waiting for me all day. He puts down his cleaver, wipes his right hand on his white coat and sticks it out to me. “Marhaba. Kiifhallik?”

“Fine, praise to God,” I say in Arabic. I know seventeen words in the language, and if you’ve got it, flaunt it, is my motto. “And how are you?”

His face collapses and he looks mournful. I know what's coming. I hear it a lot. Life is terrible in Palestine, so little hope, so much oppression, and all he does is work work work twelve hours a day six days a week.

This is all very depressing. To comfort him I tell him that in America people work work work too. I tell him of endless, mind-dulling commutes, the astronomical cost of psychotherapy, the high price of olive oil. Even in America life is no stroll in the park.

He sighs disconsolately. I have just robbed him of his last illusion. He waves his bloody knife in defeat.

“Everywhere,” he says as he whacks the cleaver down on a bovine leg bone, “it’s the same old shit.”

Bashir finishes what he is doing and asks if I want coffee. You bet. Shopping isn’t just buying things, it’s also a social occasion.

He washes his hands, spoons powdery coffee grounds and sugar into a small metal coffee pot with a long handle and adds water. He places it on a portable gas burner to heat.

“These Muslim women,” he says disapprovingly, referring to the ones that have just departed, “they’re all too fat.” Ethnic, religious and racial prejudice flourishes everywhere, especially in the Holy Land. He explains he likes women skinny, like me. Since I’m in a death struggle to lose ten pounds, I know he’s lying, but I am flattered anyway. I’ll take whatever I can get.

“These Muslim women,” he says again, “they do nothing all day, just sit around and eat.” His own wife is skinny, he tells me, even though she doesn’t do anything all day either. She has no job. She’s just at home with their three small children, doing nothing.

Coward that I am, I remain silent. In my own defense, allow me to say that I have tried to enlighten him on this particular issue on previous visits when he uttered similar comments, but he prefers to remain in the dark about the trials and tribulations of motherhood. I expect he needs primal scream therapy, or at least MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS. Then again, I am here to buy a leg of lamb, not do social work.

The coffee is boiling, foaming, and ready. He pours it into a Styrofoam cup and hands it to me. Now I need to let the grounds settle for a minute. We discuss my meat requirements and he disappears into his cooler because the lamb carcass hanging in the window has already offered up its hind legs.

Now, I hear you ask, what do you do if you want chicken or pork? Okay, let me tell you. For chicken you go to Chicken Street, where a number of small shops are lined up next to each other, all selling the same freshly cleaned birds, whole only, with the heads still attached. That’s just how they do it here. For pork I go to a pork-only butchery in Beit Jalla, a village near Bethlehem, or when my husband works in Gaza for the day he buys it in a butchery in an Israeli kibbutz he passes on his way home in the afternoon. Wonderful pork chops they have there, as well as first-class bacon and excellent sausages. You don’t believe me? Come on over and I’ll show you.

I sip my thick cardamom-flavored coffee while Bashir gets my order ready. He talks about his wife, his children, and his house, which he owns without a mortgage. We talk about cooking, which is one of my passions, and he says his wife is a very good cook. He touches his finger tips to his puckered mouth to illustrate how good. I am relieved he’s so appreciative of this wife’s kitchen skills, even if she doesn’t do anything all day. He decides I should meet her some time and I agree that that would be very nice.

How about now? he wants to know, taking me by surprise.

It is four in the afternoon and I have nothing to do, apart from going back to work and write a passionate love scene. To tell you the honest truth, I’ll do almost anything to postpone writing a love scene. That’s why I’m hanging out with a hunky Palestinian butcher, drinking coffee rather than sitting in front of my computer. (You think writing romance is easy? Hah! You should try it some time). So yes, why not now? I ask myself. Be adventurous! Seize the opportunity! Go visit the butcher’s wife.

Bashir wraps up my meat and puts it in a plastic bag. After I pay him he wipes his hands on his coat and off we go. He stalks out of the shop, leaving the door wide open and calls out something to a person across the street. He points out his car to me, just down the street.

“How far is your house?” I ask, trying not to feel like I’m doing something really, really stupid.

“Oh, not far,” he says, and opens the car door for me like a true gentleman. It’s an ordinary small car that looks a bit worn and defeated. We drive through the narrow, twisting streets of Ramallah, Arabic music wafting in through the open window, as well as the scent of exotic spices, shwarma meat, roasting nuts and exhaust fumes.

I’m wondering what my friends in the States would say if they could see me now, driving off into the unknown with a handsome Palestinian in a bloody butcher coat. On second thought, I don’t need to wonder. I know.

We’re out of town now, hurtling along a narrow mountain road with a dramatic view of the desert. This is Samaria, the one from the Bible, yes. Villages cluster in the valleys, and I hear the call to prayer coming from a nearby mosque.

Not much grows here, it being a desert, and it’s rather awesome to see the endless barren landscape stretching out as far as the eye can see broken only by a few ancient, gnarled olive trees.

Where is he taking me? It would probably make sense to worry. Maybe I’m being kidnapped to some Bedouin tent camp to be kept hostage. Maybe he is not the butcher he pretends to be. Maybe unspeakable things are going to happen to me and no one will ever find me. No one even knows where I am now that I foolishly got in the car with a man who might be a terrorist, who is now taking me away from all I love and cherish.

Well, what do you want? I’m a writer. I make things up for a living. My imagination has a mind of its own

“Where do you live?” I ask casually.

He waves into the desert. “There. Not far.”

He said that an hour ago, or so it seems. Perhaps I should be crazy with hysteria right now, jump out of the car, scream for help, but somehow I can’t make myself. He has a such a gorgeous smile, and such good hair. He should be in the movies. What’s not to trust?

The road passes through a village. White stone houses, a few small shops, a herd of goats. Then finally he slows down and gestures at a big house clinging to the rocky hillside that drops away from the road.

The door opens before we even get to it. His wife indeed is skinny. She’s wearing jeans and a T-shirt, has a baby girl balanced on her left hip and two little boys clutching her legs. She looks tired, like she’s been working all day, but that must be a wrong impression since she doesn’t have a job.

Bashir introduces us and we shake hands and smile at each other. Her name is Samiira and she has a friendly face and warm brown eyes. I feel bad for her. Here is her husband, bringing this stranger to the front door without a warning. Who knows what a mess the house is. I had little kids once, and I know what my house looked like any given day and it wasn’t pretty.

She steps aside to allow us entry. Bashir wants to show me around. It's a big place with high ceilings and a dark, gloomy atmosphere, which I’ve come to recognize as typical of many of the older stone houses here. The furniture is old-fashioned and reminds me of the stuff that my grandparents used to have. However, the place is neat as pin, apart from the numerous colorful kid’s toys strewn everywhere. I’m in awe.

Bashir opens doors and shows me every room in the house, including the master bedroom, which is a rhapsody in pink. Ruffles and bows and roses bloom on the curtains, the bedspread, the pillows. It looks like a Sears catalog display on steroids.

Bashir beams with pride. Next to him, his wife smiles at me expectantly.

“It’s beautiful,” I lie. Well, did you expect me to tell the truth?

“It’s from New Jersey,” says Bashir, explaining that a family member had brought the bedding back from a trip to America..

“It’s beautiful,” I say once again, “I can tell it comes from New Jersey.”

I’m sorry, but I just couldn’t resist.

Bashir is suddenly in a hurry. He has a business to run, but he wants the two of us to visit, which we can do after we run him back to the store so Samiira can keep the car to take me home later. We all pile into the tired vehicle and I sit in the back with the two little boys, who are pestering each other the way boys do, paying no attention to me at all.

Back down the desert road to town we go. Amazingly it only takes half as long as going the other way. We drop Bashir off, and Samiira deftly steers the car in the home direction. We’re there in only minutes. On the way we pick up her sister-in-law who’s strolling by the road with her two small ones.

The three of us sit around the kitchen table, drinking soft drinks, while the kids race around in the house, playing and yelling the way healthy kids do every-where. Both women speak a little English, enough to have a conversation, which is a good thing because my seventeen Arabic words aren’t going to get us very far. We talk about children and cooking, politically and socially safe subjects anywhere in the world. One of the advantages of being a woman when you are a globetrotter is that no matter where you go you can always talk about kids and food with other women if you have a language in common, and sometimes even when you don’t.

Samiira shows me the big pot bubbling away on the stove, tonight’s dinner. It contains stuffed grape leaves and tiny stuffed zucchini simmering in a light, tomato-y broth. This is true home cooking, not often found in restaurants because it is time-consuming to prepare. I have eaten these stuffed delicacies before at a friend’s house and they are delicious, filled with a mixture of rice and lamb and various seasonings. To the uninitiated, however, they might not look very appetizing given that both the stuffed grape leaves and the zucchini have taken on the color of dead seaweed. Then again, people eat that too, in the Far East.

Samiira takes out a plate, fills it with the little bundles and invites me to partake. It’s more food than I eat in two days total and it’s only five o'clock and I had lunch at two. Also, I have a small stomach. I don’t know why, I just do. You hear of these people who’ll eat an entire large pizza with extra cheese all by themselves in one sitting, followed by a quart of chocolate ice cream, straight from the container. I dream of being able to do that. In reality I’d have nowhere to put it, as I have nowhere to put all these greenish cylinders on the plate in front of me now. Bravely I dig in, praying a solution to my problem will magically appear.

It does: A great idea strikes me.

“This is delicious,” I say sincerely, pushing the half-finished plate of food gently to the side, “and I’d like to take the rest with me so my husband can try them too.”

Samiira bobs up from her chair, fishes a plastic container from a cabinet, takes it over to the stove and starts filling it from the pot.

“No, no!” I say hastily, feeling panic rise. “I’ll take the ones left on my plate!”

She waves away this idea. “They are for you, you eat. This is for your husband.”

Well, what can I say? People here are generous and friendly and hospitable, but sometimes that gives you a pain in the stomach.

Later she takes me home in the car and I stagger upstairs to our apartment with a view to die for. It’s the first time I don’t notice the view as I come into the living room. GD is already home and reading the Herald Tribune. I dump the leg of lamb and Samiira’s plastic container on the coffee table and crash on the sofa, groaning.

“Hi,” he says, lowering the paper. “Where have you been?” He is not used to my being absent when he returns home from his day of toil. He seems not disturbed by my horizontal position on the sofa, nor the tortured sounds issuing from my throat. He’s probably attributing these to my exaggerating the ex-haustion from walking up three short flights of stairs. I’ve been known to do that.

“Visiting the butcher’s wife,” I say. I can barely talk and I clutch my stomach.

“I’m starving,” he announces a few moments later. “What’s for dinner?”

“I don’t want to even think about it,” I say with all the vehemence I’m able to muster in my condition.

He raises his eyebrows. “Would you like to go out to eat?” He's a generous and accommodating man.

I groan and shake my head. “I never want to eat again for the rest of my life.

“I see,” he says evenly. He's the calm sort, and he’s used to my making sweeping statements, impossible promises, and untenable declarations. “So what about me?” he inquires. It’s a practical question, not a complaint. “Shall I make myself a sandwich?”

I point at the plastic container on the table. “There’s your dinner.”

He opens the box, gets up, finds a fork, and eats the whole box of stuffed things one after the other. “This is really good,” he comments. "You should learn how to make these."

“In my next life,” I say.

As it turns out, I already have the recipe given to me by my friend Farrah (Muslim and skinny, just so you know). Farrah has a husband and three teenagers, two boys and a girl. On top of that she is a psychologist working with children living in refugee camps. She put up an elaborate, traditional Palestinian meal for us some time ago, which was such a nice thing to do, considering how busy she is and how much time it takes to cook traditional food.

Sitting at the table full of all kinds of food, I looked at the huge bowl of stuffed grape leaves with admiration and asked Farrah if she’d made them herself.

She gave me a look, like: Get real, girlfriend.

“I made the stuffing,” she said, “and then I took that and the leaves to a retirement home where little old ladies love helping out and stuffing the leaves for you. They’ve done it all their lives and they’re expert at it, and it’s a way for them to earn a little money.”

I love this, and I’ll bet that little-old-lady-made beats frozen factory-made. Which of course is the wave of the future.

Anyway, if this were a food article, I’d pass on the recipe, but it isn’t.

Besides, it’s a lot of work and unless you have a little old Palestinian grandma at your disposal, you’d never get around to trying it. You have no time.

All you do is work work work. I told my butcher so.