I pulled out the Hebrew edition to show him. Delighted, he took it into the kitchen to show his wife and the rest of the staff, then returned to my table and, indicating the English article, asked, "So what paper is that one?"
"It's Haaretz in English," I said. "I have a subscription for an American newspaper and they come together."
"So you can read English easily? Whole articles, just like that?" asked Ronen, incredulously.
"Um, Ronen... English is my native language," I said.
"It is?" he asked. "You never told me that!"
Ladies and gentleman, I have arrived. I may look foreign to some but - ha! - I fooled a native. I plan to bask in the glow for a few more hours - or until the next time I watch a native-born Israeli friend's lips twitch with suppressed laughter as he reads something I wrote in Hebrew.
Monday was a looong day, but a very interesting one. We went up to Jerusalem with grand plans to do an interview with the Jerusalem Post, tour the Old City, go see the separation wall in Abu Dis and meet a Palestinian journalist friend of mine, but of course there simply wasn't enough time to do everything. The interview with Orly Halpern, the JPost reporter, was fun but took three times as long as planned (article here). By the time we finished it was nearly dark, so there wasn't much point in touring. Instead we went directly to meet my friend Sayed* for coffee.
Sayed lives in Ramallah, but he's frequently in Jerusalem because he works for a foreign broadcasting corporation. We went to chat in a cafe, where we were joined by Jamal*, an Arab-Israeli journalist who works for an Arab television station that's based in the Gulf region. During the course of the conversation we gave Hossein a succinct-as-possible explanation of the difference in status between what some call "1948 Palestinians" and "1967 Palestinians" - those who are Israeli citizens and those who have Palestinian Authority identity cards. I was particularly pleased that Sayed, Jamal and I were able to give a neutral - and at times funny- summary of this very controversial, very loaded subject.** We also talked a bit about how common it is for Israeli and Palestinian journalists to work together - that many have good relations and routinely share information.
Sayed wouldn't let us pay. As we left he called out in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic to the owner of the cafe, "Yalla, habibi. Ma'as salameh. Put it on my bill."
[Sayed never lets me pay for anything - whether he visits me in Tel Aviv or I visit him in Ramallah. He insists that this has nothing to do with machismo. Hmmm...].
Hossein met a few Iranian Jews who own shops along Jaffa Road in Jerusalem. In striking contrast to the Iranian Jews he met in Tel Aviv - particularly through the Centre for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University, where he gave a presentation last week - the Jaffa Road shopowners were a suspicious, surly bunch. Hossein was less-than-impressed. A couple of the younger guys made some nudge-nudge-wink-wink comments about how to find girls in Israel, but the rest were barely civil. One guy, upon hearing that he was being introduced to an Iranian Muslim, muttered an inaudible excuse, ducked out of the shop and disappeared. I gathered that they were suspicious of Hossein - perhaps they thought he was a spy. But they weren't the only ones who were suspicious: one Israeli reporter friend told me that a colleague was convinced Hossein was a foreign agent. (to which Hossein asked, "Foreign agent for whom?") Then again, the colleague has a reputation for seeing conspiracies all over the place.
On the other hand, the trendy Tel Avivis who gathered that night at Lima Lima, a lounge bar on Lilienblum Street, were very warm and receptive.
Hossein giving a talk at Lima Lima. (more photos on Flickr)
Neither Hossein nor I had anything to do with arranging this event, by the way. It happened like this: one of the founders of ilcu.com read Hossein's New York Times opinion piece, saw that the dateline was Tel Aviv, got his email from his blog and invited him to sign up on ilcu. Within a few hours someone who does public relations for ilcu had arranged the event at Lima Lima and posted it on the site; within half a day nearly 40 ilcu.com members had confirmed that they would attend and in the end more than 60 showed up.
By the way, I really recommend checking out the event page on ilcu. Scroll down to find photos taken at Lima Lima (much better than mine), profiles of ilcu.com members who attended and comments - including comments from a couple of those new Iranian members.
After Hossein and I posted a link to the event at ilcu.com on our blogs, several Iranian men signed up on the site and, according to one of the founders, have been happily making friends with several Israeli women who are also ilcu members. Now I'm waiting for some Iranian women to sign up and become friends with Israeli men.
The event was basically a casual Q&A session, with questions ranging from cultural to political. People wanted to know if Ahamdenijad had the power to wage nuclear war; whether the Iranian government was as sophisticated as the Chinese at censoring the internet; whether there is serious poverty in Iran; what young people in Tehran did in their spare time; and why Hossein can't go back to Iran right now (it's not just because he's visited Israel).
Afterward a group of us (including Rinat, looking particularly lovely here) went off to nearby Nanouchka (video of "a day in the life" at Nanouchka here), a Georgian restaurant that becomes a major "scene" after midnight. A meal and more drinks were followed by a photo session and interview for an upcoming cover story on The Iranian for this week's Ha'Ir (The City), a weekly supplement that is distributed in the Tel Aviv area with the Friday edition of Haaretz. I think there is also supposed to be an article in this week's Time Out Tel Aviv, and on Thursday he will be interviewed for Voice of Israel's Persian-language broadcast.
More links about Hossein's visit:
Ynet article (Hebrew link)
BBC Radio interview (me and Hossein)
MetaFilter
Oh, by the way - quick clarification in response to some emails I received: It is true that some Iranian Jews who live in Israel do manage to visit Iran, and that Iranians have visited Israel in the past and returned to their home country without facing any serious consequences. But those visits were always made very discreetly, almost clandestinely, usually via Turkey. The point of Hossein's visit is to break the taboo by breaking the silence. Given that his website is censored by the Iranian government and that he was warned by a government official following his last visit not to return to his country, I guess his visit falls into the category of "gutsy".
*Not their real names.
**Some people reject the term "Palestinian" for Arabs who have Israeli citizenship. Instead, they prefer the term Arab-Israeli, which is most commonly used in Israel. Jamal said he preferred Palestinian of Israeli nationality. This is just one example of how complicated the whole subject can become.
