by Naomi Litvin
“Would you take a little less for both the mezuzah and the scroll?” My bargaining skills weren’t so good at that time.
“No,” the old man said with a somewhat snide, crooked smile. “This is a very special mezuzah. Don’t you want to take a special mezuzah home to America?”
“I am Israeli,” I protested. “Can I please have a discount for being Oleh Hadesha?” I had been told by more than one person that some merchants would give a price reduction for new immigrants.
“We were all Oleh Hadesha at one time,” he was trying to be funny. “Do you think anyone gave us a price cut?”
“I don’t know about that. I will come again another time,” and I left the shop to continue my sauntering toward the Arab section.
I did love to walk through Wadi Nisnas, a short way down the steps from my place and which I considered the best Arab neighborhood for coffee and spices. The richest and cheapest ground coffee was one where the owner would always throw in some cardamom for free. That was an acquired taste, and I’d ask for mine on the side so that I could use the tiniest bit in my brew.
I had been warned not to shop in the further eastern Arab neighborhoods. I shopped mostly at Russian groceries avoiding the meat department.
CHAPTER EIGHT
One day, instead of Hebrew class, I took the train to the most northern Israeli city, Nahariya, population 50,000. Never mind that it is twenty-two miles from Haifa; it took me two hours to get here. I got lost walking to Bat Galim train station from Hamagenin in Haifa.
I had discovered that by taking the trains and local buses it was as good as taking any formal tour. I could spend a whole day on the Israel Railway going up and down the coast. There was air conditioning, Wi-Fi, electricity for charging my phone, and endless opportunities to people watch. The friendliness of Israelis was boundless. And I felt completely safe, especially with all the Israeli Defense Force traveling with their weapons.
Nahariya was beautiful but extremely close to the border of Lebanon. I thought, Wow, I found my Sea. I could get a little dog here, buy a traveling van, and send for my bicycle. This is truly a beach town and incredibly affordable. I liked the indoor outdoor market surrounding the train station. And the Sea was walking distance from there. Good places to eat, friendly people.
There was a beautiful country club with an Olympic size swimming pool that overlooked the Sea. I stopped in to take a tour and began to speak with the receptionist. She was English speaking, her name was Vered and we immediately hit it off. After showing me around the club, she invited me into the office.
An employee of the swim club entered the office and began loudly complaining to her in Hebrew. They both started to yell and clearly were arguing about something. I was sitting there feeling uncomfortable, trying to figure out an exit plan in case workplace violence erupted right in front of me.
When he finally left, Vered told me he was a nasty person and angry with a co-worker. She had a very serious look on her face and our fun had ended. I said goodbye, thanking her for her hospitality.
By this time, I knew I wasn’t going to stay in Haifa but I was unsure about moving so close to Lebanon. There had already been two wars with Lebanon and rockets from there dated back to 1967, prior to the Six Day War. I would have to think about this and compare it to other locations.
I googled Nahariya on my smart phone and learned that on September 9, 2001 there had been a terrorist attack here. I didn’t remember reading or hearing about that at the time. Of course, it was two days prior to 9/11 and I was in the United States. The Nahariya railway station bombing was a suicide bombing. This one had been executed by Hamas during the Second Intifada. Killed were three young Israeli soldiers and ninety-four others were wounded. The bomber left two wives and six children.
There was a day that I decided to see as many locations of suicide bombings in Haifa that I could visit. I had been told by a local Anglo friend, who had been living in Haifa for the last thirty years that 2002 through 2004 were particularly horrible years.
The Matza gas station and restaurant bombing was on March 31, 2002. A Hamas suicide bomber blew himself up and killed sixteen, injured forty. Two whole families were killed. This was close to the Grand Canyon Shopping Center so I did a little shopping and also saw the location of mass murder.
The Moriah Street bus bomb attack on March 5, 2003 was extremely bad. This was bus #37, the same number that I took to go to my doctor’s office and to visit some friends in Haifa. Fifteen were dead and fifty wounded when the bomb exploded and tore off the roof of the bus. People on the street were also hurt. Body parts were flying and the street ran red with blood.
It’s eerie to go to the exact spot of a place that has been exploded and imagine what the people saw and felt on a day when they were going about their usual business. So there I stood.
From there I went to the beach to see the Maxim Restaurant which had been rebuilt after a female suicide bomber attacked on October 4, 2003. Twenty-one were killed, fifty-one injured. Families and babies. This place was frequented by both Arab and Jews. Was this another wonderful example of the coexistence that is part of Haifa’s claim to fame?
Those groups that claim responsibility for mass murders were lunatics and it didn’t matter to me which group of lunatics it was. Their thirst for death and blood were much like vampires. The more blood they spill, the more zest they have. I didn’t get very far in my quest to see all the suicide bomb locations in Haifa. What’s that old saying? Once you’ve seen one you have seen them all.
CHAPTER NINE
I had been waiting for the Wi-Fi service to be installed, which I had ordered before my laptop broke. Since I was expecting my laptop any day, I didn’t cancel the service appointment.
One morning, an angry guy zoomed up on a motorcycle shouting, “I don’t speak English.” So I answered in the same manner. “And I don’t speak Hebrew.”
How handsome this young dark Israeli wearing a Jewish star necklace was. I grabbed my necklace and motioned to it with my other hand. “We are both Jews, please help me!
He got on the phone and started berating someone before he began his inspection of my cottage. More hollering in my direction, “You have router?”
Shaking my head I said, “No, lo!”
Eventually, he found a panel on the wall that had been painted over, unscrewed it, and pulled out a handful of wires. At that point he went outside, came back, called someone again, and began speaking to me in perfect English, “Someone is bringing a router. I am going somewhere, and don’t touch anything!”
He roared off on his motorcycle. Fifteen minutes later he was back. I went to the door and with a nice smile on his face he said, “Thank you,” and then he got to work.
The weather was beginning to get awfully hot in Haifa. I felt like I was losing track of time, which felt distorted in Israel, anyway. One day could feel like a week. Everything was stretched out. If I wouldn’t have looked at a calendar I don’t think I could have estimated how long I had been living in Haifa.
I had wandered all through most of the areas that were safe for me to go and one morning I woke up to fog. I walked down the hills to the Haifa Port following the fog horns. Was I really hearing them, or were they auditory hallucinations? It could have been that I was merely homesick thinking about San Francisco and the cool breezes there.
Taking photos of ships at the end of the long driveway leading to the Port, I was abruptly detained by a uniformed man. He wanted my camera. I was surprised and asked him why. He said in English that he must delete the photos that I had taken. But since the viewing screen was cracked, he couldn’t see what they were. I couldn’t lose the camera, not that it was worth much money but the photos were important.
Eventually, after I showed my Israeli I.D., we agreed that he could delete the last ten photos and then he let me go with a warning. He was actually quite charming in an authoritative way. I left there smiling.
I walked by the Dagon Grain Museum which h
ighlights the different ways grain was cultivated and processed before modern times but it was closed. It was an interesting structure and I made some notes as to using it as a setting in the book.
From there I walked all the way down to Dado Beach and spent several hours walking in the surf. I had brought the mourners Kaddish prayer to say for Mother, even though it wasn’t the actual designated day for it.
I had woken up wanting to say Kaddish. I walked into the Sea and said the prayer in Hebrew, placed the paper in the salt water and watched it disintegrate. I thought about salty tears and salty water and the connection between the two.
I was resolved to go back to Tel Aviv the next day to see if the laptop was ready. On the way to Merkas HaShmona Railway Station I passed The Greek Melkite Catholic Parish Cemetery. It was old and overgrown with weeds, broken concrete, tilted headstones, and mausoleums. I went through the crooked, open gate and walked around.
I saw an old Arab walking toward me. As he got closer, I realized he was not so old. At first I thought so since he was dressed in what’s known in the Middle East as a thawb, an ankle length white shirt. On his head was a large square of white cotton, called a ghutra, folded in a diagonal way with a cord, the igaal, around it. He was also wearing a full-length dark outer cloak, called a bisht, which looked like wool despite the already searing heat.
He was smoking a cigarette. For some inexplicable reason I noticed that it was a Marlboro. He approached me and got quite close to my face. I smelled cumin on him mixed with body odor. He had blue eyes. In halting English he said, “Do not be afraid. I have a message for you. When you are in Tel Aviv, you will be approached by a friend, do not resist.”
“Who are you? How do you know I am headed for Tel Aviv?” At that moment a crow behind me cawed, and I jumped and turned to look at it. When I turned back around the Arab was gone. The Marlboro cigarette butt was on the ground, still smoldering.
CHAPTER TEN
I got to the computer repair shop in Tel Aviv after trying to call many times en route. They wouldn’t answer the phone, so I didn’t know what was going on. The receptionist announced that there was no progress on receiving the laptop part from Germany. She tried to talk me out of taking it.
“Give me that damn computer,” I said to her making myself sound completely in charge.
She left me at the counter for quite a long time while I heard her speaking Arabic to someone in the back room. Finally she came out from the back with my laptop and gave it to me.
I didn’t say another word to the girl. I was seething. I put my laptop in my backpack and decided not to let it ruin my day, but it was not easy to just shake it off.
I walked a few blocks to Arlozorov and jumped on the first #5 bus, got off on Dizengoff, and walked straight for the Carmel Shuk where I could find lunch and get lost in the crowds. There was a small grill that made chicken, onions and other veggies with a spicy yogurt sauce on pita. I ordered one with a Goldstar beer and sat down on a bar stool to enjoy my food. I drank the beer fast and felt better.
I started to get a feel for Tel Aviv. I could feel the city’s pulse. I knew, from my previous vacations, that there was nowhere better for me and my lifestyle. I felt young and alive here. Suddenly, not caring how impulsive or how expensive it would be, I decided that I would move to Tel Aviv at the first opportunity.
I was roaming the alleyways of the area between the Carmel Shuk and the Mediterranean Sea. I was in love with this city. The humidity was high but there was a slight breeze. I didn’t have a care in the world.
I walked away from the Sea, up Allenby and spent time exploring the area encompassing Neve Tzedek and Rothschild. I wanted to buy some fresh ground cinnamon and cumin so I veered east to the Florentin area to the old Levinsky Market district where the shops, vegetable stands, and spice shops are incredible. On impulse I also bought a sack of dried dates that looked plump and some pistachios.
There were so many people on bicycles and a lot of them rode on the sidewalks. You really have to pay attention to where you are walking in Florentin so as not to crash into people both walking and biking.
I thought that Mother would have loved it here in Tel Aviv. It was both reverent and irreverent, old fashioned but modern, safe, terrifying, happy, sad, sexy, frumpy. There were black Jews, white Jews, brown Jews, all this and more. Mother would have felt at home here. It would have been right up her alley, since she was a nonconformist.
Then, walking back down to the beach from Neve Tsedek, I saw a daughter my age with her mother and my eyes teared up. I wished Mother were here so I could ask her some questions. I didn’t know if I would ever find any solid information that I could present to the Israeli authorities.
The old guilt of not pleasing Mother, not being able to make her happy was eating away at me in that moment. Did I believe her or didn’t I believe her? Did it matter? The important thing was always granting her wishes, making them come true.
So if this was her last wish, didn’t I owe it to her, and to myself, to continue to explore her story? I wondered if I would be free after this. I did so want to be free.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I felt comfortable here in Israel. I am Jewish and I was home. Israel is an enigma in that this Promised Land is our reward for centuries of hatred, vandalism, murder, and mayhem against us. It is a gift but it is also a responsibility. This is not the Israel that I imagined all of the years of my life. It is better, it is brilliant. I was thanking God for my existence on this day in Israel.
Between Jerusalem Beach and the Dolphinarium was the rocky Chinki Beach, and I walked a little further to put my towel down to lay in the sun on the smoother Banana Beach. I was in amazing Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean Sea, lying on the beach listening to the crashing waves and the pop pop pop of the guys and girls playing matkot, Israeli beach paddleball. I was thoroughly enjoying the eye candy.
I looked back over to The Dolphinarium, an unusual, huge concrete structure, abandoned and ruined, and covered in fantastically artistic graffiti. No one had been able to do anything with it since June of 2001 when it was a nightclub and a suicide bomber blew himself up inside. He killed one IDF soldier and twenty civilians, mostly teenagers that had emigrated from Russia.
The bomber had dressed as an orthodox Jew but he was actually a Palestinian with Hamas. Everywhere within the beauty of Israel are reminders of these bombings and why the wall had to be built to separate us from the West Bank.
At that moment the glass collector wended his way along the beach among the sunbathers until he’d spot someone close to the end of their beer or soda. “Drink up,” he urgently told them in Hebrew and they obeyed, handing over their empty bottles to him. Even the glass collector is a respected contributor to this intriguing society. After all, his function is important as he keeps the beach clean and performs the important job of recycling.
I loved that everyone’s hair was a mess and that it didn’t matter. I felt feral and free as I moved down to the edge of the beach, feet in the surf. I had almost forgotten about the Arab man at the Melkite Cemetery. I was to be waiting for a sign of the mysterious person that was to contact me. I wondered what that was all about.
The waves were crashing with a lot of white foam. A slight cool breeze was wafting about. An attractive waitress sporting a cocktail tray of ripe juicy watermelon slices with chunks of white cheeses whizzed by me. I was not far from the surf.
I was eating my dessert of dates and pistachios when a creeper wave came dangerously close to my towel. Along with the other sunbathers, I grabbed my stuff and scrambled for higher ground.
In the confusion someone bumped into me and put a note into my hand. Whoever it was, was gone in an instant. I didn’t see if it was a man or woman. The note, in English, told me to wait ten minutes and then get up and walk to the end of the walkway adjacent to the marina at the end of Gordon Beach.
It went on to explain that my contact would meet me where the green and white striped lighthouse stood. I tr
ied to calm myself with deep breathing and then I went to my destination with fear but also excitement. Finally, something was happening.
From the walkway to the lighthouse you could see all the way south to Jaffa. I was looking around to see if I was being followed. There were some people fishing and a few couples kissing on the rocks. But as I looked ahead to the lighthouse, I didn’t see anyone down there except a young boy running away.
At the back of the lighthouse was a paper shopping bag. I looked around but didn’t see anyone. The bag had my name printed on it in English, and it looked like the same handwriting as the note. I recognized the European style of writing, being distinctly different than American.
I grabbed the bag after checking the inside for anything that might explode and saw just paper. Then I hurried back up the hill to Dizengoff Street where I could get the #5 bus to Alozorov Railway Station and go back to Haifa. Once on the train and sure that I had not been followed, I steeled myself to inspect the contents of the shopping bag.