The Big Felafel

Today’s Balagan and Chaval Award

Today’s Balagan (mess) and Chaval (shame) Award goes to the Classics Book Store which closed its business today. Located downtown on the steepest alleyway between the municipality (ugh! Arnona) and the misrad hapnim (Ack! The face office), is a yellow gated, easy to miss, used English book store. Here’s how it looked inside. Imagine your bookshelf at home. Now imagine being really angry and shake the bookshelves until all the books fall out. Now attempt to smush them back in wherever there is room. Oh, and make sure that all the books are in front of other books and all over the floor. This is how it felt today, but worse. Nowhere to step. No friendly hi when I walked in to make up for the balagan. No respect for books, or people for that matter. I felt belittled. People went up to the attic of the store which was not lit, to look through boxes and boxes of books. I asked him where the books are going after the sale. He said recycling. Recycling! Chaval. He couldn’t give it to another bookstore?! A few of us at the sale suggested cynically that it would be easier to find the books we wanted at the recycling bin after the sale than at the sale itself. I asked what was going to be taking the place of the book store. He said, get ready for this, a book store!