Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman © October 26, 2017

My plan to skillfully and thoughtfully distribute my wife Joy’s ashes where it would mean the most to both of us was going well. Our tall handsome blonde, brown-eyed son David made all the arrangements and connections on the Internet and eased my way, accept for the last one. What was I expecting?

Landing in Tel Aviv, Israel at 4:30 PM and leaving on the morning of Wednesday, October 25, 2017 from Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy awaking at 6 am, and flying east at noon on El Al, it was the last leg of my trip where Joy’s ashes will be sent into the wind from the top of Masada. Never heard of it? It’s usually incorrectly referred to as the Jewish Alamo, but since it happened 2,000 years earlier, the Alamo should really be called the American Masada. Just my opinion. Two Jews died in the Alamo with the other 180 men, not that it makes them any more special. David had found the least costly places everywhere for me and knew I was working with very limited funds and a lot of spunk for a 67-year-old widower. The last place was for four weeks and a chance for me to see Israel, think about Joy and work on this new book of mine called: Promise Kept: Mission to Masada.

I’ve already written and consolidated associated stories totaling about 100,000 words. Also taken a zillion local photos of where, what and why. I’m maybe hoping someone in an Israeli university writing department will connect me with someone to design a new website and promote my book online. This country could also be called Entrepreneur-ville, even though the word is French, because this really is the center of the cosmos in terms of a place to get an idea, think it through and then doing it. and then doing it.

Not talk.

Action.

Well, the determined worm in my apple the was mathematically inevitable since ever other part of my plan went so well, was when I discovered to my horror as the plane was landing and I was squashed between two adorable Jewish grandmothers, that my car reservation made in Milwaukee three weeks ago by me, was off by two days.

No car for me for the next two days after I arrived. My AirBNB reservation was somewhere far north in Israel’s Never-Never land and no way for me to get to it without a car. Or as I soon learned, even with a car.

Here’s what happened in the last twenty hours.

El Al Plane landed at 4:30 PM

Went to the car reservation desk, explained the error with passion and dismay.

Desk person was remarkably unmoved by my performance, or so I thought.

Be careful what you wish for.

Discovered that French is Israel’s second language, not English.

Maybe the food here will get better.

Regardless, I waited in the wrong line for 45 minutes, then started over.

Now 5:15 PM.

Found the right line, waited in that line for 90 minutes

Now 6:45 PM.

During that time while waiting in line, I met a slim fifty-ish blonde woman from Paris with lovely lines radiating from her blue eyes, in a silky sort of beige blouse and no make-up (you wanna know this, right?) who told me that she liked to travel and her husband hated it so every so often, she explored Europe. Alone.

I thought to myself this chick’s hubby is a fucking idiot, but kept those cogent thoughts to myself, while she purred on about her life story. My imagination was on a different track as we edged closer to the car rental desk, but she looked so fine while talking to me and also eventually walking away in black pants that were well-tailored. That means they fit like a glove. That means she was possibly entertaining me, or not, as she went to the desk. I didn’t mind that she was ahead of me.

When the French-speaking counter-woman managed to tear herself away from discussing with a urbane couple whatever the hell was important to both of them about the future of democracy in France, or maybe just some Bordeaux wine, she saw my situation, told me she’d fix it, responded to my polite request in English that the cost shouldn’t change for me just because of an error made by a clerk on October 4^th back in Milwaukee’s Billy Mitchell Airport. I said it slowly because she was already drowning in a sea of Hebrew and French. She nodded. Then she went away. Maybe to Normandy to visit. I have no idea.

Back in less than an hour—sacre bleu!!—the nice lady though unconscious that it was now:

7:45 PM

No matter what else happened now, I was going to have to drive through Israel’s many colorful little villages in the dark. Winding, twisting, twirling roads awaited me. With unending streets and highway signs in Hebrew letters, smaller English letters and even smaller Arabic script.

Then the news meant to thrill me:

Not only was the car going to be the same price (!), but also as a way to recompense sagging old me, I was upgraded to a very cool, impossibly complicated French Peugeot four-door black car. I was not happy. I’m not a “car guy’ and was happy when a real engine replaced the team of squirrels in my last old car. How the hell will I drive a new French car with whatever they decided to do to make it, and France, of course, distinctive?

Damn thing took three car-rental guys with varying levels of English to attempt to train me how to drive that

Monstrosity and here is what they upgraded me to:

(1) First I key in a four number code on the dashboards.

(2) Then I immediately step on the brake, while inserting the odd key into the ignition.

(3) Then turn the key and count to three

(4)While my foots still pushed against the brake

(5)And make sure the pretend right armrest is in the down position

Because the “Up Position” was really serving as an emergency brake.

(6) I had to be aware that when the car is at a red light, the turbo or something engine inside of it turns off.

An ECO feature, but making the American driver very insecure about the deathlike-soundlessness of it.

Now after 8 PM, I drove off, slowly, jerkily, with a full tank of gas, all my bags, even a supply of shekels at 3.2 of the colorful little things to the dollar, with which to pay for the liters of gas, another pain in the ass European type of complication for me to figure out, besides the kilometer car speed and the meter measuring system, and then there’s the temperature thing where I only know if its hot, cold or raining but no real idea of the actual numeric temperature I’d comprehend in Wisconsin.

Dark.

Very Dark.

When God said “Let There Be Light” when he assembled the world, he may have possibly whispered under his breath that: Just for adorable Israel, at night, “Let it Be Really Dark!” Promised Land my ass.

Black-Land.

Here is the quick version of what happened in the endless hours after that, after I realized that unlike all of the customers before me as I noticed while waiting in line, I did not receive a handy and clearly marked roadmap of Israel.

Gee.

I guess it could happen to any one,.

But it didn’t happen to anyone.

It happened to me.

I drove for hours, mostly the wrong way, wrong speed, seems the Chosen People prefer 150 kilometers and hour, or 90 miles an hour, I guessed, and are annoyed by slower driving immigrants trying to decipher their exit signs n three languages. Lights flash, horns honk, the earth trembled.

I stopped at a myriad of gas stations to get some sort of directions, failed repeatedly, and had my first meal at one of them, to go, which then after couple of bits, then went, into the next gas station’s garbage can. Horrible. Buy the gas, skip the road food.

Ran into a whole crew of road workers assembled at the end of their shift at 10 PM, who thought my situation was hysterical, and where was my GPS thing and when I showed them my old Apple iPhone I inherited from Joyce, they saw it may work in America but not…..yeah.

They tried to draw me a little map. No one spoke English. Never. Must be a damn foreign country or something.

I do know a little French as that cute woman discovered in the waiting line for the car, but my Hebrew was supposedly learned from 1958 to 1963. Not really useful on the South-Side of Chicago. Recently revived formerly almost dead Middle Eastern languages don’t catch on so fast. I was lost in a sea of Hebrew.

Over and over, going place to place in the dark, seeking a cop, but never got one, finally aimed for bigger lights on the horizon and drove to Haifa. Israel’s third city. Quiet at Midnight. I parked and walked the streets.

I was gonna do that anyway, but first I wanted a place to sleep and stow my stuff which had been dragged from Racine, Wisconsin, to O’Hare airport, to Reykjavik, Iceland to London, England, to Rome, Italy, to Sardinia, Italy, fairly successfully earlier. The security people only took things from me the needed for themselves, I believe.

There were a series of blocked off brick alleys where mostly younger people were sitting outside of storefront cafes’ drinking and talking. There was loud and pretty good music pouring out of one place and as I watched through the window, people were dancing. Lots of smiling faces, nice atmosphere.

I walked everywhere it seemed safe. Looking at restored mosques, soaring spaceship-like architecture and I began stumbling on some of the bricks.

It was 1 AM in Israel and I had no place to sleep.

I pushed back the passenger seat, rolled up some warm clothing I packed for Iceland to serve as a pillow, pulled my crushable sun-protecting hat I’ve bought in Israel seventeen years ago over my eyes to block the bright light I parked under in a sort of seedy area, and tried to sleep. I had been up and moving-–walking, a cab, a plane, a car, more walking—since 6 AM Italy time and now farther east in Israel an adding yet another hour, I had been going for 19 hours. I closed my eyes and took my chances.

Woke up at 4 AM, tried to sleep more, gave up, walked the streets looking for a cop at 5 AM, all stores still closed, no person anywhere, and feeling damned, I went through the ritual of starting my French car at 6 AM.

In the daylight, I resumed my hunting and pecking at gas stations, coffee shops and a vegetable wholesaler. This went on for hours. Then, recognizing some of the names of the streets from my reservation, I turned to go to a small place called Kiyat ( sometimes spelled with a Q) Tiv’on, a town I guess, and exiting pulled into another gas station where I walked over to a large guy buying gas, asked if he spoke English, he did with a heavy accent, told him my unfortunate experience in his lovely country, showed him the reservation, he knew of it, then I asked him if I could follow him there and he agreed.

When we got to HaAhim Fish Alley, he pulled over, looked at some of the addresses with me, told me he didn’t think the place existed and he had to go. We shook hands. His hand was like a catcher’s mitt and very warm.

I began to explore.

Then a slender grey-haired guy appears in the narrow street, asked me my problem, I didn’t understand his name but it was French, of course, and he listened to my frustration—so close but maybe I’m an idiot after all—and took me inside to meet his nice wife, Braucha, meaning a prayer, who looked at my reservation and decided to look for the place on the street where she lived. Her husband, meanwhile was certain I was scammed—not a French word—and what were my plans now?

Then, prayer answered, Braucha found the website and all the other information—she was from Belgium—contacted then, wrote down the information which turned out to be the house next to them, a private renter, and lifted the doormat to discover the set of keys waiting there for me.

I called my son, removed all the curses, told him the place was just perfect, windows looking out at rolling hills, vines, pottery and flowers covering many walls in the “alley”, which it wasn’t. Then I talked to the gentle resident of the 2^nd floor space, which along with two other rooms for rent there, was owned by a local Israeli chiropractor and it was a source of a little extra income for her.

After I unpacked, put my stuff away, took off as many things as possible while still appearing decent, attended to a bad blister on the bottom of a toe which I pierced with a needle to let the painful clear fluid out, then washed it again. I believe in being prepared and I have about as much medical essentials as anyone might ever need with me.

My roommate is, in his words and carefully redone by me in a more comprehensible type of scribble is:

Shamsuzzama speaks Hindi and Urdu, and as he says, a bit of English, from a small city named Sultanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India, which is also called by Indians themselves Hindustan and Bharat.

He received a PhD from CSIR-Central Drug Research Institute at Lucknow, India, and when I asked, he said,

“I came here for a post doctorate fellowship under the supervision of Dr. Amir Sapir at the University of Haifa.”

 He has been granted what he deems to be a “very competitive fellowship fro the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education, as part of the Academic Cooperation with India and China.”

Shams is a very nice guy, quiet and helpful and made it easy for me to find my way around. I have been watching a stream of Indian movies while I type about my experiences, which all have frantic mass music and dancing and almost always a love story somewhere, even if there is killing, bad guys, evil plans, jealousy or whatever kind of emotion or plot, including a version of ET.

My other roommate, also in his significant amount of well-chosen words:

(Bob speaking here) This meeting of the three of us in Israel was totally random, but what fascinates me about it, is that I am Jewish, Shams is an East Indian Muslim and Nikolaos is Greek Eastern Orthodox Christian, and it doesn’t seem to mean a damn thing to any of us. Our main topic of conversation is whether to leave windows open or closed.

Besides my travels to Iceland, Italy and Israel, yet another “I” country is adding to the cultural stew of my education east of America. That leaves Ireland. Maybe I’ll get there on some future honeymoon. Or whatever.

There is a kitchen, bathroom, three bedrooms and a living area. It is on a hilltop and very airy even on hot Israeli days. Later that evening, I met the owner, a delightful and petite woman named Orly Platner.

Her name means “light” because her mother Rina was in a difficult delivery over three days and so when Orly finally arrived, Rina said she “saw the light”. Orly’s birth also happened to be during the late Fall Jewish holiday of Channukah, which is known as the Festival of Lights.

I’ve been here 24 hours and it is amazing how much you can absorb by listening to people. All it takes is sincerity and focused attention.

My son picked a nice place for me after all, except it was in the Twilight Zone.

Dum-de-Dum-Dum, Dum-de-Dum-Dum, da-da-da-DAH!!!

(To be continued…)

Driving in the Dark: Lost in Israel (part 1) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3736

Bob in Israel: Crusader Castle and Caraway Seeds (part 2) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3748

Marsha Michael, Who Solved My Problems in Israel (part 4) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3771

Tel Aviv, Israeli radio and Unexpected Art (part 5) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3796

Vad Yashem: Killing Millions of Children (part 6) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=38

Chicago man Watches Death of Samurais in Israel (part 7)//www.differentslants.com/?p=3846

Traveling Alone, Traveling Together (part 8) //www.differentslants.co/?p=3865

An American Jew’s Bold New Plan for a Sane, Peaceful and Prosperous State of Palestine (part 9) //www.differentslants.co/?p=3887

David’s Star in Israel (part 10) //www.differentslants.co/?p=3907

Sleeping With the Bedouins (part 11-a) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3962

Pleading with Fate in Jerusalem (part 12) https://www.differentslants.com/?p=3980

The City is Littered With the Corpses of My Retail Life