Fili’s world

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“Hey, hey you…”, I hear somebody calling in English.
I’m sitting down at some cafe place in downtown Jerusalem, reading the daily newspaper. I raise up my head to the girl calling for my attention who just switched shifts with the girl who previously took my order. “Yeah?”
“Your dish. You want…. eh… how you want your dish?” she asks, in English.
I stare at her, look down at the Hebrew newspaper I was reading with the very big bold headlines about our designated prime minister forming Israel’s new government, then look back at her - trying to understand why she’s talking to me in English. I go over to her…
“You come, good good, you understand? You say you want, you don’t say what kind…” she keeps on with her very Israeli English.
I smile and ask in Hebrew - “Why aren’t you talking to me in Hebrew?”.
For a second, she looks very surprised, then looks at her friend in charge of the register, and then asks me in a really high pitch voice - “Oh, you understand Hebrew! Are you Jewish?”.

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“Boker tov, ma nishma?” (Hebrew for “Good morning, how’s it going?”).
She looks at me with a big welcoming smile, and replies in English - “Oh, you come to see tour?”.
“Ken” (Hebrew for “Yes”).
“Oh, not many people this morning, but tour start one hour. You come, you go, you have look around, you see many things, you come”… English again.
“Az od sha-a?” (”then… in an hour?”, in Hebrew), I’m puzzled as to why she insists on replying in English, while I’m obviously talking Hebrew.
“Oh, it’s okay, we speak good English here, have good very good English guide. You come where?” she tries to calm me, as if it’s difficult for me to speak in Hebrew.
“Taiwan, I’m from Taiwan” - I decide to go along with it. If they insist on talking to me in English, so be it.
“Oh, Taiwan… ofcourse.” she looks like she’s trying to recall where Taiwan actually is, “Welcome to our country.”

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While I was touring Vietnam, it occurred to me that there’s one thing I want to do when I get back to Israel. On “Things I constantly think about doing” I mentioned that I wanted to “Read Israel (And the Occupied Territories)’s Lonely Planet, fake my way around Israel as a tourist from Iceland (?!) and see what the people and places are like.”. It’s been on my mind alot, but I never thought I’d follow up on that, and not that I was planning to.
First time I thought it was mere chance, second time I thought - “okay, funny, but maybe -this and that-”, but third, forth and yesterday the fifth time, I’m thinking something weird’s going on. I wasn’t trying to look like a tourist, but service-folks from various business and tourist attractions treat me as if I’m not Israeli.

A friend invited me for a sleep-over at Northern-Israel Benyamina two days ago to watch Macabbi Tel-Aviv play. Macabbi, the leading Israeli basketball team which were the European league champions for a while now, lost to the Russian team - Tzeska in the European finals for this year’s basketball-title (Both countries - Israel and Russia, mind you, aren’t exactly European, but they still somehow dominate the European basketball field).
I was suppose to start work early the next morning, but I figured that since I drove all the way over there, might as well enjoy what that part of Israel had to offer. So, next morning, I took off to visit Ceasarea (My link), where everybody insisted on treating me like a tourist - although I am, like it or not, very much Israeli.

When I got to the last station of the tour, I started talking to a woman who was an intern there and was watching my small tourist-group from the side while taking notes. I asked her why in the world they all thought I’m not Israeli. She bursted out laughing and replied - “You’re Israeli, eh? Dear god, I can’t remember the last time we had a young guy your age come here alone so early in the morning, and besides - you really don’t look that Israeli, there’s something about the way you carry yourself, and we tour guides are very sensitive to details like that”.

I haven’t decided yet whether I’m offended or flattered by this recent development.