Discovering Israel — Part 5
The General’s Son by Miko Peled
Another book I read through my Palestine book club. And another book I would highly recommend. It has taught me so much about knowledge. It had made me reflect on me, my life, my grandparents, and my education so much that I’m struggling to keep this article about the book and not about myself.
It starts with his grandmothers. One was a professional woman and the other a housewife. That’s not the fun part, the fun part is the importance of being thrifty. It made me laugh. First mistake his ‘professional’ grandmother made is to tell boys about being thrifty. That’s not the job of the ‘males’ — feel free to laugh, but this was normal in my home country especially after World War II. Girls were taught to be thrifty as a way of teaching them to be good mothers, wives and, ultimately, women. Men didn’t need to learn this because their job is to make money and bring it home. It was the job of the women to make that money go as far as possible. However, it had to be done without denying your family comfort.
There is no mention of his ‘housewife’ grandmother being thrifty, but I’m willing to bet that whenever she peeled anything (apple, potato, beetroot, anything) she knew how to peel it thin so there is no waste. She also probably turned off the water, the lights, and everything else whenever it…