by Eshkol Nevo
Pleased?
That although a movie is not a book, it’s a different art form with its own rules, but even so.
Even so?
The creators succeeded in preserving…the spirit of the book.
Listen—
You found yourself laughing, crying, falling in love with Gal Gadot.
How do I know what I’ll feel? I haven’t seen anything yet!
It doesn’t matter what you feel. As far as I’m concerned, you can hate the movie. What counts is what you say in interviews.
But—
A writer who doesn’t take part in public relations for the movie is sending critics the message that he’s not happy with the adaptation. And if there’s something the critics know how to sniff out, it’s blood. You don’t want to open the morning newspaper and see that they slaughtered us, right?
Right.
In the end, our success is your success. That’s what I’m trying to explain to you.
I understand.
Flexibility is the name of the game.
Okay.
You’re sure you don’t want something to drink?
No thanks.
Coffee? Tea? Water? You look a little pale.
Maybe water.
Your book really is huge, I want you to know that.
Thank you.
I started reading it in the duty-free shop and couldn’t put it down for the whole flight.
Thank you, thank you very much.
The minute I finished it, I said to my wife: This is a movie!
Do you believe that, as a writer, you are obligated to be involved in politics?
I meet with Michael Orbach, my American acquaintance. He’s almost twenty years older than me, but he has fewer white hairs, and his gait, as we walk along the beach promenade toward Jaffa, is lighter. We met in another life, when I worked as a copywriter for an ad agency. Michael ran a workshop for us on social advertising, or as he called it, Meaningful Advertising, and when he lectured, I felt as if I were seeing the light. It turns out that it’s possible to work in advertising without making a mockery of yourself. You can write slogans, radio spots, and scripts for worthy causes. You can use advertising techniques to encourage people to make significant changes in their lives instead of urging them to buy things they don’t need.
I went up to him after the lecture. Mr. Orbach, I said, your words have inspired me.
I said, I’d like to join your company. Work with you. Maybe as a representative of Meaningful Advertising in Israel. What do you think?
He said I should send him my CV.
I sent it. He replied politely that, at the moment, he wasn’t looking for new staff members, but he would keep my CV on file.
I wrote back that I know that what he said means is no in American, and asked if we could occasionally e-mail, because working in an ad agency had made me feel that my words were losing meaning.
We began to correspond. Exchange ideas. More accurately, I asked his advice on a series of subjects and he taught me a few things.
Every now and then, I would ask about the possibility of working with him. My days in the agency had become increasingly bleak during that period. As the municipal elections grew closer, a subsidiary company to handle political advertising was established in the office, and I was assigned to it for three months. We were supporting mayoral candidates throughout the country. Billboards. Radio spots. Party platforms.
One of the candidates was Yoram Sirkin. THE Yoram Sirkin.
I remember the first time I saw him. The ironic thing was that I wasn’t supposed to be at that meeting at all. I had a deadline to produce a jingle for another campaign, but they took me off it and suddenly called me into the conference room. This is our copywriter, the big boss introduced me when I walked in, and then pointed to the other side of the table and said, Meet Yoram Sirkin, the next mayor. The three men sitting at the other side of the table were more or less the same age. None of them had the charismatic presence of a future mayor, so I didn’t know which of them to look at, but I said to myself, It’s definitely not the one on the left, because the minute the big boss said, the next mayor, the one on the left averted his eyes in embarrassment. Altogether, there was something saggy about him. His shoulders sagged, his shirt sagged, and so did his glasses.
But the guy on the left spoke first. His voice was slightly nasal and he paused in the wrong places between…words: I asked for you to come into…the room because it…was important to…me that you…join our campaign and see eye to eye with…us. No wisecracks, the kind ad…agency people like. You understand what I’m…saying?
Completely. What do you think about seeing heart to heart? I asked.
The room suddenly filled with a should-we-laugh-or-cry silence.
Good one, Yoram Sirkin said, touching the bridge of his glasses lightly. Taking their cue from him, his two escorts nodded.
The thing about a political campaign—I continued as if I were an expert on the subject—is to arouse the voters’ emotions. To find the right buttons and press them. Over and over again.
What did you say your name was? Sirkin asked. And before I could reply, he turned to the boss and said, I want this kid to…be with us at every meeting from now…on. I like the way his mind…works.
* * *
—
The official purpose of the next few meetings was to learn our candidate’s agenda, to find out what he wanted to promote, what he believed in, and what his plan of action would be—if he won the election. But Yoram Sirkin answered almost every question we asked with the same question: What do you think would go over well with the voters? I believe that, with the exception of his intense desire to be elected, he had no other clear aspirations. We replied cautiously that we should wait for the reports of the focus groups, and until we received them, anything we said about voters’ preferences would be guesswork.
Yoram Sirkin nodded, and then, for the first time, made the gesture that would become the trademark of comedians imitating him in political satires on TV years later: rubbing his hands together as if he were performing the commandment of washing his hands before a meal.
The focus group concluded that the residents were quite satisfied with their city and more than anything, were afraid that a new mayor would change the way things were being done.
If that’s the situation, I said at the next meeting, let’s go all the way with it. Let’s tell people to vote for our candidate because he’s the only one who definitely won’t change anything.
Good one, Yoram Sirkin said.
We flooded the streets with billboards that showed a large, nicely photoshopped picture of him—the glasses were gone and his evasive glance became an intense, direct stare—along with the fruit of my keyboard: Sirkin. Only he can preserve our city.
At the same time, we hired a language coach to teach him how to speak before an audience. We didn’t delude ourselves that he would become a firebrand overnight, but we asked her to work with him on his…pauses. Polls all over the world show that candidates who win elections are those who know how to pause in the right places.
When the campaign opened, the polls gave Sirkin four to five percent of the vote. But he was faithful to the list of messages prepared for him, and repeated them like a parrot in a cage: We love our city the way it is. Every change is risky. The risk is greater than the chance of success. If it’s not broken, why fix it? If it’s fixed, why break it?
Meanwhile, the candidate leading in the polls, a brigadier general in the reserves, was accused of sexual harassment and dropped out of the race.
We eliminated a third candidate with a negative campaign that placed in voters’ minds the totally fabricated notion that he had ties with real estate sharks and would push for construction that would change the character of the city and lower property values.
; From week to week, Sirkin’s numbers rose another little bit in the polls. And another little bit. What is known in the professional jargon as gathering momentum. At the same time, and to our great surprise, his body language changed. Suddenly, he walked briskly, suddenly, his movements were sharp. Suddenly, he banged on the table: Get me the ultra-Orthodox!
And the ultra-Orthodox came to the office and closed a deal to support him in the election in exchange for future budget allotments.
On election night, at our headquarters and in the presence of a modest audience that included mostly members of his family, we celebrated Yoram Sirkin’s victory in the mayoral race, never suspecting that it was only the first stop in his meteoric rise in politics.
The agency’s subsidiary was dissolved immediately after the municipal elections.
A month later, I received a call on my personal phone from the new mayor.
Listen, kid, he said, I have to give a speech at the municipal education conference.
Okay.
I thought maybe you could…write a…few points for…me. A few killer sentences.
But…I thought our office doesn’t handle your account anymore.
Tell me, kid, why should they make any money on me…or you? Work directly with me. As a consultant.
Let me think about it, Yoram, okay?
Okay. But the education conference is…tomorrow. Don’t think too…much.
* * *
—
I always knew that copywriting was a hollow profession. Only when my path crossed Yoram Sirkin’s did I understand that it was also corrupt. That I myself was already corrupt from so many years in the profession.
But I didn’t know how to do anything else.
I hoped that Uncle Michael from America would rescue me from the predicament I was in. I waited for his e-mails the way children wait for the Independence Day fireworks. And he wrote the same reply every time: Of course, the minute I have a job to offer you, I will. Let’s meet and talk about it the next time I’m in Israel.
* * *
—
We met when he came to Israel to run his workshops. We walked along the beach promenade from the InterContinental David, to the marina, and back through Jaffa. Always the same route. And he was always the one who spoke. I mean—lectured. About the mistakes in the last Labor Party election campaign. About the fact that the left wing in Israel didn’t have to build its campaign around fear, like its right-wing opponents, but should base it on hope. About the fact that Herzl’s dream was to establish a country for the Jews, and now that it has been established, we have to redefine Zionism, fill it with up-to-date content, otherwise it will remain hollow, and that hollowness will fill up with right-wing, Messianic elements.
Between one political prophecy and another, he also distracted me with advice in other areas: Start a family as quickly as possible, kiddo. Marriage isn’t a prison, the way people mistakenly think, it’s the freedom to stop searching for love. But you have to choose right, son, and the criterion is flexibility. A flexible partner is the key to happiness, and children—having children is the most creative thing a person can do in his life, children enrich your creativity, they don’t damage it, trust me—
I trusted him. I felt I was learning so much from him.
On one of those walks, he told me in the same arrogant, know-it-all tone he typically used that he had closed his New York office and fired all the employees. Meaningful Advertising, the company, was not very profitable. And he was up to his ears in debt. So now he worked alone, mainly giving workshops in order to pay his debtors. A person needs to take responsibility for his failures, he said, otherwise there’s no way he can succeed.
He didn’t see any contradiction between his collapse and the fact that he continued to give others advice. There was something both ridiculous and impressive about that.
* * *
—
A few months later, I left the ad agency and began to write. I paid the rent by writing speeches for Yoram Sirkin. I no longer needed an uncle in America, and he didn’t have any practical prospects for me anyway. Nevertheless, maybe out of habit or because we were both sociable people who, deep inside, felt chronically lonely, we kept meeting every once in a while to stroll along the beach promenade.
Now we’re walking toward Jaffa once again. He has just finished giving a workshop for the directors of human rights organizations in Israel, and he’s upset. It doesn’t matter how crappy your governments have been, he says, the people were always optimistic. That’s why I loved coming here. Your anthem is called “The Hope,” and that’s what there always was here: hope. But today—today I gave a workshop to a group of hopeless people. What happened to all of you?
Look, I begin—
And he interrupts me.
I read your last book, by the way. The translation is excellent. And the characters—they actually jump off the page. Forgive me for saying this, but I kept thinking, how can you write such a naïve love story that could take place anywhere, and be blind to the fact that the country you live in is causing so much suffering in the occupied territories? How can you write about a trivial love affair when women are giving birth at checkpoints?
Look, I try—
And he interrupts me.
You know what the problem is? That people like you go into art instead of politics. And people like—what’s his name? Sirking? Sirkind?—are government ministers and legitimate candidates to lead the country. Do you get it? Your government lets you write books, make movies. What do they care? You can walk on the red carpet in Cannes. You can win at fucking Sundance. You can sell formats to HBO. It’s all fine just as long as you don’t get in the way of their building settlements and destroying the Zionist enterprise, right?
But—
A person like you, with your family background, has to ask himself at every moment whether he’s doing the most meaningful thing he can. Write another best seller? Come on. You can do better.
I have an answer for him. But for the last few weeks, there’s been so much tension at home between me and Dikla that I don’t have the strength to argue with someone else now. And I think that, this time, there’s something else underneath his typical heat-of-the-argument reversal. Something more personal he’s going through.
* * *
—
It comes out as we pass Manta Ray restaurant.
His wife is leaving him.
They spent their lives waiting for this time to come. The kids left for college and now they would have time to make their dreams come true, the dreams they had to push aside in order to be parents. And now his wife does want to make those dreams come true. But not with him.
I nod in understanding. That was the first time in our history that he told me something really personal. I wonder whether I should put a hand on his shoulder. But I don’t dare. And I wonder whether to tell him that, last week, Dikla stopped getting dressed when I’m in the room, and doubts every little thing I tell her. Whether I really sent the advance payment to the hall we hired for the bat mitzvah, whether I’m really starting to give the creative writing workshop on Thursday evenings in Beit Shemesh, whether—
Right before Jaffa, he collapses totally.
On a bench.
I sit down next to him.
Surfers walk down to the sea with their boards.
Surfers come up from the sea with their boards.
Wild is the wind.
* * *
—
It happened so quickly, he says in bewilderment.
One evening—“We have to talk.” Then a confession. Well-phrased. As if she had polished it for weeks. Thank you for all the good years, but I think that we should separate before it turns really ugly, she told him. The next day, she took her things and moved into a rented apartment. Which means she rented the apartment before she spoke to hi
m. Would you believe it?
A sixty-something American man is now leaving me space to say something wise that will comfort him. Give him some insight. But my life experience is so meager compared to his that I feel all I can do for him is listen.
I’m completely lost, he says. There’s a story I used to tell myself about my life—and it turns out that it’s wrong. And I have no fucking idea where to go from here.
The three-card monte con man sets up next to us, this is his regular place on the promenade. His cronies gather around his box, but the fierce wind blows the three cards away—only one of them is the jack—and the con man and his cronies run after them to try and catch them.
How about eating at Dr. Shakshuka? I finally say.
My American friend laughs. He’s crazy about shakshuka.
As long as a person keeps his sense of humor and his appetite, I think, there’s a chance he can be saved. We head for the Clock Tower, the wind has died down a little, and I notice that he’s slightly stooped and has slowed down. Usually I have a hard time keeping up with him when we walk, but now I have to slow down so we can stay close. Right before the entrance to Dr. Shakshuka, he stops, straightens up, and puts a hand on my shoulder. Partly patronizing. Partly to keep himself from falling. Think about what I said about politics, he says. If people like you continue to stay on the sidelines, you won’t have a country left or sidelines you can stand on.
* * *
—
On the way back from my walk with my uncle from America, I see a billboard. It happens while I’m speeding along the Ayalon highway, so I have only a second to look. It’s enough to register Yoram Sirkin’s face and read my slogan: Sirkin. Only he can save our country.
What doesn’t the general public know about you?
Not only the general public. Dikla doesn’t know either that my relationship with Yoram Sirkin continued for years, and is continuing secretly to this day. My fingers tremble as I write this, and I’m not sure I’ll have the courage to press Save after typing these lines, but it’s the truth: I was there. At every step up Sirkin took. I’m the one who wrote the speech that propelled him into public consciousness, the one he delivered after a rocket hit a building in his city. The sentence “The best defense against a Quassam is the solidarity of our people”—it’s mine. When, after the war, he decided to run in the national primaries, he hired an ad agency for the sake of appearances, but kept buying slogans from me on the side. I never believed that, with the help of my slogans, he would climb high enough on the list of candidates to win a Knesset seat. I never believed that you could lie to everyone, all the time. And I certainly never thought that, during his first term in the Knesset, they would begin talking about him as a candidate for the cabinet.