Rumor had it that he was only selling apartments to Israelis. His first question to me, as he sized me up: ”Medaber Ivrit?” (Speak Hebrew?)
Unfortunately, his apartments were dreadful. Typically decrepit former homes of East German government officials, there were holes in the wall.
“Before I got into real estate, I sold mobiles in New York,” he said. I thought of him when I found this brochure on my hotel night table.
One of the things I love to do at airport bookstores is take stock of the books they carry. Inevitably, there are surprises, standout titles one would be hard pressed to immediately locate in regular bookshops, and always a good war history or two. While I am no expert on French stores, changing planes at de Gaulle last week, this send-up of Islamic fundamentalism, a collaboration between a comic artist and a journalist, stood out.
The reason? The familiarity of the title. It reminded me of a joke my brother used to make satirizing 9/11 conspiracy theorists, speculating that Bin Laden was secretly Jewish. “Ben Ladin,” (as in Ladino), he would pun, transforming “Bin” (son) into its Hebrew sibling, “Ben”. Seeing this title, stocked on a shelf near auto mags, I couldn’t help but recall David‘s sardonic translation, as though others were clued into his same wavelength.
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