9/2/01
Time Was
When Haim Yavin discovered an Israeli town stuck in the past, it looked like
the news story of all time. But was it?
It was an Arab shepherd boy who first discovered
the Town of East Cohen on the other side of a large
cave, past the wadi where for 36 years no one had
any reason to go.
East Cohen was cut off from civilization when,
in 1965, the government promised the East Cohanim
an access road "Soon, after the holidays."
The residents were told to "Wait" and "Be
patient." Which is what they did.
"These things take time," Yerachmiel
the Barber told Zvika. He was right.
"Yes, but maybe they forgot," Zvika
suggested after about 20 years. He removed his kova
tembel for the barber. "These things happen."
He was also right. Davidke the Ice Vendor tsked. "An
entire town can be forgotten? Trim carefully around
the ears. In New Guinea, maybe, but not in the middle
of Israel." He was wrong, but everyone agreed
that he was right, so they continued waiting.
The shepherd boy, Ahmed, knew something was
odd when he looked around the town square and could
not see a McDonalds. Or even a supermarket. He whipped
out his cellphone and called his father. "Abu,"
he said excitedly, "You gotta see this, it's
like they're from the Bible or something." His
father did not believe him. "Abu, an Egged bus
just passed by, and it's red." Now his
father believed him.
Well, word got around, and the Town of East
Cohen was on the map (so to speak) when newscaster
Haim Yavin found out. He showed up personally.
They had never heard of him, but they were
polite. He explained about TV, and the townsfolk listened,
but nobody saw the point. "If there's news, I'm
the first to know," Shulamit told him. "I
open the window and holler at Varda across the street,
'Varda, did you hear?' And you know how Varda is,
in a minute everybody knows."
Shulamit had a radio that worked fine until
the last war, in 1956.
Any news that requires urgent argument was
dealt with on Tuesdays, at the East Cohen Coffee Shop.
(The coffee tasted like mud, but as Chaya the Beadle's
Wife pointed out, at least there's coffee.) These
days, the hottest topics are whether Golda is too
old, the pros and cons of rationing, and if we should
keep the Sinai. On Thursdays, Zahava's tea room is
open, and the townsfolk drink tea, and gossip. According
to the latest, Avrumele's son says he wants to go
hutz la'aretz, but that's ridiculous, no one
in East Cohen ever heard of such a thing.
When Haim Yavin broadcast his report on the
discovery of East Cohen, the nation was agog. Millions
canceled their vacation plans and came running to
East Cohen instead. Maybe it was because of the free
parking, though there was only one parking place (there
was only one car, Simcha's Simca). Or maybe they came
because of the prices, which were still in lirot;
but go find a lira these days, and anyway, none of
the tourists had valid rationing cards -- not that
there was what to buy.
"Why I came here," a visitor from
Tel Aviv told Ziona, who provided a grand tour of
the town for the price of a #1 egg (her famous cabbage
souffle recipe took three months to make, at the rate
of one rationed egg a week), "is because I always
tell my grandchildren 'Those were the days,' and then
I started to think, what was so good about those days?
So I come here, and it's like I'm young again. After
a couple of hours here," the tourist told Ziona,
"I remember what I hated about the Good Old Days,
and I start to miss my villa." And then the tourist
gave her another egg, as a tip.
Ziona's daughter Yaffa was another reason
people visited East Cohen. Yaffa was 19, very possibly
the most beautiful young woman in the land, and she
could cook, clean, and milk cows. Her ambition in
life was to make one lucky man happy, and more important,
to make one mother-in-law happy, which is why Israeli
women flocked to East Cohen with their sons. "You
always said you want to marry a woman just like your
mother," they would harangue their sons, "Well,
this Yaffa is me exactly."
Unfortunately, Yaffa didn't realize these men
were men, because they looked like girls. Where she
came from, not even the girls wore earrings.
Inevitably one day, through that cave and past
the wadi came the tax authorities, and right behind
them the army induction officers, land assessors,
building contractors, and, of course, Habad, because
how long can an Israeli go with paying taxes, serving
in the army, shopping, and putting on tefillin?
The taxmen quickly calculated the townspeople's
combined debt since 1965 at 70 trillion New Shekels,
"and we want it now," they said. Chava,
who briefly studied accounting -- "It was a nine-year
course," she explained, "because Ben-Yehuda
was inventing Hebrew at the time, and we had to wait
for all the new words" -- presented herself to
negotiate with the taxmen. "We're patriotic Israelis,
so of course we'll pay," she said, "if you
will have these computer things make out the bill
in lirot." The taxmen said it was not possible.
Chava shrugged.
"Austerity is over," announced a
contractor named Dudu. He was going to build a tourist
center-shopping mall-video arcade complex (the first
of several) in the middle of East Cohen, "so
big it'll have three Chinese restaurants!" Ziona
was very glad that rationing was finally over, after
49 years, but she wondered why a town would need a
shopping mall when they already had Nachum's makolet,
"which sells everything."
Sitting as they do every day after supper on
the town's park bench, Zevulun and Haimke agreed that
food from China would be interesting to try, maybe
once, but for that they didn't need a whole new building.
"And I hear they want to put it where the big
tree is."
"Tsk, tsk," Haimke said.
The big tree was where the children gathered
in the evening to sing songs and dance the hora.
"Where else would the children go?"
Haimke shrugged. "Maybe they'll be allowed
to sing and dance in the shopping mall."
Ahmed the shepherd boy found the whole thing
amusing -- that is, until he was almost killed. It
was a silly mistake. Yerachmiel was having a frightful
argument with the army. All these years, he charged,
the East Cohanim had assumed the army was protecting
them from Arab marauders, but it turns out they had
been left defenceless. "We could have been slaughtered!"
Yerachmiel pointed out.
At that moment, unfortunately, Ahmed called
his pal Mahmud to tell him what was going on.
He pulled out his cellphone.
Zvika screamed. "It's a grenade!"
The townspeople ran for cover and a dozen guns
appeared from nowhere.
"Whatarya, crazy?!" the Arab boy
said. "It's a phone."
"Oh yeah?" Davidke called out from
behind Nahum's mule, "If it's a phone, where's
the wire?"
Ahmed was dumbfounded. "The what?!"
"You primitive idiot! A phone's gotta
be plugged in or you can't use it!"
Whereupon the grenade rang.
The out-of-towners found all this to be quite
funny, even if an Arab kid had almost been shot dead.
It was back in '63, Davidke explained -- October
'61, according to Chaya -- that the Post Office promised
East Cohen a phone line. "In only 10 years, they
promised. Be patient, they said. Sometime around Dubi's
bar mitzva -- that would be 1978 -- I remember we
were sitting around at Zahava's and I said they'll
probably put a man on the moon before we get a damn
phone line."
Turns out he was right. By now, Dudu the contractor
said, they've probably already put a telephone repairman
on the moon.
Zevulun now understood why it seemed like so
long since the last elections. "I trust Golda
is well," he said.
HAIM YAVIN, the newscaster who knew too much, realized
this was more than just another story. It was the
impossible fulfillment of his wildest dream. (Maybe
you've noticed, he doesn't look so happy here in the
future. Haim Yavin misses the good old days, when
news was news and he was it, back when he was the
only man in Israel wearing a tie.)
He gathered the invading out-of-towners, including
Ahmed, and he said:
ג€Hevre, what we have found here is a
national treasure, and it must be preserved. Not for
future generations, but for past generations. We must
retrace our steps, and leave, as though we had never
been here. We must leave this town in its pristine
ignorance. We must leave this town to eat its one
egg a week without knowing hunger nor gluttony. To
contentedly drink humble botz, and not be tempted
with capucchino. To forever wait patiently for a telephone
line, and never be jaded by receiving one. To safeguard
Yaffa for a nice, clean-cut East Cohen boy. To continue
believing Golda is alive and well. To read Ephraim
Kishon aloud to one's wife in bed and then chuckle
softly together after the lights have gone out at
nine-thirty.
"Friends, we are granted this last chance
to not screw up our country. Let us go back to where
we came from."
Dudu the contractor, the Habadnik, even Ahmed,
were moved to tears. They agreed unanimously.
"Goodbye," Haim Yavin said to them.
The out-of-towners stared at him. "But
-- you don't mean..."
Yes, he did. He almost smiled. "This place,"
he said, removing his tie, "is where I came from."
