The story of Isa, the poor man

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Isa, a short, stocky man with bad teeth, but loves to have a big laugh, was currently looking depressed at the construct in the tent city Yafo. He knew what was going to happen, the tent city would end soon, it’s only a question of days now. What he must do now, he had no idea. The tent camp gave him his daily amusement and food, warmth and help, but with the tent camp gone, that would be gone too.

Isa visited the tent city already for eight months; before that he was walking through the streets from Yafo with his soul under his arms, meaning that he had no purpose in life. He has nobody he knew who he could call friends, there was no woman in his life and also no friend. Years ago a man with the name Igal was his friend, but he moved back to Odessa after he came to live on the streets … and since then nobody.

Those eight months were amazing for him. He left his small room, four by four with toilet, shower and kitchen each day at eight in the morning and sat down in a chair in front of the construct of Wafa and Sukri and got his amusement. Many times he helped out, baby sitting the little ones, guarding he tents and constructs from his favorite people and others, doing shopping and doing little things and for the rest he and others who always came each evening could have fun and the food was always good and more then enough.

Now things had changed. First the municipality came up with the plan to give money to the people if they were willingly to rent an apartment with that money and half of the camp left. Then they started to negotiate with the families who were left and they had a deal too, and that changed the relationship he had with the people of the camp. Isa could not help it then to be quiet and worry. He didn’t tell it to the people, but he was afraid that he would be again standing aline at the end of the story, while the people in the camp could move to their apartments and houses. He knew that most of those people did not have more money then he did, but at least those people had the guts to leave their apartments and live in a tent. If he would do the same that time, he would be the one with some NIS 6,000 and that would enable him to pay for two or three months for an apartment, but that time he did not have the courage to do so and now it is too late.

He gets each month NIS 1,500, NIS 600 per month rental support and that is it. That meant that he had left each month NIS 220 for food and other expenses, like smoking and that meant in practice only smoking, and not enough! Each night he was collecting bottles and each week he was cashing them in and that was exactly enough to enable him to smoke two packs of cigarettes a day. He did not drink, neither he did not eat … well, he did eat, but at the camp with the rest of the people. But now this was finished and he did not know what to do now. The monthly money he got was enough to pay for the rent and the bills, but not enough for anything else. And that was not the worse, the loneliness was the worst. He had nobody to talk to. Isa knew that he had problems with a normal conversation and many people are scared to talk to him when he would open his mouth. His humor was crude and he loved to laugh and many people were not appreciating this. He knew all of that. He hit his head too many times and too many times he was hurt and he hurt in return too many people.

But the end of the camp is for him devastating. It took away good food opportunities and people to talk to, who were accepting him as he was, not more and not less.

Sometimes life stinks.

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Tags: apartment, bills, cigarettes, constructs, food, Israel, loneliness, municipality, Poor people, tent camp, Tent Cities, tent city, Tents, Yafo

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