23/7/93

The Protektzia Principle

If you're not famous, at least be a freak.

    I'm not Avi Cohen. Avi Cohen walks into the post office, gets in line, a long line, and some guy up front notices him and says, "Hey, look, it's Avi Cohen!" And because Avi Cohen is a famous soccer player, everyone begs him to go to the front of the line. Because everyone believes this makes Avi Cohen a pal, even if only for that unforgettable moment it takes for him to whiz by to the palpitating teller.
    I'm also not Yossi Sarid. Yossi Sarid goes for a haircut, and everyone stops by to say hello, how are you, how's the coalition doing. The barber doesn't charge him, traffic stops so people can peek in through the window at this famous person, and the more shameless burst in and scoop up Yossi Sarid's shorn split-ends from the floor as a souvenir. And it doesn't even matter that they may be a sworn Levy man or Shas activist or Kach goon. From now on every time he's on TV, they'll be able to say: "We met."
    I'm not Pnina Rosenbloom, believe me. The poor woman wakes up with a stuffy nose, and to go to the doctor she has to call in a retinue of armed guards. Every human male wants to participate in her life, even if it's only to pass her Kupat Holim pinkas across the counter and over to the clerk. Oh, to get one's hands on Pnina Rosenbloom's pinkas! "Pnina!" they say, already on a first-name basis, "take my place, I'm next." "Pnina! Take my phone number!" "Pnina! Take my money!" And the bewildered medic who's going to look up her nostrils is uneasily aware that everyone is staring at him with quivering anticipation, imagining, woozily, that maybe he'll play it cautious and decide she needs a complete physical.
    I'm not famous, I'm not related to a celebrity, I don't work anywhere helpful like Income Tax or El Al or Toto or Betar Jerusalem, so according to the Famous Persons Provision of the Protektzia Principle by which this country is run, I'm just an ordinary gournisht.
    That is, I was. Until the day my wife gave birth to triplets.
    Now, wherever I go, people stop and stare and whisper, they want to give me their place in line or photograph me or give me gifts -- providing, of course, that the little 'uns are with me. (Without 'em I'm still gournisht.)
    One time we were having lunch at an outdoor cafe. Two young women were strolling by, striking beauties I would have gone goofy to impress in my bachelor days. They saw me and stopped. Love at first sight. They approached  with that I-am-woman expression Robert Redford must get all the time. Then I remembered the kids were with me. "Triplets?" "Yup." "Identical?" "Yup." And then, with typical Israeli sensitivity, mindless of the fact that my mouth was full of gnocchi, one of them asked: "So, was it one placenta or three?"
    In this kid-mad nation, a fellow with look-alike not-quite-three-year-old blue-eyed triplet girls is a sensation. People love a good freak show, and we're it. When we go to the zoo, we're the big attraction. People actually leave the chimpanzees and come running to ogle and point at the shlishiya, petting them on the head and posing them with their own children for a couple of feet of video tape. Even the chimpanzees come to take a look.
    Some day I'm going to take the kids to the Midrehov, find a place between the fat mime and the blind Russian harmonica player, and have the triplets sing nursery rhymes while I sit there with my cap on the ground and a sign that says, "Have pity. I've got no money to send my triplets through gan."
    Lacking the qualifications for special treatment under the Famous Persons Provision, I have to get by with the Celebrity-Status Through Association Clause.
    There was the time my wife and I had to take the girls to the Interior Ministry, Kupat Holim and the National Insurance Institute, all within a couple of blocks of each other, all in the same morning. These are not three of my favorite places.
    We applied for five passports, had three blood tests done and checked in on our insurance coverage -- and it took us exactly 28 minutes.
    It was the first time I had ever seen anyone in the Interior Ministry smile. When the triplets came marching in there wasn't a sour puss in the place. Every soul came alive. "Look, triplets!" "How cute." "How do you manage?" "Did you take fertility drugs?" "Too bad they're all girls." "Are you going to have more children?" And all the while, everyone waved us through the throngs "because, nebich, people like you shouldn't have to wait." And this miserable clerk, of course, couldn't do enough to please us. She practically invited us to her home for Shabbat.   
    Unfortunately, the girls can't spend their lives as a bureaucracy buster, or I could rent them out and make a fortune.
    When my children abandon me and I have to fend for myself, I get by with a photo and a phrase.
    The photo is a darling shot of, as they say here, three twins, seeming to say "Please help my daddy." 
    The phrase is: "But I have triplets."
    I first discovered this conferred immunity when I was stopped by a plainclothes policeman in an unmarked car who was of the opinion that I had not given him the right of way. He was mistaken, of course. He forced me off the road without bothering to identify himself as the law. I thought he was a terrorist; he treated me like one. We didn't get along too well, and the fellow seemed intent on sending me to the gallows, if he didn't first throttle me then and there. It didn't help that I was shouting and cursing at him, and as if things weren't bad enough, he noted that I was eating a salami sandwich while driving a Renault, which is apparently a crime.
    He hollered at me. "You don't have time to eat at home?"
    I gulped. "No."
    He got out his stationery.
    At that critical moment, God put those words into my masticating mouth. "But I have triplets," I whimpered to the apoplectic plainclothesman. "I'm on my way right now to the hospital to see them. They were born yesterday."  He was shattered. "Mazal tov," he mumbled, and let me go.
    Another time, I was stopped by a policeman who (mistakenly) accused me of driving along railway tracks, of all things. "This is gonna cost you 800 shekels and you're gonna lose your license," he said. "But I have triplets," I said, and showed him the photo. He let me go.
    Then, a few weeks ago, I wound up in traffic court (really, I'm not such a bad driver) accused (mistakenly) of driving without a valid license. Seven hundred and fifty shekels. "I didn't do it," I told the wise and kindly judge, "and besides, I have triplets." I showed him the photo. His eyes misted. He dismissed the charges and let me go.
    What is it with Israelis?

IT DOESNג€™T always work. There must be an employment test with the question: "Do you like triplets? [] Yes [] No." If you answer Yes, you become a policeman or a judge; if you answer No, you become a cabbie or a bus driver.
    You can imagine how difficult it is for a mother to get three tykes off a bus when the driver is the sort who resents the inconvenience of braking at bus stops. It is always nice to get such sympathy as "Lady, are you getting off, or what?"
    Or the taxi driver who once scowled, "Just make sure they don't vomit on the seat."
    Not very nice, but for true evil rottenness, none can compare to a woman in the Labor Ministry. She had the power to make or break the few Israeli families in situations such as ours. We were then permitted to bring in a Filipina to help us cope with our barrelful of babies.
    (It must be explained that only a Filipina would do because they are the only blessed people on Earth happy to work 24-hour days, and baby triplets require 72 hours of work a day.)
    I ran from office to office, did all the paperwork, did it again when they lost the file, and then waited. And waited. Parents of triplets commonly lose their sanity while they wait for the Manila mercy flight. I ran from office to office to find the snag. The file, I finally learned, was yellowing on the desk of this woman. 
    I politely introduced myself and explained haltingly why I was standing in her office. She stopped what she was doing but did not look at me. "Go," she said venomously, "and come back when you learn to speak Hebrew properly."
    Clearly she had misheard me, so I tried again. "We're in terrible stress, ma'am. and this Filipina--" I had said a dirty word. She looked up at me, turned purple and screamed: "Hire a Jew! Get a Russian!"
    Now I was sure she misunderstood. "But I have triplets."
    She turned purpler. "We all have our problems. Get out!"
    I never even got to show her the photo.
WE DONג€™T seek protektzia to attain unnatural privileges, but rather to be assured of minimum consideration. In the days when Bezek was a consumer's nightmare, we used to hunt down its employees to befriend, because without someone to speak for us, we couldn't get heard. By infiltrating the company we weren't hoping to get a telephone installed for free, but to get a telephone installed at all.
    If you don't know someone, you have to be someone, but if  you're absolutely nobody, then you have to be like nobody else. Bureaucracy is managed not so much by rules but by mood. If the pakid is interested in you, he'll find a way to help you, to reason with a mad computer bungle, to skirt the nefarious obstacles, to get your file from Point 'A' to Point 'Z' by simply getting out of his chair and walking your file over to Desk 'Z'. The key is to penetrate the glassy-eyed stupor of a grey-collar wretch who suffers a non-stop assault of braying, bitching, bickering, bitter nobodies.
    If you have to be a nobody, be blonde and breasty, or a midget in a three-piece suit, or a new immigrant from Syria, or 115 years old, or a Japanese with peyot, or a father of triplets.
    Nevertheless, nobodiness has its limits.
    One day, my wife and I decided to go forth and seek celebrity-nobodies like ourselves. We attended a meeting of the Jerusalem Association of Parents of Triplets. Freaks of a feather, we were, a half-dozen-or-so couples strutting around, each with a photo and a phrase. "I've got triplets." "No kidding? We've got triplets too." "Hey, look at this photo, we also have triplets." "Me too." It was like being a Jew in the Jewish state. And then, in walked a shy young man and a sweet, petite woman from Lod, barely old enough to be legally married. Yemenite. Humble. Soft-spoken. Somebody got up to welcome them in and introduce them around.
    "Triplets, eh?" I said Canadianly.
    "No," he said, smiling. "Quads."
    Nobody else had anything to say to that.