It's a small thing, but in two of the three movie theaters in our area, and I presume in movie theaters around the country, an intermission is taken during the showing of the movie. Sometimes, it's at the midway point, like when we saw the urban gritty Linha da Passe, and sometimes it's well past that, as with Oscar darling Slumdog Millionnaire stopping with our chai walla just about to answer the final question, it seemed. It's an interesting non sequitor for a society that always seems to be rushing, a contradiction among many.
***
Just this weekend I made it out to my first show in Tel Aviv of live guitar-based music that portends to be modern. Really, I made it to two shows, if briefly.
It started with a certain colleague, call her, say, "Amy", and I picking up another colleague and friend, Karyn. The three of us drove down Ben Yehuda and then Allenby, driving on streets officially reserved for commercial traffic, and after some circling, we found a parking spot near the club we had our eye on, on Lillenblum St. Lightning lit up the sky to our south, ominous but we hoped not impending.
The gate was 25 shekels to get in (these days just north of $6). We paid for three and walked in to a dark, crowded bar room. The bar itself was opposite the door, with high tables and stools to the right of the door, along the wall, and a stage area in the opposite corner. The place was small but packed (i.e. about 40 people). On stage, a girl with curly brown hair that almost covered her face when she leaned over her acoustic guitar sang in Hebrew. While we couldn't understand her, the mood translated quite well: gloomy, emotive, and dark. Even though she was an opening act, the singer's downward pull, combined with the lack of seats, pushed us out of the bar. Fortunately, it was a quick enough rejection for us to get our money back.
This led to plan B. We called a fourth friend, Andrea, who was stationed near her home in Florentin, a working-class neighborhood in south Tel Aviv known for its nightlife. She was at the 8'' MM Pianobar, and they too had live music. This would reunite our dinner/bar group of a weekend before, and seemed like the only appropriate option.
Well, we did try to add someone else to the mix, but she was driving from somewhere amidst a pounding hailstorm and so was unenthusiastic about continuing her night.
Anyway, after some wandering the wrong way down one way streets in a strangely deserted Florentin, we found a decent parking spot. I ingested a quick dinner as the girls drank coffee and warmed up, and then we walked over to the bar.
This was also a crowded bar, but bigger, with a second tier for the bar itself, the lower floor reserved for the stage, the piano, and a few tables. Andrea and a friend saved us seats, and so we squeezed into the corner of the bar and watched the show.
The show was put on by the performer Zaak. Zaak, I gather, is the singer, a handsome sabra with a high voice who strummed on the acoustic like all folkies should, except with a little more South American-styled rhythm. With him was a shaggy-haired bassist who looked quite similar to the girl on stage at the other bar, except he was a smiley dude rather than a mopey woman.
It was a cute enough performance. Zaak held sway in two languages (Hebrew and English), and played a few cards nicely, if repetitively. The big one was the covers card; first he played back to back Prince jams, which was fun, but for every surprising Pearl Jam tune ("Indifference", though he muffed the poison lyric) there was a too cutesy reach into "No Diggity" land. And on all the covers, the bass player had a little bit too much fun with upper registers and wah-wah pedals. Add that to the crowd being a little bit over clappy (i.e. clapping out the beat for every song), and the show dragged a little bit.
Some of that dragging was saved by the fact that we apparently sat at the VIP table. Squeezed next to Andrea was the father of the artist, and his family spilled around the table. While sitting next to them, we found out that Zaak is fluent in a bunch of languages, that all the songs he played were original (well, except the covers), and that, well, he's a charming young man.
Anyway, an inroad of some sort has been made. Will this lead to another true breakthrough performance? Future remains hazy.
***
A fantastic window into any society, if the opportunity presents itself (so perhaps we should qualify that as a fantastic window into any urban society), is the train system.
I ride the trains twice or three times a week. The ride from Herzliya to the south Tel Aviv station is just under 20 minutes, a huge save on gas and aggravation in evening TA traffic. Then there's the chance to catch up on reading my morning paper - usually by that point I've finished the Israeli paper, the Ha'Aretz, and I'm on my way through the IHT. Round trip costs me 15 shekels, and the only real drawback is that I usually have to wait for the return train twenty minutes longer than I'd like.
There are a few basic facets of the train system that one has to accept in Israel. There's the obvious - it's not a metro, it's more of a commuter rail, riding along the eastern frame of the city, side by side with the main highway, the Ayalon. The ride is much more comfortable than one in Moscow, or even Madrid, as the trains are amply sized, suited for the amount of passengers that ride the rails. I rarely have to consult guides for how to get a good spot on the metro, for example, as a seat is almost always available.
At first I was very impressed with the speed and punctuality of the trains. This was mostly because the impression I got from past teachers at our school was that the public transportation system in Israel was in shambles, a no man's land of dirty buses running on disjointed schedules. Of course, those teachers were trying to sell me cars. Anyway, that positive first impression wore away as I realized that trains often showed up late and I got used to having a pair of seats to myself, an accomodation that the trains could not always meet during rush hour.
The other things that you have to get used to are particular to Israel. Like the prevalence of rifles on the train. Assault rifles or sniper rifles, occasionally handguns, all a part of your trip into the city. Now, they're not quite floating around; usually they're in the hands of a young man or woman dressed in dull green army garb, a soldier for the land. Nowhere else in Israel have I encountered such a concentration of soldiers in uniform with their guns in tow, and the viable reactions are two: to get used to it and pay no mind, or to freak out and jump one of the soldiers, breaking the end of the gun with your bare hands so that they can't use it to fight back, and then continue in their humiliation by stomping on the gun, confirming your overwhelming masculinity and alpha male status. Or you can just not take the trains, I guess.
Then there are the non-stop political ads. Billboards line the train station tunnels, representing not only the big three parties (Likud, Kadima, and Labor, from right to left), but also a few of the fringe outfits. In addition, the big ones often campaign against each other, so you might see a picture of Tzipi Livni (Kadima) looking leaderly and strong (as well as pretty) on her own party billboard, then an unflattering picture of her along with an imposing picture of Bibi Netanyahu flanking the strong yet shrewd Ehud Barak on his Labor party poster, and then a picture of Livni getting a midnight phone call and looking in distress for the Likud poster. The three faces of Tzipi Livni, you might say.
The trains most especially offer a glance into the mindset of the Israeli people. There are the simple reactions, like when a soldier cries out, "Of course" after it's announced that the train will be five minutes late. There's the general habit of leaving a bag on a second chair on the train or in the station, even when the crowds would dictate giving up that luxury. If you leave something or have shampoo leaking in your mesh bag, they'll point that out for you, a kind gesture in a gruff voice.
But the Israeli character at its most prickly is seen in the way that, almost unfailingly, those in the station waiting to get on the train will try to squeeze into the train car even as the passengers leaving the train are fighting to get off. The courtesy of allowing your neighbor to go in front of you is a rare discovery in the Holy Land. After all, you have to make sure you get into the train so you can choose between any of 20 empty seats to get the best one for you and your bag.
***
But if the trains show the negative potentiality of Israelis, there are times when the citizens remind you of their sweet, kind cores.
I wanted to buy a home stereo system. Nothing fancy, just a system that played CDs and had decent speakers, so it wouldn't be completely rinky-dink.
I went to a strip mall near our school on the way home one day. My first stop was at Best Buy, a store whose goods match its American counterparts in theme, but whose scope is laughably limited. Also, it looks kind of junky on the outside. And small.
They didn't have what I was looking for, so I walked over to Home Center, another store in the shopping complex. After a little bit of looking, I found the stereo section, and then I narrowed down my choice to a black nakasumi model. It looked basic but effective, with two nice handheld speakers and a cd player. There was no corresponding price tag, so I figured I'd go for help.
A man came over, and in my pidgin Hebrew I found out from him that this was the last one in the shop, that it cost 200 shekels (just about my budget), and that if I wanted, we could test the cd player. We couldn't find a CD to test it with, however. The radio worked fine, and I felt like going home, so I told him that I was sure it was fine and I'd take it, so no worries. Or I told him, "I have horns sticking out of my side and it's giving me cramps." Either way, I made my choice.
The purchase itself hit a snag, as the stereo was not only the last one they had, but also not even in their system. So they gave it a different serial number - 9090803838, as I remembered from them typing it in a few times - and sold it to me. That different serial number carried a 400 shekel tag, but they knocked it back down to the promised 200 and I went home.
There should be no doubt at this point that when I went home to try the stereo, I found out the CD player didn't work. The disc wouldn't spin, and there was nothing that could be done about it (at least, nothing that could be done with my technological illiteracy). It would have to be returned.
Here's where the drama raises a notch (and you're wondering how a story about a broken stereo system could get any more dramatic, aren't you?). Despite remembering when I bought the stereo, which did not come in a box since they didn't have any for it, that I must keep the receipt, because there was at least a 50% chance the stereo wouldn't work, I couldn't find the receipt. So while I was right about the unreliability of Home Center's random stereos, I was wrong in my method for holding onto the receipt. I turned my car and my bedroom upside down, but I couldn't find the thing. And why didn't I just keep it with the stereo? Because it was a gift, and I thought it would be tacky to have the receipt near the stereo, even though I told the recepient of the gift the price just like that. It's just my foolish pride.
Anyway, I decided I'd go to the store after school on Tuesday, a day after I bought the stereo, in hopes that maybe they'd remember me and help me out with the stereo regardless. I didn't have much hope, but I didn't have many other options either.
I arrived to find the woman behind the help desk already engaged with a customer in a heated discussion. The woman looked to be in her early 30s, with that darkly Caucasian Israeli skin tone and long gold curls that had a brassy tint to them. She looked like a regular spitfire, hardly someone who would help me in my sorrow. Besides, she and the customer were going back and forth in loud tones, he a little bit more aggressively, about a phone he had bought at Home Center and how they weren't responsible for the service plan, or something.
A younger, pudgier girl, a cashier, came over and told me to wait. Since there were no customers at the checkout line, she decided to try to help me. In Hebrew, I explained that the stereo wasn't working, or more specifically the discs, but that I didn't have the receipt (kabbalah) or the bill (heshbon), and I knew you needed that, but I had lost it, and was looking and looking and couldn't find it, so she told me the verb for search, and then she said she'd check with the manager behind the counter and maybe she could help, and I said I bought it yesterday and pointed out the picture on the wall from the Home Center staff retreat of the manager who sold it to me the day before, as if that would help. I had my most resigned, world-weary face on, prepared for the inevitable teeth-pulling argument that would get me nowhere.
It may have been that my face is what saved me, not so much for its stunning form and general presence as for that "I give up and just want to go home and curl up" aura glowing around it. In any case, by the time the manager turned to me, I had a well-practiced story about my situation (in Hebrew), an advocate in the cashier, and a steady lean on my right elbow as if I knew I had no chance of getting anything. Because that's what I thought.
After confirming that I was dumb enough to request a return for a stereo without a receipt, the
the manager pulled out the purchase list from the day before. I recited the serial number at some point, and while I wasn't sure if she heard me, the manager managed to find my purchase. It was a day before at roughly the same time, and so it wasn't perhaps as hard as it seems. It made me think that for all the wonderful things that technology has done, it still hasn't completely eliminated the need for holding onto receipts. But Home Center is close.
It was easy after that; she took my name, number, and a few other details down, and promised that in the next couple of weeks I'd have a new stereo system to replace this one. She printed out a new receipt for me, one which I actually held onto. She even switched to English a little bit for me, speaking it much better than I speak Hebrew. It was a happy ending.
And one with a nice epilogue: when I came to get my new system about a week later, not only did it work, but it was a fancier, nicer version, without costing me any more. So if you go on a scavenger hunt and find the last piece of a type of merchandise, grab it and hope it's broken. Then you can get an updated version for the same price and a little extra time.
Also, Israelis can be very, very nice when they allow themselves to be. Which is good.
***
And there are the times when I'm in a restaurant in the old city of Yafo, hearing stories about how Golda Meir was known as "the Mattress", for the relative ease which it took to lay on her. The eggplant is bad but the company is just fine, and we're late for the show we're going to but the waitstaff is very nice, if a little inattentive, and work and politics and gruffness seems faraway even as we're talking about someone's stolen bike, and when we go to the next bar and there are vulgar visual puns on common ad themes, like a grotesque alien baby sucking on a voluptuous woman's breast as "Got Milk" is written above his head, or a Coke bottle turned to a phallic image, replete with phallic wordplay (think about it), and a little brown dog runs under tables, stopping only to be petted and held, and then only for brief periods of time, and the night goes late but not too late, then the place becomes unimportant and the people and the haze and the combination make up for everything, and Israel is ok.
Or when I'm in that same restaurant with somebody else, and while we talk about giving and receiving, the soundtrack features three Leonard Cohen songs, two of them outright classics and one a less obvious pick, and Dylan's "Don't Think Twice" rolls out of a Neil Young jam, and all of a sudden the potential has exploded into a humble happy home. Then all is ok. Israel is ok.
Next post will be a little more focused, on the many ups and downs of contemplating life-changing decisions. Or getting into a country for good. Cheers!
