23 The Ramlah-Lod Market

The "Ramlah-Lod Market" is the commercial name of a market that travels throughout the country and displays its wares every day in a different locality. On Thursdays it comes to Pardes Hana to what used to be the main "Egged" bus station which is now vacant and serves as a parking lot for busses on Saturdays. People flock to the market and the traffic on market day is insufferable. Cars park in every place they can squeeze into and this is a serious nuisance for the local population.

From my workroom I sometimes hear the hucksters hawking their wares and had thought of going there to see what was going on. That is what I did today. I went through the market's gates – and immediately found myself in another world, overwhelmingly colorful, noisy and pulsing with life. I felt the way I did a year and a half ago on a trip to Romania in Târgu Mureş's market. I thought to myself that we travel great distances in order to have a "genuine" experience like this and I tried to see the market near my house through the eyes of a tourist. That is an excellent exercise. Try once to see your house, your street or the Public Square through the eyes of one who, as it were, comes here for the first time and for whom all these things are totally new.

That is the way I looked at the "Ramlah-Lod Market". I gazed at the clothes, the seeds and the dried fruits, the household utensils and the baked goods. A young man standing next to a woman, perhaps his mother, as she is preparing a Druze pitah, sprinkling it with labane and za'atar, rolling it and serving the pitah warm – simply delicious. Notice the colorful pile of clothes. And note the date trees in the background that hint at the world beyond the other reality of the "Ramlah-Lod Market".