Excerpt from an online chat with my sister:

Lisa says:
I saw Mordecai Vanunu
adina says:
?
adina
says:
wow
adina says:
and?
Lisa says:
at the American Colony Hotel in East Jerusalem
Lisa says:
Nothing
Lisa says:
he just hangs out there
adina says:
:)
Lisa says:
but I had to tell you!

I don't go to Jerusalem very often, but when I do I usually stop by the American Colony Hotel on Sheikh Jarrah Road. The lobby is always full of journalists, foreign workers for NGOs, and multilingual Palestinians who make their living as translators, drivers and guides. For me, the atmosphere inevitably evokes Graham Greene novels.

Summer dining in the shaded courtyard, near the tiled goldfish pond, is always a pleasure; the setting makes up for the mediocre and overpriced food. And there's usually an interesting conversation to eavesdrop on. Once I sat near a blonde guy who looked utterly foreign in his carefully pressed chinos and polished brogues; he was reading Haaretz in Hebrew, spoke Arabic to the waiters and stood to greet the person who joined him in Swedish. What was his story? I wondered.

A couple of nights ago I went to hear a talk given by Raja Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and novelist from Ramallah who is probably best known for his memoir, Strangers in the House . It has been published in Hebrew and English, but not in Arabic. (When asked about this anomaly, Shehadeh claimed not to be bothered that his novels don't reach an Arabic-speaking readership, and added that most educated Palestinians speak English well enough to read him in that language. He refused to be drawn out on the nature of the political controversy that has prevented his book from being published in the West Bank).

I arrived an hour early, so I used the time to buy a couple of novels in the bookshop, and sat on one of the wing chairs in the lobby to read them over a cup of tea with fresh mint. And that's when I saw Mordecai Vanunu. He walked quickly, with his head pulled down between his shoulders - giving him a turtle effect - and his eyes were a bit darting. He looked at me for a split second, then rounded a corner and disappeared.

I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed him, but it seemed as though I was the only one who thought his presence was anything beyond ordinary.