1/11/02

Beginnings

There's nothing like starting all over again -- at the right place and the right time.

 

   It seemed like the worst of times. My room was small, my roommate big, and there was hardly space for the mice and giant flying cockroaches, but we managed. It was like a jail cell, with the government-issue bed and sheets and plastic plates, no phone, no TV, no money...

   But it was the best of times. I was a new immigrant with starry-eyed expectations, in an absorption center with about 200 excited young hopefuls.

   A few weeks before I got there, when I was still on Kibbut Na'an, an immigration official came by and asked what I want to do after ulpan. I didn't know. "I want to work at The Jerusalem Post," I said fancifully, "but I know it's impossible to get in. Or I'd like to do advertising copywriting, but there's only one full-time position in English."

   He suggested I sign up for tuition-free studies, which included dirt-cheap accommodations -- and I'd get a monthly stipend to boot. It was either that, or stay on Na'an and make a career of moulding pipe fittings. I asked what was available. He started reading from a long list: "Let's see ... there's hotel management school --"

   "Stop! I'll take that."

   When I arrived at Maon Tiran absorption center in Herzliya Pituah, Simon was undoubtedly at the reception desk, but I didn't notice. I did notice Dvora, the house mother. She was a lovely, petite Yemenite with cascading black hair down past her waist, so yeah, I noticed her. Simon, a squat, roly-poly, squawk-talking Londoner, thought he was the house mother. He was a resident immigrant like the rest of us, but he lived behind the reception desk, where he could keep tabs on the front door, the mail and the payphone. He was either a consummate yente, or a spy posing as a yente, but either way, nothing happened in our lives that he didn't know about. One day, Simon saw me getting off the #90 bus, and came running. "Mazel tov," he mumbled, "Your sister had a boy." That's how I first knew I'd entered unclehood.

   I think he kept us all honest, because you couldn't cheat on your girlfriend without him knowing, and he'd tell.

   We needed Simon, because 200 people had to share two payphones, which were permanently temporarily out of order. To get a message out, it didn't matter if we had the necessary asimon, we had Simon. An anxious mother (it was wartime, as usual) would call from Argentina or France, and Simon knew just what to say. He would hand us our mail and tell us what's in it. He had opinions about us and shared them with anyone who would listen. Everyone did.

   But even our know-it-all didn't know the melancholy overwhelming the boy in Room 201. One quiet Friday afternoon, the Austrian-Jewish soldier closed his door, pointed a gun at his head, and shattered our innocence. The disbelief we couldn't shake was why he did it the day his army service ended. We flayed ourselves with guilt: we had all clustered into cliques, and few of us even knew this blond boy's name.

   ROMANCE WAS the major clique-breaker. I hung out with the hotel-school students, and the North Americans, until I met a South African gal. Then an Iranian introduced me to Maon Tiran's "Maon Iran" clique. I finally settled on a Peruvian named Estrella, meeting her the day she made aliya (it was also my birthday), and became ensconced with the South Americans. There were Brits, French, and a few other Europeans, but what we didn't have was today's Big Two: only two Ethiopian women -- one, a vivacious beauty, the other, a brooding loner with a cross tattooed on her forehead -- and no Russians. The most exotic foreigner was the occasional Israeli who wandered in.

   Each bunch had its turf, with common hangouts: the front desk, in earshot of the fat little yente; or the lounge. (There was one communal TV, one national channel, no arguments. The good old days.) The bus stop. The immense plaza out front was perfect for long-distance frisbee-throwing, our primary sport; the beach was two minutes away, and the war, far away. We knew there was a war only because of the tanks, fighter jets and attack helicopters traveling north past us.

   One of our immigrant soldiers once managed to call home, providing our highlight of the day. Every phone call was everybody's business, there was no privacy, and anyway, you had to holler to be heard. "Hello, Ma? Yeah, listen, I'm in the army," he shouted, commanding our attention. In uniform, scuffed up from the fighting, the mama's-boy Canadian winced, paused, looked around at us, and turned a deep red. "No, Ma, the ISRAELI army."

   There were too many unforgettable moments to remember, and most of them happened when I was with my best friend, Mike Lefkin of Hartford. If I ever see him again, the first word that comes to mind will be "Cleveland," and we'll go nuts.

   Mike and I always had lots of company, but there was one sad-sack who just couldn't get in with the in crowd. Al was oppressively mopy, and dumb. He once confided that "My only hope is to find a Moroccan or Yemenite wife, because they won't know I'm dumb."

   Al seemed to have reverse comprehension (he would affix American stamps on mail to America). Mike and I were bored one day, so we went looking for Al. We tried to be nice. Where ya from?, we asked. Startled that we'd care to ask, he said "Cleveland." Mike and I shared a knowing glance: it would have to be Cleveland! (They used to have a reputation.) Seeing that Al really wanted to talk about his hometown, Mike continued. "No kidding! Where in Cleveland?" Al answered: "Ohio." Restraining ourselves, we asked if it wasn't the other way around, that Cleveland was in Ohio. Al explained dully that yes, but if you were from Cleveland you were also from Ohio.

   Soon after, Mike and I were at the old Tel Aviv Central Bus Station, standing in line to buy tickets, and we struck up a conversation with a pleasant blue-haired lady. We asked where she was from. "Cleveland," she answered proudly. Mike couldn't stop. "No kidding! Where in Cleveland?"

   Now, it was extremely noisy, and we had to shout to be heard, and she thought he said "where is Cleveland?"

   She looked at us like we were idiots, and said: "Ohio."

   Gershon was another fellow who tried too hard to make friends. We always saw him in uniform, which maybe he thought made him seem macho. So it was comical when he came loping along one day and excitedly told us he had entered a Jerusalem Post cooking contest called Dishes My Mother Taught Me. Well, good luck, big fella, we said, snickering to ourselves. As I was then in chef school, I asked about his recipe. Chicken in Coca-Cola sauce, he said. Feigning nausea from the thought of it, we sent him slinking away in embarrassment, our derisive cackles ringing in his ear.

   The sonofabitch won the cooking contest. He was a sensation. The Post made a big thing of him. To make matters worse, the Coca-Cola company sent him a free case of Coke, and he rubbed it in by offering to share it with us.

   Gershon, wherever you are, I'd like you to know: I've cooked "the dish Gershon taught me," and it's hellacious.

   THERE WERE parts of Herzliya Pituah we entered only with a prayer: not the slums (in this ritzy town, Maon Tiran was the slum), but the richest parts. Mad guard-dogs roamed in packs, and they were known to attack.

   Georges, my Parisian roommate and fellow student, was fearless, and insisted we walk to school the short route -- right through these canine badlands. I begged him to be reasonable, pointing out that even the bus didn't go there, because it was afraid.

   Besides the gripping terror, my other reason for preferring the long route was that I could walk along Rehov Hanasi. For about three blocks, it is one of the world's most beautiful streets. Thickly walled with arched, soaring trees, the street is like a verdant, vaulted aisle in a cathedral in the Enchanted Forest.

   If we weren't in the mood for foliage, but rather feminage, we took an even longer route, along the beach. Bo Derek, the archetypal "10," wouldn't have been noticed here. One day, we were enjoyingthe scenery, me 'n' the guys. A sensational beauty stralong the shimmering sand toward us. A sure "10," we agreed, until she got closer, and we argued if any woman on earth could be a "15" or a "20." She got close enough, and I didn't need Simon to ID her: she was the daughter of an Orthodox rabbi, and only 14 years old. We weren't legally permitted to even fantasize.

   We didn't mix much with the locals: they didn't join us in our rooms for coffee klatches, and we didn't go to their gala embassy parties.

   We partied a lot, but without a Foreign Ministry budget, we couldn't afford food. The Supersol across the plaza was then rated the country's most expensive supermarket (the Bank Discount next door could have been rated the most hated branch), and Maxie's deli you could only dream of entering -- until I got a job there, as much for the noshing as the salary.

   For a while, Georges and I were being fed regularly by the young Iranian woman across the hall. She'd appear at our door, sparkly-eyed, and give us a bowl of rice -- charred rice. Georges and I found this bizarre, because she was my girlfriend then, obviously trying to impress. But burned rice?! Only a couple of months ago I finally learned that among the Iranians, it was a sign of honor to be given this burnt offering. We just thought she was a terrible cook.

   Georges was lanky, elegant, blond, coolly demure, and a quintessential French snob. He got plenty of razzing when he started dating a Brit (conveniently, my roomie's girlfriend was my girlfriend's roomie); then he did the unimaginable: he married a woman from Brooklyn. And went to live there!

   NOTHING WAS mundane then. Every trip aboard the clackety, lumbering #90 was exciting. Our bus stop was like Arrivals & Departures at an airport: We were going to, or coming from, Jerusalem!, or Tel Aviv!, or Eilat!

   What a different time it was. None of us had cellphones, or even telephones; no cars, TVs, computers, laptops, palm pilots.

   Security guards? Simon was more than enough.

   There was no fear. There was optimism.

   We were certain of the future, except we didn't yet know how we'd each fit in. Everyone at Maon Tiran was starting a new life in Israel, with enticing choices in careers, love, advancement, finding a niche in society.

   After struggling through a year and a half of my two-year course, I realized my paltry Hebrew was not going to get me through. I didn't have any serious options. So one day, I decided to start checking the classifieds in the paper. And that very first day, like a godsend, an ad miraculously appeared: "The Jerusalem Post seeks an English-language copywriter..."

   I got the job, quit the course, packed my bags, and for the last time, I got on the #90 outside Maon Tiran. I moved to ... Jerusalem! I was like a new immigrant all over again.

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