Mika rolled her eyes and was like, “Whatever—they’re figs.”
In order for all this to make sense you have to understand some of the history here. When the Nazis invaded Bukovina, Yochanan was three years old. In order to save his life, his parents put him on a train headed to Palestine by way of Bucharest. They made him memorize a fake name for himself as well as for them and told him that if anyone ever asked, he was to say that his parents were dead. Unbeknownst to him, his father had sewn a piece of paper into the lining of his coat with his real name and address so if anyone found him, they might also find the paper and could safely return him to them.
The train—filled with two thousand children, many of whom who were sick and starving and dying of typhus—stopped in a place called Botoshan where there was a Jewish community and Jewish doctors. (Where there are Jews, there are doctors.) Yochanan, even in the face of such grim circumstances, was apparently so charming and so adorable that one of the doctors actually took him home. Yochanan lived with this doctor and his family for more than a year and the doctor eventually found the paper in the lining of his coat. Miraculously, his parents had survived the concentration camps and Yochanan was reunited with them.
Somehow that piece of paper survived and today, sixty-some-odd years later, it hangs above his desk in a frame.
Needless to say he had a crazy childhood and, as such, is excused for his insanity. And believe me that almost seven decades later there is some serious residual insanity. Exhibit A: The fig story. Also, as a Holocaust survivor, he categorically refuses to throw away food. In fact, right after he flipped out over the figs, he tried to feed me a rotten olive. When I protested, he started screaming, “Olives cannot be rotten!”
And then he shoved it in my mouth. I think he was right because even though there was a moldy film on the juice the olives were sitting in, the olive tasted fine. When he forced me to admit there was nothing wrong with the olive, I was like, “But still, who wants to eat a moldy olive?”
Yochanan screamed, “There is no such thing as a moldy olive!”
Understandably, Yochanan has a different relationship with food than the rest of us because the rest of us were never starved nearly to death. He is constantly cooking obscene amounts of food and hoarding things in jars and cupboards and if he catches you trying to throw something out, he goes completely ballistic. You are also never ever allowed to say food is disgusting. This is grounds for him to go completely ape-shit crazy. So these are the things we have to tolerate. He can be totally impossible but he’s been through so much and he’s so much fun and so brilliant and lovable that it’s really kind of easy to overlook his insanity. Plus, he’s really funny.
For example, after the olive incident he had a huge fight with Talma for throwing out six rotten tomatoes. I was sitting in the garden, which was adjacent to the kitchen, and he sat down next to me with the bag of rotten tomatoes that he’d rescued from the garbage and said, “I think I am going to get separated. I’m much too busy for this aggravation. I have many interests—in art, in literature . . . And I have many friends, as well. I simply don’t have time for this.”
Unbeknownst to Yochanan, Talma was standing right behind him and obviously heard everything he said. She was like, “Really? You know where the door is, Yochanan. Please go.”
Yochanan, with a shit-eating grin, didn’t skip a beat. He said to me, “You know what the problem is? The problem is that in the past few years, she has become very assertive. She wasn’t like this before.”
Talma met Yochanan when she was sixteen years old. Yochanan was a couple of years older and used to race up to her on his bicycle and unzip her sweatshirt and race away. Shortly thereafter, she lost her virginity to him in a bomb shelter. Other than the fact that Yochanan fought in three wars, they hadn’t left each other’s sides since. They were both in their late sixties now. The mere thought that he could survive one day without her was laughable.
In fact, I was laughing so hard and was so amused by all this, I didn’t even realize that the garden had started to fill up with people and was buzzing with activity. All these people had arrived and they were eating and drinking and laughing and then I heard somebody scream, “Guy is here!”
Inexplicably, I suddenly felt like I was having a full-blown out-of-body experience. I had no idea who Guy was. I had never even heard his name before. But the second I heard his name—I swear to God—I actually felt the earth move. Maybe on some subconscious level I thought of Lori’s brother, Guy, who had been killed on 9/11. I honestly don’t know. But I had never experienced anything like that before in my entire life.
And then I saw him.
And all bets were off.
He was literally the most beautiful human being I had ever seen. He had smooth, mocha skin and jet-black hair, speckled with silver. He had crazy long black eyelashes and dark-brown eyes that were deep and soulful with just the slightest hint of a twinkle to let you know that he was more than just a pretty face. He had that sexy I-haven’t-shaved-in-a-couple-of-days scruff and I liked his teeth. Most people in the Middle East—most people in the world, including certain dentists incidentally—have heinous teeth that are brown and crooked and rotting out of their heads. Guy’s teeth were not perfect, but they were almost perfect. He was tall but not too tall and I could tell he had a sick body. He was muscular the way a runner or soccer player is muscular. And he had a great ass. And while there was something gentle and shy about him, there was also something confident and incredibly sexy. He was seriously drop-dead gorgeous and I could not stop staring at him. He kept catching me staring at him, which was mildly embarrassing but it also meant he was staring at me. I decided right then and there that I needed to have my way with him.
I excused myself from the table, did some quick investigating, and discerned that Guy was one of Roy’s best friends and I had apparently met him at the wedding. It was a testament to how drunk I was that I didn’t even remember. When I returned, Guy sat down at the same table Talma and Yochanan were sitting at and Roy joined us. We were having a fairly inane conversation that I wasn’t paying attention to because I was fantasizing about tearing Guy’s clothes off when Roy said something about how Guy was a really good cook and that he was particularly gifted when it came to fish. Yochanan started shouting, “I am a great chef!”
And then he started telling Guy that Guy may think he knows how to cook fish but Yochanan could teach him the real way to cook fish, the best way to cook fish and on and on it went. Guy, for his part, took all this quite well. Had I walked into someone’s home and been greeted by such a raving lunatic, I’m not sure how I would have reacted. It’s not like Guy knew Yochanan. It’s not like he had ever met him before. It’s not like a strange man wasn’t lecturing him on something he obviously knew a great deal about. But he took it. And he didn’t take it the way most people take it. He took it—differently. He was so laid-back and chill. He was like, You are obviously a fucking lunatic and that’s fine but if you want to cook me a fish dinner so you can prove to me that you know how to cook fish better than I do, or so you can prove to me that you can cook salmon and I’m going to think it’s trout, I’ll be more than happy to come over for dinner.
There are few things sexier than a man who has nothing to prove. I was so turned on that I would have seriously had sex with him right then and there. But Guy was really kind of shy and we didn’t say more than a few words to each other that day.
A few nights later I went out with Roy and a bunch of his friends to a bar in Tel Aviv. Keeping in mind the year I just had, the fact that Roy had just gotten married and had a pregnant wife at home, and how infrequently we saw each other, it was a big deal to be let out like this. And I, for one, had every intention of making the most of it.
The bar was crowded and dark and smoky and people were dancing on the tables and soon I was one of them. I was having the time of my life. At some point, this guy name
d Sammy started hitting on me relentlessly. He was kind of ridiculous, with his wife beater and his gold chain. He was almost a caricature of himself but I thought he was sort of hot in a cheesy macho kind of way. Plus, he was mildly entertaining, so I played along. After about fifteen minutes of this, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Guy walk in. I was like, See ya later, Sammy. My night is about to get interesting. Guy sat down at the bar and I sashayed my little ass over and sat down right next to him.
He was even sexier than I remembered.
As it turned out, he was also painfully boring.
I could not have been more straightforward in my intentions had I dropped to my knees in the middle of the bar. I mean, as far as I was concerned, I was making it pretty clear that I was interested in him. In fact, until he opened his mouth, I was pretty much ready to leave the bar with him that instant. But for some reason he wouldn’t stop talking about parking. He droned on and on about how it had taken him forever to find a parking spot and how the parking situation in Tel Aviv was so terrible and on he went until I finally couldn’t take it anymore. I was so bored and underwhelmed that after about twenty minutes of this I actually got up and walked away. As luck would have it, I found Sammy, who was standing pretty much exactly where I’d left him and was thrilled to see me. We walked outside, sat down on a bench, and proceeded to make out for what I thought was about half an hour.
Next thing I know it’s two o’clock in the morning and I am wasted, sitting on a bench in a foreign country with some guy I just met who is trying to convince me to come home with him. If Sammy looked ridiculous after several drinks in the dark lighting of the bar, now that I was more sober and essentially sitting under a streetlight I wanted to die. My araq-induced stupor and my excitement over being at a tacky bar in Tel Aviv led me to believe that Sammy was hot, when he was in fact not hot at all. Sammy, as it turned out, was the very opposite of hot. He was the kind of guy you think is hot when you’re wasted and in a dark bar in a foreign country—contextually hot, as it were. Had I found him in New York City, it would have been in some cheesy club in the Meatpacking District and he would have been from New Jersey. Or worse, Staten Island. I could try to make this sound better than it actually was, but if I’m really going to be honest, I had just made out with a character out of a Sacha Baron Cohen skit.
Upon realizing this dreadful error and having no interest in repeating my ordeal with the masturbating Canadian, I found Roy and got the hell out of there.
So that was that.
I spent seven more glorious days with Roy and Talma and Yochanan and the rest of my family. We cooked meals and went to the beach and went to Jerusalem and the Dead Sea and traveled around and I fell in love with the country all over again. A week later, when it was time to return, I went to the airport firm in my conviction that I would return sooner rather than later, even if it killed me. I knew there was a very real possibility that it would actually kill me, given all the suicide bombings and other insanity that took place in that neck of the woods.
It’s worth noting that even I, the most paranoid of paranoid, have to admit that the American media’s version of what goes on in Israel is totally sensationalized and wildly inaccurate. Having not been in Israel for fifteen years, I was mildly concerned for my safety after everything I had seen on television. But being in Tel Aviv is akin to being on the Upper West Side of New York City during Hurricane Sandy. It’s like you know something super fucked-up is going on but it’s not really affecting your life. Which is part of the problem, of course, but that’s not the point. The point is that I was safely on my way home, feeling vibrant and rejuvenated, vowing to return as soon as humanly possible.
As I was in line waiting to check in at the airport, I was waxing nostalgic, thinking about how insane it was that I had suffered for so long over Nico and Noam and about how good I felt now. I was thinking about how incredible it had been to see everyone and how lucky I was. I was thinking about how nice it had been to be out of New York, even though I loved New York, and how incredible it was to reconnect with my family and my roots. I was thinking about how much I loved the weather and the flowers in Israel and how wonderful I felt. I was thinking about all of these things as I presented my passport to the man behind the counter. I told him I was flying standby and asked him to check my status. The man said that there was plenty of room on the plane and I was free to check in.
So I checked my luggage and made my way through security and passport control. If you think the security is annoying in America, try getting in and out of Israel. It’s like a police interrogation: Who are you? Where are you from? What were you doing in Israel? Has anybody given you anything to take out of the country? If so, it could be a bomb. Do you know that Arabs can’t be trusted? How many times a day do you shit? They are not fucking around over there. It took more than an hour to get to my gate.
The thing about flying standby is that like most things that are superfantastic, there is a downside. Even though I felt like a movie star flying first-class, the people who work for the airline knew I was just a lowly second-class citizen flying on the goodwill of an employee. And because you are essentially a nonrevenue customer, you have to wait for every single other passenger to board the plane before they let you on. Once you’re on the plane, you’re golden, but I wasn’t on the plane yet. I was, quite literally, steps away from walking on when a man with crooked brown teeth, beady eyes, and a long, greasy ponytail, said to me, “Zis flight iz foole.”
It took me a moment to decipher what he was saying, which was, “This flight is full.”
I was like, “You have to be kidding me!”
Beady Eyes repeated himself as though I hadn’t heard him properly the first time, “Zis flight iz foole.”
I said, “But that’s impossible. They told me when I checked in that there was definitely room. And they’ve given me a ticket.”
In America, where the customer is always right, this may have made an impression on someone. But Israelis seriously just don’t give a fuck. Beady Eyes repeated “it’s foole” again and just as I was about to reply, he straight up walked away from me. It took me about ten minutes to discern that the flight was not actually “foole,” but it was “overweight” and, as such, they were not letting anyone else on the plane. Who had ever even heard of such a thing?
I couldn’t believe my luck. I had been flying standby for years and nothing like this had ever happened and there wasn’t anything I could do. The next available flight that looked like it had room wasn’t until the day after next. I reminded myself that I had known from the beginning that this might happen and I figured that as long as there wasn’t a war going on, there were worse things than being stuck in Tel Aviv. I went to find my luggage, relisted myself on a flight back to New York, and after running around from one side of the terminal to the other like a chicken with my head cut off, I resigned myself to an extra two days in the Holy Land.
I was finally about to exit the airport when something very strange occurred. A female security guard—dressed in full military gear, complete with a machine gun strapped across her chest—stopped me. To this day, I have no idea why she stopped me, but she did. She said, “Didn’t you just get here a few hours ago?”
I was like, “Uhhhh, yes.”
She said, “Well, then why are you leaving?”
Let’s be clear here. Israel may be a tiny country but Ben Gurion is a major international airport. There are tens of thousands of people who come and go from that airport every day. I have no idea how or why she remembered me and, somewhat baffled, I told her the standby story and how I had gotten kicked off the flight because it was overweight.
She gave me a once-over and very matter-of-factly said, “Well, God obviously has other plans for you. He’s not ready for you to leave Israel yet.”
It was a very intense and very strange interaction. I’m like the least religious person in the world. I mean,
I’m practically an anarchist but even I was taken aback by this.
And then I put the thought out of my head and called Roy.
Even though it was two in the morning, like a good surrogate brother he offered to come collect me from the airport. Like an idiot I told him I would take a taxi. I had no money and I had no phone: in a fit of drunken idiotic joy, some fat, hairy Middle Easterner had tossed my Chanel bag and with it my iPhone into the pool at Roy’s wedding—and I should have known better than to turn down Roy’s offer. But I didn’t know better. Instead, as though I were in New York City, I hailed a taxi and climbed in.
And as soon as I got in the cab, it hit me that it was the middle of the night and I was in a country that I didn’t really know. Ultimately, even though I spoke the language, I was a foreigner. Moreover, I was stuck in this taxi with no phone, a man who looked like an Arab, and no idea where I was going. I became completely convinced that he was kidnapping me and bringing me to who-the-fuck-knows-where. I could already see images of myself on YouTube, holding an Arabic newspaper with the current date and time, with my head being chopped off.
Suffice it to say I was bugging out.
We were on the highway and I began to formulate a plan as to how I was going to jump out of the taxi. How would I survive such a jump, I wondered. And then I started to notice the signs along the side of the highway and I realized that we were not headed toward Tel Aviv. I began to have a full-blown panic attack, in earnest. I was sweating and starting to hyperventilate. In the calmest voice I could muster, I said, “It doesn’t look like we’re heading toward Tel Aviv.”
Not that I knew what the fuck I was talking about or where Tel Aviv was in relation to anything else in Israel, but I was convinced we were going the wrong way and that my life was in imminent danger.
In a very ominous voice (or in a voice I thought was very ominous), the taxi driver said, “Why would we be headed toward Tel Aviv?”
On My Knees Page 12