Leafy sees

Mike’s house of recovery

I was very depressed after my divorce.

Or might I say- shocked? I became almost catatonic with pain

. I became a hedonic- indifferent.

 Mike decided to take me as his personal charity project.

I wasn’t the only broken soul Mike was nurturing.

He offered me a job at the guest house.

To be a host

Mike made me a host at his magic guest-house

and wonders never ceased. I thought life ended

with my divorce but life had different plans for me

It was then I became familiar with my Sister/Wife Nasrin.

Nasrin

is a Palestinian Christian woman, a minority within a minority.

She is a single mother of four lovely children.

Nassrin moved with her children from Yaffa to the old city of Jerusalem.

Nassrin would always invite me for a cigarette and black coffee in the garden,

She would lure me out of my room every day, out of bed.

I had to be nice and check in the guests on the computer. Mike and I, we love Nasrin a lot.

We spent many hours together and we sort of became family.

Nassrin is an educated, kind, and generous woman, but by no way a fool

. She admired Mike and was grateful for the opportunity he gave her

Mike gradually made her his personal assistance and right hand.

And Mike’s house has a lovely garden to sit in,

but one thing a person should never do at Mike’s is smoke a cigarette in the room.

You see, as pleasant and easy-going

as Mike is at some points he can get very stubborn

and non-compromising, that is about hygienic.  

Mike possibly has OCD because he sees crumbs & dust everywhere.

He sees invisible crumbs and specks of dust everywhere.

non- smoking policy

After a while,

I realized that somebody

who runs a guest house must be fully hygienic,

and being obsessed with sterility is kind of

a bonus, a perk in the hotel and hospitality industry.

People are messy and leave traces behind,

we are required to trace them and eliminate them.

Everything has to be disinfected.

At the time

 I thought Mike’s approach to domestic hygiene was

a bit over the roof,

but when the coronavirus started to spread

in Israel, I also wanted to keep it clean.

, so basically I just relied on the training I got as I worked at Mike’s.

Even when I was no longer living at Mike’s House guesthouse

Mike never thought something gets into my thick head

and that I am just a messy person, a Schleper.

But when the time comes

and  I need to keep it clean or else

I’d face unpleasant precautions

(because I was living at Mike’s house for over a year)

– I became grateful for Mike’s obsession with domestic hygiene.