بيت الحرية / בית החירות / House of Freedom

Sometimes I wonder why we humans feel the need to document our lives. Unlike most other mammals (except for maybe elephants and dolphins, as far as we know), we have a huge capacity for memory and the ability to reflect on our thought processes.

I don't know if I am writing this blog for myself or other people. I think mostly for myself, so that when I am 50 (in sha Allah I will live that long) I can look back and reflect on the adventurous things I did as a young adult.

Anyway, I want to write about the place I am going to call the House of Freedom. This is the place where some Israeli friends live in South Tel Aviv. (I am not going to mention the exact location or any names to protect their privacy, as I usually do when I mention friends or acquaintances on this blog.)

It is quite wonderful that there is a place where hippies like me can just hang out with other young people and talk about pop culture and be silly and laugh and basically be ourselves.

This house has been a refuge where I can take a break from being a foreigner (even though I will always be an American tourist here) and just relax, learn a little bit of Ivrit (Hebrew)...when I am most other places in Israel, I feel a little bit on guard, like I have to be proper all the time, and here I can let my hair down (my short hair, that is - lol).

Even though I am lost in translation a lot of the time because my knowledge of Hebrew is minimal, my friends are kind enough to translate for me and teach me new words.

Although I do have many other wonderful friends in Israel, there is something comforting about being with a group of other 20-somethings who are trying to figure out who they are and what they want out of life while balancing the stresses of work or school. I forgot how much I missed this camaraderie from my college days.

Then there is the neighborhood. Most people think of South Tel Aviv as pretty gritty, which it is to some extent (I try not to walk around by myself at night), but there is also a cultural richness to this area that cannot be found in other parts of Tel Aviv or Israel. Many Eritrean and Sudanese immigrants live here, and every Saturday there is a wedding or other celebration going on. Today I was walking to a cafe with a friend to have breakfast, and we saw some Filipina (I think Filipina) women in bright red dresses somewhat akin to Indian saris, with sparkly gold edges, and a group of Eritrean (or possibly Ethiopian) people where the men were dressed all in white, and the women in intricately beaded dresses, some colorful and some white, their hair braided in labyrinth-like patterns.

This neighborhood reminds me a little of some parts of Brooklyn or Queens, where many immigrants in New York live. They bring their cultures and make the neighborhood more alive with their music, traditional dress, and food.