A Tale of Love and Darkness

GRANDMA CAST a single startled look around her and pronounced the famous sentence that was to become her motto for the twenty-five years she lived in Jerusalem: The Levant is full of germs.

Henceforth Grandpa had to get up at six or six thirty every morning, attack the mattresses and bedding violently for her with a carpet beater, air the bedspreads and pillows, spray the whole house with DDT, help her in her ruthless boiling of vegetables, fruit, linen, towels, and kitchen utensils. Every two or three hours he had to disinfect the toilet and washbasins with chlorine. These basins, whose drains were normally kept stoppered, had a little chlorine or Lysol solution at the bottom, like the moat of a medieval castle, to block any invasion by the cockroaches and evil spirits that were always trying to penetrate the apartment through the plumbing. Even the nostrils of the basins, the overflow holes, were kept blocked with improvised plugs made of squashed soap, in case the enemy attempted to infiltrate that way. The mosquito nets on the windows always smelled of DDT, and an odor of disinfectant pervaded the whole apartment.