The time to pray

I am sitting in the square waiting for Marwa to come and help me clean the new apartment. She is two hours late. Yuval, from the real estate office in the square, brings me a cup of tea and we sit together on a bench under the big trees.

There is a family living next door to me with several children. Sami is the father. He sells labane and olive oil. Yesterday, Marwa told me Sami and his family were no good. ‘Don’t talk to them or let them in your house,’ she said. ‘I know what they’re saying. They’re no good.’ Marwa’s not from Jaffa. She’s from the North. No one in Jaffa is any good, she says.

But the family hang out on the landing smiling at me. The kids especially: a boy of around 15 – he says Shalom; a teenage girl with curly brown hair, and a smaller girl who presses a fist shyly into her mouth.

Later, the hallway is silent. They’ve all gone, except the small girl who is by my side and curious.

‘Shalom.’ She lounges againast the bannisters. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Leila. What’s yours?’

‘Najwa.’

We’re half-way down.

‘And your husband,' she says, 'what’s his name?’

‘I don’t have a husband.’

‘You live alone?’

'Yes,' I say.

We walk the three flights down, through the mint green hallway and into the square.

Outside, Sami is smoking. Yuval asks him how much for a litre of olive oil. ‘The family is good,’ says Yuval. ‘Well, the boys not so good – but they’re teenage boys.’

Sami is wearing a knitted waistcoat over his shirt and has a large belly. He wears a tailored tweed jacket and has nicely cut grey hair. He shouts up to his wife, who is hanging washing on the balcony, to find out about the olive oil. Sami’s Hebrew is fluent, as is Marwa’s, but they speak Arabic first. Marwa prays five times a day. If she doesn’t pray she doesn’t feel right with herself.

I would like to pray. Jews pray three times a day. Like Marwa, I don’t feel too good with myself if I don’t take the time to pray.