When I'm in East Jerusalem I like to drop by a well-known English bookstore that's owned by a Palestinian man who lived for a couple of decades in the USA. He and I first made contact when I was assigned to write a puff piece about his shop for an Israeli newspaper. The deadline for the piece was too tight to allow for a trip to Jerusalem, so I just interviewed him over the telephone. "Iyad" was charming and he loved to tell stories. I could tell that most of his tales were apocryphal, 'though he told them well, but since the point of the article was to advertise his shop I didn't mind writing up his yarns - as long as they were prefaced with the caveat "he said" or "he claimed." And besides, I've always been more interested in why people tell certain stories than in whether or not they are true.

Several weeks after the piece I wrote was published, I stopped by the shop and we finally met face to face. Iyad turned out to be a well-dressed, immaculately groomed middle-aged man who clearly fancied himself a bit of a skirt chaser. He greeted me warmly and we ended up talking for quite a long time.

Among the many stories he told me was the one about the time he took his mother on a trip to the Golan Heights. Shortly after they started out on the return drive to Jerusalem, Iyad's car started acting up. He drove to a nearby garage and was informed by the mechanic that the repairs would take several hours. By then it was already quite late, so Iyad told his mother that they would have to spend the night in a nearby Zimmer, which is what Israelis call a country B&B.

"Stay in a place owned by Jews?!" exclaimed his scandalised mother. "Absolutely not!"

Iyad explained to his mother that the only other option was to sleep in the car, and in the end she capitulated.

The proprietor of the Zimmer, which Iyad said was a beautiful place, turned out to be a 60-something woman named Aliza who had been born in Yemen and immigrated to Israel as a teenager. And to Iyad's surprise, Aliza - who spoke fluent Arabic - and his mother got along fantastically well. They spent hours sitting on the porch of the Zimmer, gabbing away and sipping tea with fresh mint.

Early the next morning, Iyad left his mother - still sitting with Aliza on the porch - and went to fetch the car from the garage. When he returned to pick his mother up for the journey back to Jerusalem, she told him she was having such a lovely time that she'd just as soon stay for another day or two.

Iyad laughed heartily after delivering his punchline, clearly delighted by this little tale of unexpected friendship between putative enemies.

After a while I told him that I had to go and took out my wallet in order to pay for the book I'd selected. He made a pushing-away gesture with his hands, and insisted on giving me the book as a gift.

I thanked him and he shook my hand with a warm grip.

"Well!" he said enthusiastically, still holding my hand, "I must say, this has been absolutely delightful. It's not often that I get to meet such charming young ladies from Tel Aviv."

Still smiling, he added, "But tell me, you're not a Zionist - are you?"