Old Man in Green Cap

After a two-part servees ride, into Ramallah from Jalazone and then onwards to the outskirts of the city, our daily commute finishes with an uphill walk through the main street of Amari camp to the school. During this walk, we are almost always ambushed by a rambunctious old man in a green baseball cap, who waves his stick at us and elaborates a few wisecracks on a single theme: that we are off to work and he is not. The wisecracks are delivered with much cackling and usually mention coffee and cigarettes, though not necessarily in that order. Sometimes it is enough to simply remind us that he is going to spend the day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he ventures the observation that we are drinking water and he is drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. Sometimes he guffaws about the fact that we will be ducking fusillades of chalk and sweating blood while he spends the day drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, or vice versa. Every now and again he injects a smattering of Arabic into the greeting, but the basic message comes through loud and clear.