by Ron Bahar
“Well yes, but—”
“Go experience life, Ron—all of it. Be an alpha male, go find someone, and go sing.”
MR. Dupuis unwrapped the formaldehyde-infused frog he had dissected earlier in the day. He then gave his students a literal tour of blood and guts, from mouth, to esophagus, to stomach to small intestine to large intestine, and finally to the amphibian analogue of the anus: the cloaca. He didn’t allow his students to leave his last class of the day until all of us memorized this route, including the role of its major tributaries, the liver, the gallbladder, and the pancreas.
“Okay, it’s awesome, but it’s disgusting,” Amy declared.
As she and I walked down the hall together after class, I considered Frank’s odd, yet inspiring illustrations and recommendations and decided once and for all to take the “you only live once” approach.
“Amy?”
“Yes?”
Holy shit, this is actually going to happen, I thought. Go Ron. Fuck yes. After years of daydreaming, sex is imminent. I fucking rule! Amy, you have no idea how long . . .
“Ron!” exclaimed Amy, interrupting my trance. “Huh?” I asked, returning to Earth.
She smiled, almost conciliatorily. “You were going to ask me something and then you spaced out . . . what is it?”
“Um . . . nothing.” What a fucking loser.
I spent the rest of the day mentally masturbating over my ineptitude. I was humiliated by my inability to speak honestly to someone I cared about so intensely, someone who craved that honesty so desperately. Of course I’d had opportunities over the years to tell her how I really felt, but inevitably I would succumb to my own fears. What a jackass I was. I ran surface streets during cross country practice that afternoon and, despite the general sparsity of traffic in Lincoln, my lack of focus nearly caused me to collide with two cars, a pedestrian, a stray dog, and one very angry man on a Harley near Pioneers Park.
After practice, I wandered toward the Duster with my head down, trying to make sense out of what had transpired. Just before I reached the car, I bumped into something. Someone. Before looking up, I smelled the unmistakable scent of Faberge Organic Shampoo and Conditioner . . . you know, the one that Heather Locklear used in those commercials, the one that intoxicated me every time I leaned to the opposite side of my lab table.
“Hey,” Amy said as I looked up. “It’s me. You don’t have to be so shy. I know how you’ve felt about me for years. I know your situation is a little ‘complicated’—so is mine—but I feel the same way and I’m right here. I’ll be around when you’re ready for me.” She smiled. I smiled back. She leaned in dangerously close to me, and squeezed my hand. Our lips nearly touched, but we didn’t kiss. I grinned widely as she stared at me with those hazel eyes. She was breathtaking. I was smitten.
She let go of my hand, turned around, and walked toward her ’76 white VW Rabbit. She knew I was staring at her. I jumped in the Duster and drove home, exhausted as usual, but very, very happy. The only feeling more exciting than a first crush is the realization that the sensation is mutual. Social status and religion play no part in this strange and wonderful collection of emotions.
CHAPTER 4
“When you get so sick of trying
Just hold on tight to your dream”
—ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA’S “HOLD ON TIGHT,”
FROM THE ALBUM TIME, RELEASED JULY, 1981.
IT PEAKED AT NUMBER TEN ON US BILLBOARD’S HOT
100 SONGS.
I had wanted to become a physician since preschool and, though my ambition was precocious, my patience was not. I was all about the goal and not about the process. I did love biology and physiology. Of course, I wanted to understand how twenty-three chromosomes could nearly flawlessly pass down information from tens of thousands of genes to the next generation. Of course, I wanted to know how a fertile, amorous male could navigate the miraculous process of seeing an attractive, aroused fertile female, mount an erection, spread his seed, and approximately nine months later, witness another human pop out of said-female’s vagina. Unfortunately, however, I approached school only as a means to an end, and I didn’t want to waste one joule of energy outside the confines of the classroom. I would save the love of learning for another time; I was on a mission.
I was a scholastic parrot. I repeated everything and invented nothing. Perhaps that’s why karaoke and lip sync appealed so much to me. My intellectual curiosity was limited to the minimum memorization necessary for me to absorb and subsequently regurgitate information to garner As on a report card.
I wasn’t particularly proud of my approach, but I was proud of my determination. At the time, my deepest secret was a fear of being exposed as an intellectual fraud, and to avoid this shame I would study harder than anyone. And it worked. Mr. Dupuis and my college counselor, Mr. Evans, together recognized my “strength,” and encouraged me to apply to accelerated medical school programs, only perpetuating my twisted view of education. I skipped the chapter on the Socratic method.
I was the product of a perfect storm of Jewish guilt and the Indian dream of upward mobility.
ZILLAH Rosenbaum was born in Poland in 1901, the fourth child of seven in an Orthodox Jewish family in Warsaw. After finishing high school and dabbling in chemistry at night school, she worked diligently at a local bank through the stock market crash of 1929 and into the Great Depression years of the early 1930s. Zillah eventually received a small severance pay in 1933, but saw no future for herself in her native country. Instead, with a pioneering spirit, she used the money to travel by boat to Beirut, and from there by taxi to Palestine. Her parents and siblings would all later perish, either in the Warsaw Ghetto or in the gas chambers of Treblinka.
Zalman Rodov was born in Marina Gorka, Belarus, in 1897. He studied horticulture in college, and subsequently served as a local government administrator. In 1926, he was caught carrying Zionist literature and was immediately sent to a Soviet prison camp in the Ural Mountains for four years. After his release, he was exiled, shortly before Stalin enacted a policy of murdering such “subversives.” He found his way to Palestine in 1930, where he later studied and eventually practiced land surveying. On the side, he smuggled in Jewish refugees at night from the shores of the Mediterranean. He was also a member of the Haganah, the Jewish paramilitary group, which would eventually become the nucleus of The Israel Defense Force.
Zillah and Zalman married in 1935, and Ophira, their first of two children, was born the next year in the coastal city of Haifa. Ophira was shy, skinny, and studious. Despite their limited means, the Rodovs spent half of Zalman’s salary fostering their children’s education in private school. After high school, Ophira enlisted in the army, where she served for two years and attained the rank of corporal in the Israeli Air Force. She then attended teachers’ college before teaching seventh and eighth graders for two years.
HANNAH Gabbay was born in 1908 in the city of Baghdad. She moved to Mumbai (then Bombay) in 1918 after the conclusion of World War I, when the British occupation of Iraq allowed the departure of many Jews to brighter pastures in England, Southern Asia, and Australia. Though she initially attended Jewish day school, she left after a prank, in which classmates locked her in a closet with a boy. She spent her high school years at The Convent of Jesus and Mary.
Silas Bahar was born in 1905 and moved from Baghdad to Mumbai in the same exodus of 1918. After attending an Iraqi Jewish high school, he started a career in the printing business and eventually opened his own press at the age of forty. When Hannah was seventeen years old, she married Silas’ older brother George. George died of pneumonia only six months later. Hannah was devastated, but, according to custom, Silas married her the next year.
Ezekiel Bahar, their third of ten children, was born in 1933. Eze, as he was known to all, was mischievous yet devoted. He would surreptitiously place stink bombs in front of neighbors’ doorsteps. However, he would also take the blame and a Catholic school priest’s whipping for the w
rongdoings of a younger brother. Eze completed his studies at Saint Mary’s High School in 1948, twelve years before its most famous alumnus, rocker Freddie Mercury.
Eze was also self-reliant and ambitious, even at the ripe age of sixteen. In 1949, only one year after Israel precariously declared its independence, he informed both his family and The Jewish Agency for Israel of his dream to emigrate, or make aliyah (literally “ascent,” in Hebrew), to the fledgling state. When, at the last moment, an Afghan family relinquished its seats on the plane that would take them later that day to Tel Aviv, the agency called for volunteers. Eze had only a moment to decide. He immediately accepted the offer, and, after his mother tearfully consented to his departure, he grabbed his pre-packed suitcase and left. When Silas returned from work later that afternoon and found out what had happened, he raced to the airport to say good-bye to his son. The plane had already taken off, with Eze on board. Eze and Silas would never see each other again.
Sixteen and alone. Once in Israel, Eze spent two years at The Mikveh Yisrael (“Hope of Israel”) Agricultural School in the town of Holon. He then enlisted in the army, rose to the rank of staff sergeant, and worked for the Israeli Intelligence as part of his three-year commitment. During his conscription, he was not renowned for his skills in the field, and in fact at one point overturned a jeep and broke his arm. However, his aptitude for math and physics was noticed by his superiors, who encouraged him to pursue a college degree. Shortly after his military stint, he attended engineering school at Israel’s Institute of Technology in Haifa.
IN 1957, Ophira met Ezekiel through one of his classmates; it was love at first sight. They were engaged within six weeks and married within six months. Though they had little money, they were happy. She taught and he studied. Zillah and Zalman treated Eze like a son, and he loved them like his own parents. Zillah died of breast cancer in 1959, and her namesake, my sister Zillie, was born three years later. That same year, my parents made the decision to move their new family to the United States so that my father could complete his graduate studies.
To this day, my mother regrets that decision.
My father became a star graduate student at The University of Colorado at Boulder. Upon receiving his PhD in electrical engineering in 1964, the same year Iris was born, his chairman offered him a junior faculty position to stay as an assistant professor. I was born the following year, and my family remained in Boulder until 1967, when the Chairman at The University of Nebraska contacted him about a promotion to come to Lincoln. In considering the move, my parents, who had originally planned to return to Israel immediately after he was awarded his diploma, were heartened by the promise of a small but tight-knit Jewish community in the Cornhusker State. The Bahars would pack their bags for Lincoln and move there that fall.
———
MY father’s professional ascent was meteoric; he became a full professor before the age of forty. I could tell you that his work involved such scintillating topics as “transient response from irregular structures and inhomogeneous anisotropic media,” and “transform techniques for boundary value problems.” I could also tell you that he penned a chapter on “radio wave propagation over a non-uniform overburden” in the all-time-nerd bestseller Electromagnetic Probing in Geophysics. I literally had no idea what he actually did.
I knew my father was brilliant, but did he and my mother make the right decision in moving to Nebraska? Essentially all of the select few Middle Eastern or Asian highly educated adult males who moved to Midwestern college towns in the 1960s or ’70s were either professors or physicians. My father met both cultural criteria, but was his transplantation truly the fulfillment of a dream?
While my father plugged away with his career, my mother never adjusted. He ignored the long, cold winters and simply worked. My mother, on the other hand, never felt comfortable, either with the temperature or with the people. When I was ten, she returned to school to earn a master’s degree and concentrated, of course, on Jewish History and the Middle East. She did so to fill the void and numb the pain she felt for “abandoning” her past.
If we were to remain in Lincoln, Zillie, Iris, and I would justify my parents’ diaspora through their children’s educational success and fidelity to Judaism. We, in fact, carried dual citizenship with the United States and Israel. Did the three of us feel the pressure of living up to the legacy of our ancestors, who sacrificed and suffered so much so that future generations could live freely and robustly as Jews?
Yes.
Rule number one: Perfect report cards were expected, not desired. My parents didn’t even attend parent-teacher conferences. While I was an excellent rule follower, I saw no reason to work beyond what was expected from me at school. With my goal of reaching medical school, and despite my impatience, I had become an expert at delayed gratification. Conversely, I had no idea what it meant to live in the present. Sadly, I would be amazed when my sisters would read non school-assigned books. Whom were they trying to impress, anyway?
Rule number two: Never date a non-Jew. As there were no Jewish girls for me to date, it was the ultimate paradox for this horndog. Not that anyone should feel sorry for me (well, maybe they should), but what the fuck? Why did I need to suppress my love for the opposite sex, and, for that matter, my ability to be the musical frontman anywhere else but at my Bar Mitzvah?
CHAPTER 5
“Sometimes love don't feel like it should
You make it hurt so good”
—JOHN COUGAR’S “HURTS SO GOOD,” FROM THE ALBUM
AMERICAN FOOL, RELEASED JULY 10TH, 1982.
IT PEAKED AT NUMBER ONE ON US BILLBOARD’S HOT 100
SONGS.
Sundar Rajendran was my only classmate of Indian heritage. Naturally, his father, Somasundaram, was a physician. Also, naturally, Sundar and his younger brother, Babu, intended to follow suit. Sundar and I shared the first-generation bond that few others in our nearly homogenous community felt. Of course our languages, religions and food differed—I spoke Hebrew, practiced Judaism, and lived in a house that smelled like roasted eggplant. He spoke Tamil, practiced Hinduism, and lived in a house that smelled like curry.
I loved that smell; I would salivate the moment I stepped into the Rajendran’s home. Sundar’s mother, Prema, fried some badass samosas. The scent also reminded me of my grandmother. An accomplished cook herself, Hannah Bahar taught me the true meaning of spice, and that ketchup was indeed not a food group, even in Nebraska. “Acha, dahling, try it with a little yogurt sauce,” Granny would say in her singsong accent, music to my ears, and a symphony to my gut.
I also loved visiting Sundar’s father, who was both my mentor and my own physician. Dr. Rajendran was the first pediatric gastroenterologist in the state of Nebraska. I was fortunate to have easy access to him, given my career goals and my diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome, better known as IBS.
Two events exacerbated my IBS symptoms: taking tests and talking to girls. Both scenarios manifested in a cruel combination of insomnia, sweat, flatulence, and diarrhea. Very attractive.
In a direct breech of doctor-patient confidentiality, Sundar would insert himself into any health-related conversation I had with his father. I was like a human physiology experiment, and, as a future pre-med himself, Sundar wanted to know exactly what made me tick. He was also a nosy sonofabitch. We were close friends, and, I had to admit, beyond the discomfort and embarrassment, I found it pretty fucking funny.
Dr. Rajendaran spoke professorially yet paternally. “Ron, clinical depression involves the abnormal transmission of the neurochemical serotonin in the brain. Irritable bowel syndrome involves the abnormal transmission of serotonin in the intestines. So it’s as though your intestines are depressed, and IBS-related symptoms are significantly exacerbated by anxiety. New research suggests that the use of antidepressants will help your brain help your gut. We should talk to your parents about possible treatment options. I’m concerned about you, son. What’s going on in your life that could be
stressing you out so much?”
“You mean other than his blue balls and the fear that he won’t get into medical school? “ snickered Sundar.
“Stop it, Sundar. I’m serious.”
“So am I,” he answered.
Sundar embraced the prairie. All of it. School came easily to him, and so did the women. His conquests were legendary: Smart girls, hot girls, athletic girls, farm girls . . . it didn’t matter. “I invented tall, dark, and handsome . . . the women love the brown man,” he liked to say while looking in the mirror, mock-flexing like Arnold Schwarzenegger, in spite of his slight frame.
“I see the dark, but I don’t see the tall or the handsome,” I’d answer. Fucking lothario. I was deeply jealous of his freedom from repression; he owned his appearance and everything attached to it. Our parents’ odysseys overlapped, but our courage did not. He brimmed with confidence; I withered with apprehension.
“It’s all in the attitude, amigo . . . all in the attitude,” he said, still flexing, but now adding a fake grimace. I had to laugh. “Dude, you gotta get over this fear of girls or you’re gonna shit your pants when it matters most.”
“Sundar, please!” pleaded the good doctor.
I knew he was right. I wouldn’t medicate myself; drugs were for crazy people, I thought. But how would I emulate Sundar’s ‘attitude?’ There were only so many times I could tolerate the sudden rumbling of my abdomen in the middle of an exam. There were only so many times I could stand in a crowded room, talk to an attractive girl, fart, and accuse others of colonic impropriety. I barely escaped social suicide on too many occasions.
“Sundar is not so eloquent, but he makes a good point,” said Dr. Rajendran. “You must trust yourself.”
CHAPTER 6