11/8/01

2001: A Water Odyssey

It is hard to imagine what the future will be like. In this fantasy, it is just like the present, only worse.

    This story is science fiction. It is set far into the future: October.
    There is no water, and the once-thriving State of Israel is a barren wasteland where mostly just camels and politicians are still alive.
    The lucky few escaped with their lives; everyone else died of thirst. Even the Palestinians said the hell with it, and suddenly remembering their nomadic origins, sought greener pastures in other countries where they immediately claimed the land (and water) as their own.
    The settlers, who are not considered human beings by 99 percent of the world, don't need water, only land, so they aren't affected.
    The haredim faithfully awaited a miracle, which they knew would come. It didn't, and when the last mikve dried up, they packed up their carts and returned to Anatevka.
    When the last swimming pool dried up, the seculars became religious, and prayed for rain. (Like I said, this is science fiction.) Actually, it worked, because finally one day it rained, a tremendous deluge, and all the poor people complained their houses were flooded.
    Even this epic downpour didn't help. The weatherman explained to everyone who hadn't drowned that it was too little too late, that all the water went right into the sea, that it hadn't rained at all where it was needed, such as on the Golan, and that in fact the water level in the Kinneret had actually gone down. (The weather report was a rerun, but it didn't matter, because that's what they always say.)
    The prime minister, who is by now in charge of nothing but water, announces that there was no cause for worry, because he has a solution: he orders the Kinneret's "red line" lowered yet again, to minus 295. (That is, not below sea level, as it used to be calculated, but below the sea bed, which is more accurate.)
    This solution is only temporary, he says, until the cabinet can agree on a long-term plan. Discussing a long-term plan is itself a long-term plan, begun in the mid-1950s.
    The great Israeli nation -- which had always counted on last-second salvations, and never bothered to save water because "What, the government's gonna let it just dry up? Trust me, don't worry, yihye b'seder" -- is just about extinct. But that doesn't deter the ever-diligent politicians, who promise to consider new contingency plans for budgetary funding for proposed feasibility studies on various alternative options that -- following the requisite parliamentary debate, preliminary vote, drafting, legal examinations, second vote into law, and Knesset committee deliberations -- will be implemented immediately, provided it doesn't get hung up in the bureaucracy.
    It isn't even an election year.

DIASPORA JEWS had planned a solidarity mission, to come and be thirsty and shvitzy along with the suffering Israelis, but they are told: "Don't come, send help."
    In no time, Israel Bonds comes up with millions.
    But they're told: "Don't send money, send water."
    Which they do, and now everyone is buying Israel Ponds. It is a dramatic endeavor: Israeli pioneers and Diaspora volunteers dig large holes throughout the parched land, fill them with millions of bottles of donated water, and instal plaques, so that by now the country is subsisting on Perrier donated by rich Jews.
    The JNF sends all the donors their trees back.
    It's October, warm and sunny with not a cloud in the sky, and everyone's complaining about the weather.
    Then comes the news: after 50 frustrating years, they finally strike oil in the Negev! It's worth trillions!
    Everyone is disappointed. "Oil," they say, "so what."
    No one knows, because it's top secret, but the army has prepared an emergency plan: it is mobilized to overrun Syria and occupy Turkey, invading with water tanks.
    Anarchy reigns in the cities. Roving bands of vigilantes break into villas to check toilet levers. Anyone not on half-flush mode is shot.
    The government urges the population to use potties.
    Dvora Ben Shaul writes in her Earthly Matters column about an exciting new water recycling program. She points out that people in India drink their own urine, believing it to be healthful, and suggests we try it. Subscribers cancel. Dvora is fired.
    The weatherman calls for rain. Sometime this year. Maybe.
    The situation is dire, and it can't get worse, but somehow it does, as Shlomi Cohen, the last Israeli farmer, gives up, and attaches his family to the drip irrigation. Shlomi had staked his livelihood on growing the national passion, watermelons, which are now an illegal substance. The Agriculture Ministry suggested Shlomi grow dried fruit instead, for obvious reasons.
    The Agriculture Ministry, now an anachronism, is merged with Shas, Aryeh Deri becomes minister, and the Ashkenazim are blamed for the drought, because they didn't buy Ovadia's amulets (NIS 24.99 at better stores everywhere) which are guaranteed to produce rain and -- oh, never mind. That stuff really happens, and this is science fiction.
    Religious zealots are everywhere, banging on rocks, expecting a miraculous gush of water. No water gushes out, of course, but Bulgarian cheese does, final proof that God is either dead or spiteful.
    At Ashdod's port, a ship arrives, bearing emergency rations from a foreign country for the children of Israel. What a stupid country. It sends powdered milk.
    (This really happened. Years ago, Ethiopia was stricken with drought, and guess what Canada sent them a shipload of?)
    Archeologists discover a pottery shard from circa August, and find traces of silt, ammonia and pollution. They deduce that tap water was once common in the region. 
     It's pouring in Britain, North America is buried under relentless blizzards, the entire subcontinent is submerged in floods, the polar cap is melting, and Israel is still suffering from perfect weather. Scientists have no explanation for this, but rabbis do ("Jews eat lobster").
    In the story's dramatic denouement, Bentzie, of Bentzie's Odometer Recalibration Co., is seen hosing down his garage floor, and then his car, and then he leaves the water running while he goes to the bathroom (where he commits full-tank flush), and comes back out to deluge his window plants. People come running, apoplectic, raging at Bentzie. Bentzie shakes a hairy-knuckle fist at the mob. "What do I care?" he bellows. The angry crowd closes in. "Don't worry, yihye b'seder," he says, the hose still spurting the last vestiges from the National Water Carrier.
    Proving both that hope springs eternal, and there's no hope.