Of all the Gauls
What’s so Belgian about Belgium? What constitutes a nation? Julius Caesar once famously said, “Of all the Gauls, Belgians are the bravest.” Luckily he wasn’t there to see me run that day, in ignominious defeat, from a flock of geese.
I am a man of rituals. The half-hour walk to work is integral to my waking up in the morning, my cup of coffee if you will. Nothing can start though, before I slush away the night with actual, non-proverbial caffeine.
They were domesticated geese, by the way, belonging to a small farm that’s managed to cling to a plot of land amid the soaring concrete of Ramallah’s construction boom. There, absurdly, a wild goose chase ensued of which not they, but I was the victim. I yelled, stamping my feet. “Why are you following me, hissing like that, wings outspread, menacing? It’s uncouth.” Or something to that effect…
I assume now that they didn’t speak any English. These feathered reprobates clung to my heels regardless of the verbal abuse I slung at them, regardless of the wide arch I’d drawn around the stretch of sidewalk they were occupying for reasons beyond my fathom.
The ruckus must have awoken the farmer. The old man appeared for a brief moment, sizing up the threat, and called off his troops by means of some unintelligible Pavlovian command. The camels in the paddock chewed on listlessly, no doubt disappointed about this anti-climax. I can only hope they got their money back.
My workplace has meanwhile moved to a part of Ramallah that’s more ruggedly urbanized. My walks are uneventful now, a tad boring perhaps, but at least I’m spared the indignation of being chased by animals one-tenth my size. I’ll see a stray dog sometimes, but all it does is run for succor. The only goose bumps now are Jacques Brel’s in my iPod.
He came, he saw, and he sang about Belgium, his “plat pays”. The brave heart of Brel often railed against hypocrisy in this “flat country” where dwelled his muse.
His was a different time though, an epoch that’s melted away in the reveries of a retiring generation. It’s a split country now. Walloons and Flemings. Belgium appears as more of a problem than any kind of solution, and talk of two states is all the rage. A good marriage requires two loving partners, not just one. That sort of thing. The monarchy shifts uneasy.
The conundrum though, the Gordian knot of splitting lies in the capital. Brussels, predominantly French, is an enclave, an island floating in the belly of Flanders. Both sides want it, claim it as inalienably theirs. Waffles are only part of the story.
Ring any bells? Sure, the analogy, the Jerusalem parallel is rough like sandpaper. Far be it for me to be so arrogant as to offer some all-encompassing solution, a clear-cut Solomon’s judgment. Perhaps, unlike the Belgians of Caesar’s fancy, I’m simply not brave enough. Sandpaper, after all, merely scratches at a surface. And yet, it can expose rust, fraught welding, or worse; the knell of breakage. Scissor. Paper. Dome of the Rock.
Today, the old lady who, um… mans the register at the bakery close to my house asked me; “You are German right?”
“Nope, from Belgium,” I answered.
In stead of the usual “What’s that?” she said, “Oh, did you know the Jordanians call us Palestinians ‘Belgians’?”
I’d heard of this, but no one had ever been able to tell me why. “I don’t know, you like waffles?”
She shook her head, and took two Shekels for my bread. “The fedayeen, on their raids from Jordan, used to wear Belgian boots. After a day of wearing these boots, the cheapest on the market, the ‘Made in Belgium’, embossed on the inside would remain readable on a person’s leg.”
“Oh. Interesting.” Sometimes I feel that’s all we leave behind; skin-deep impressions. A nicked paint job. Almost three years here and all I’ve had is a sneak preview, a mere gander. Half-witted metaphor confines my thoughts.
I really do sometimes miss the simplicity of whipped cream on waffles.