11/8/00

Only in Israel

Quiet it ain't.

    When the white Mitsubishi signaled right and turned left, it was bad luck for Cohen: he had just repaired his white Subaru, and now -- this.
    In a second, a crowd gathers. Everyone takes charge. (There are nine majors, six colonels and two generals in attendance, not to mention 11 medics, all of whom pounce on poor Cohen.)
    An argument breaks out, as to the best thing to do.
    "He's going to need a new radiator, that's for sure."
    "Waddaya talking. The car's kaput."
    "Idyot. My brother could fix it for maybe eight thousand. Three thousand if The Arab comes up with something."
    It's a warm day. Warm?! It's so warm, a debate gets going: half the crowd is certain it's a khamsin, the other half, a sharav. Things get so testy, they refuse to even agree that it's hot. 
    Levy from the Mitsubishi is hollering at Cohen from the Subaru, blaming him for both the traffic accident and the peace process. He is making no sense at all, but so what? He is shouting loud enough that the majority takes his side.
    "Waddaya crazy? The Mitsibushu shoulda --"
    "Who you calling crazy? Your mother --"
    "Oh, yeah? Your mother!"
    Which gets everyone arguing about why people have to argue at a time like this.
    Cohen, it turns out, did the rewiring in Levy's apartment some years earlier, and that makes Levy even madder, because the house short-circuits every time he uses the shaver when the fridge is working. And as it turns out, Levy's nephew does miluim with Cohen's fat son, and a bus driver who had stopped to survey the damage happens to be their sergeant who wouldn't release the nephew for his cousin's wedding but, as it turns out, Cohen's son was also invited (the cousin is his girlfriend's brother), and he was given leave.
    A long line of cars is honking the bus driver to get moving, because they also want to see the damage before it's cleaned up. The driver takes one last look, says "tsk-tsk," and drives off. A tremendous traffic jam has formed in both directions, and, although several passersby have taken it upon themselves to direct the traffic, nothing's moving because everyone has to stop and ask "What happened?"
    Some dimwit comes running up, waving his cellphone, and asks if he should call an ambulance. As if -- with a tenth of 1 percent of the national population already on hand -- he's the first at the scene with a phone.
    The first were, in fact, both Levy and Cohen, because both were talking on the phone the moment the accident occurred (turns out the people they were talking to sit next to each other in shul). Thankfully, Cohen's only serious injury is a bent antenna.
    Is it hot.
    A parked car nearby starts emitting a shrill wail, like an air raid siren, but nobody notices. Actually, three other car alarms have been blaring all afternoon, but, like, who ever does anything about it? You ever see a policeman come racing to the scene because an alarm has gone off?
    There are, in fact, two cops stuck in the traffic jam, but it doesn't occur to them to get out of their squad car and take control of the situation. They're on a mission, and nothing will deter them: they're prowling for cars with dirty license plates, and you could whiz past them doing 140, they wouldn't notice.
    Everyone milling about is scanning the crowd for people they know. Everyone, it seems, knows everyone -- or is about to:
    "He-e-e-y, Moshiko, what's up? What's new? How's things? Didja see the accident? Was it something! You know my army buddy here, Shlomo? Oh, Shimon is it? Never mind, this is -- ALLO! Ai, over here, Tznonit, howya doin'?! Wywywy, you're lookin' foxy, you gotta meet my friends here, Shimshon my army buddy, and ..."
    Well. Don't think Tznonit doesn't know Shimon and Moshiko. But she can't remember who the hell this guy is.   
    Meanwhile, Eliyahu Cohen (no relation to Cohen, but he is related to Levy) is stuck in the traffic, and he's not too happy about it. He was just on his way to getting the car's air conditioner fixed, and the last thing he needs is this. If he's shvitzing, imagine his wife: she's in the back seat, giving birth. Eliyahu has the presence of mind to get out the videocamera.
    As soon as the camera is turned on, two dozen people press their faces to the car windows, to get filmed. The wife is with one hand holding back the baby, with the other, trying to get her mother on the cellphone.
    A man with a beard comes running. "Maybe I can help!" he shouts.
    Reluctantly, the father-to-be turns off the camera for a moment. "You're a doctor?"
    "No."
    "Can you fix the air conditioner?"
    "No."
    "Then you can't help."
    "I said only maybe I can help. If it's a boy. I'm a mohel."
    The mohel spots a kid standing around with his friends. "Yingele!" the circumcisor exclaims. "You remember me? But of course not. Tell your friends, it didn't hurt so much, did it?" The kid blushes.
    Suddenly, someone calls out "mincha!" and a few dozen men, including both Levy and Cohen, gather in front of the lottery booth for afternoon prayers. A gum-chomping teenager, her bellybutton left uncovered between the miniskirt and halter top, is shooed away from the booth, but she stands her ground, protesting that it's an emergency, she had been sent by her unemployed father to buy lottery tickets at precisely that moment on the advice of his rabbi, and anyway, she pouted, she was there first, and this is a democracy, and.... The men just figure the hell with it and shuffle over to the watermelon stand across the street.
    Cohen and Levy finish their prayers, and promptly attack each other.  Levy bloodies Cohen, but it's nothing compared to what's going to happen to Levy, because his wife is gonna  kill him when he gets home, because he had promised to take the kids to a movie, and this time, she had warned him, no excuse will do.
    Which is why Levy half hoped that Cohen would bloody him, if just to win a little sympathy from his wife.
    Nobody can agree why the fight started. A poll is conducted among the eyewitnesses, and about half say it had something to do with Cohen making a snide remark about the "Proud to be riffraff" sticker on Levy's newly-dented bumper, while about half say Levy said Cohen should cover his car with riffraff stickers. Everyone agrees, however, that the accident was God's will.
    This is not a good time to be moving into the neighborhood. The truck is stuck a good kilometer away, and Sima wants her stuff NOW. She gives her new neighbors a fair idea of what they can expect, when she cuts a swathe through the throngs, elbows out, in full holler, with a posse of terrified Arabs in her wake, her worldly goods on their backs. And just let them dare ask for a tip!
    At the same time, her husband is upstairs, in their new third-floor apartment, heaving an old green couch over the balcony.
    It's a hot day. Damn hot. 
    A bunch of kids are over at the makolet on the corner (not at the Super Cheap, because nobody shops there, but next door at the Super Zol), buying ice cream. They've been buying ice cream for 20 minutes. Finally the grocer realizes the kids are not buying ice cream, they're cooling themselves off at his freezer, and he swats them away with a broom.
    A frowning woman tells him off, reminding him that he also has kids sweltering somewhere and how would he feel if blah blah blah.
    He sighs. It's been that kind of week. Tomorrow he goes off to miluim for a month. He can't wait.
    One of Sima's Arabs slips on what's left of a dead cat, and drops her bed in the middle of the street. Sima shrieks at the Arab that he'll never get out of Gaza again because her brother is in the Border Police, and what kind of morons are these people, good luck to Arafat when he tries to run a country full of them, and because she is shouting loud enough, everyone takes her side.
    Cohen and Levy finally get around to exchanging ID and insurance information. Turns out they have the same agent. Cohen asks Levy how much he's paying. Levy is paying a lot  less. That pleases Levy because it shows he's a better negotiator, and it pleases Cohen, because it shows his car is worth a lot more. They're both in a much better mood now.
    Someone shouts "It's a girl!" Eliyahu is grinning. A tumultuous "Mazel tov!" rises from the street, and all the drivers honk their horns rhythmically in celebration.
    Finally, Levy and Cohen lurch off in their newly-dented cars, and traffic gets moving again. The tiniest breeze wafts through, and the throng, as one, says "Ahhhhh," and slowly disperses. The cops are giving a whopping-big ticket to the moving truck, and the Arabs are convinced it is not because their license plate is dirty, but because they are Arabs. Eliyahu's wife is feeling guilty, because it wasn't a boy. The immigrants in the ground floor apartment are happy, because they have a new green couch. Sima finally has her fridge plugged in, and Sima's husband his TV, which he already has on full volume. Moshiko gets Tznonit's phone number, so they're happy, and the unemployed man will be, because his daughter with the bare bellybutton has just bought a winning ticket, which proves there is a God.
    It's just another day in Israel.