6.11.1987

THE HALF OF FELAFEL MAY BECOME A NOSTALGIC MEMORY

In a country that, despite its leaders, is somehow growing up, the demise of the half-pita of felafel is one more example of loss of innocence-even if it's hardly as devastating as the discovery that all those nice boys from the Shin Bet did all those naughty things.

The felafel-makers at Shuk Bezalel off King George Street and just behind the bargain clothing stands have announced that they will no longer sell the hatzi-mana.

"People come down here, fill up half a pita with every salad they can, and eat a whole meal for less than a shekel", complained one kiosk owner, who says that price controls are preventing the vendors from making a decent living off the hatzi-mana.

The last meal in town available for less than a shekel, the hatzi-mana was the perfect mid-morning snack, the ultimate eat-as-you-run mouthful of tongue-scraping sauciness that seemed to taste like what life was all about here-small and sharp, overstuffed and busy, grabbed on the run and, sometimes, on the sly-and occasionally as nasty as it was pleasant.

Sabra may be the term chosen for themselves by the locals, but it was the hatzi-mana that summed up the local spirit.

First of all, the falafel could be completely unpredictable. The balls could be cooked in cold, used motor oil or in freshly pressed sunflower oil; the salads could the be result of some North African mother's genius or a mass-produced imitation; the tehina could have the consistency of watered-down plaster or it could have the runny smoothness of sour cream.

Then there was the manner in which it was sold, a kind of take-it-or-leave-it attitude that reaches its ultimate expression in such things as the broken-down mobile homes in which Ethiopians had been housed, or the way the national unity government blithely continues to be an embarrassment because of the assumption that what's good for the politicians is good for the people.

The vendor would reach dirty-handed into a plastic garbage bag full of half-pitot, jam a couple of felafel balls in the bread, wrap it in a piece of thin and therefore useless paper, and plunk it down in front of you. It was all in one movement, including the offer to knock the chip off his shoulder.

But it was the size that made the hatzi-mana the ultimate metaphor of life in Israel.

Tiny and somewhat mysterious
-what actually does go into green zhug?-it could be as pale in the mouth as the Negev landscape at midday, or as rough as a night in a Ramle discotheque. The textures could be as exotic as the Old City in the short weeks between the end of the Six Day War and the realisation that Israel had its own version of Disneyland; or the texture could result in the need for unexpected dental work.

It was the most appropriate thing to eat while "sitting on the irons", which is what teenagers did in this country after dark when they hung around on street corners, sitting on the iron bars of sidewalk guard rails.

Since "sitting on the irons" required an adolescent agility and balance, the posture necessary for eating a hatzi-mana-came naturally to whole generations whose financial resources were limited to a weekly movie, the bus ride back and forth and the hatzi-mana that could only be eaten without spoiling clothes by adopting that same posture.

The felafel vendors say that they'll bring back the hatzi-mana once the controls are lifted and they can raise the price to something more profitable for them.

But despite the rhetoric on which politicians thrive, only memories preserve the past.

Shuk Bezalel itself is slated for extinction-City Hall has a plan to turn it all into a pedestrian mall lined with cafes and boutiques.

If the hatzi-mana returns, it will probably be called a salat-bar and cost a lot more than a little less than a shekel. Unless of course, Industry Minister Ariel Sharon, always ready to give a constituency what it wants, lifts the price controls on felafel.

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