Brunch in Jenin: cheese pastries and prison memories

Dalia took me for brunch at “Delicate”, home to Jenin’s - and probably the Middle East’s - best pastries.

The pastries were divine, light, crunchy, tasty - just enough to make you want to rush in for the next bite, without overwhelming you with flavour and forcing you to pause. I had to stop eating so that Dalia wouldn’t see me as an ogre, and suggested we take out some pastries (for her mom, I said) - my excuse to take some snacks home.

Yet this is not today’s story.

For the place, however, and its owner were far more interesting.

With a prime and exposed location on the main street of Jenin, ‘Delicate’ usually suffers purposeful or collateral destruction whenever the Israeli army graces the city with its presence.

And it seems that this experience has created a strange, a familial bond between all people working at Delicate, as well as with their regulars. “In it together”, essentially.

And in this family, Alam plays the big brother.

Alam - whose name means ‘tall mountain’, in old Arabic - smiles at his clients from behind his counter and his oval glasses, and his goatee dampens his warm smile into that of a polite clerk. I tend to think this was precisely the effect he was going for.

His eyes laughed at me when I asked him about the cards - but he answered anyway.

The cards? Well, Alam was in Israeli prisons, in Ofer then in Megiddo, for three years. I did not ask him why, and he didn’t say - I knew it would add nothing to the story, for Israeli prisons, as a friend once said, “is like a tax that we all have to pay, sooner or later”.

And during these three years in jail, he painted. And he wrote.

He painted what he wrote, he wrote what he painted. His thoughts flowed on paper, and what he wrote, he sent out - to the pastry shop.

Three of his old cards are now plastic-coated and placed on the counter, for those who care to raise their eyes a few centimetres above the dessert display case.

At times, he wrote to his fellow co-workers, which included his brother, as the rest of the team; he thanked them for the good times, he joked, he reached through from prison for a firm, long handshake.

He wrote to his clients - sometimes even naming them one by one, starting one his letters with “Dear Ashraf, Abboud, Khalaf, Ghassan, Jarrar, Hassan, Amin, Farid, Maher, Bahaa, Shalbek, Farouk..” He reminisced, with fantastic details, he thanked them for being the friends they did not plan to be.

When I asked him why on earth would one write his former workplace from jail, he said that he spent so much time here, with his brother, with his coworkers, that it became his surrogate home, if not the real one. And in the really bad times, one seeks a sense of normalcy, clings onto his memories. And you’re really grateful for it - and if you have the guts, you say it.

Prison makes you thankful.

Here is one of the letters he wrote:

“To the customers whom we got used to seeing at Delicate.

Girls and boys, fathers and mothers. To those faces, to those shadows.

An impromptu salute from the Megiddo prison.

And in the prison, my dears, days are but days, carrying nothing but the rotation of the clock.

Yesterday I reminisced about days at ‘Delicate’, so I write today to reminisce about that door, these doors, the counter, the long chair in the corner, the gateaux fridge, the oven, the kitchen, the wooden floor... and other details, taking shape along the days, eventually becoming part of my life.

Yes, my dear friends... the palm of my hand longs to touching that doorknob.

Greetings,

Alam - 17th of April, 2004. “

I was taken aback by this dream of normalcy, of routine. May I say - of boredom.

Isn’t that the story of the Palestinian people, of all oppressed peoples, for that matter? The quest for normalcy?

(a painting by Alam. It reads “To believe, you must understand”.)