Baked & Fried

My grandmother’s parents came from Egypt and settled in Jerusalem early last century. The extended family lived together in one of those particular Jerusalem homes: built around a courtyard, clad in that particular pinkish-grey Jerusalem stone, overlooking the hills where the Israeli parliament and Supreme Court would later be built, and within walking distance of the market where they made their living.

We were not so much in touch with that side of the family and I know very little about them. They were from Alexandria or Cairo; they came from a lot of money or no money at all; they were originally from Spain, or Aleppo, or Morocco; and there was something a bit ‘off’ about them (years later a distant cousin was at the centre of a major political scandal; another was or is jailed in Panama – shady stuff). My grandmother lost touch with her brothers, and my mum can barely remember my great-grandparents – only her grandmother’s beautiful smile and long grey plaits, and her grandfather sitting in that stone-clad courtyard rolling old newspapers into cones, in which later he would serve the falafel he sold in the market every weekday from seven in the morning till half past noon.