Back to America

I woke up at a quarter to six in a half empty room.  Boxes were stacked in the corners, beer glasses from last night cluttered the place up, and various personal items lay in a semicircle around a number of packed bags.  I had had a bunch of friends over just five hours ago, and the combination of packing, reorganizing, and hosting, along with Roman and Talia's yet-unpacked boxes being piled everywhere has left the apartment as an almost comical disaster.  I got out of bed.  After a few minutes of orienting myself to what was happening today, I threw on a swimsuit and set out along Herzl, then up past the back of the Shuk, and up the tayellet aside the beach.

When I got to the beach lookout by Bograshov I stopped.  A teenage girl in army briefs with a gun slung over her shoulder showed up at the same lookout, leaned against the banister ten meters away from me, and turned her gaze to a troupe of 10 or so young guys training on the sand for army recruitment.  The moment struck me as kind of picturesque, and I wished I had a camera.  Unfortunately I didn’t.  The shouts of the youths barely filtered through the quiet roar of the sea, and there was no other noise to be heard.  

Avishai and I had planned to come down here early in the morning to swim, so when he showed up around 7, we went down onto the beach and then into the water.  We waded in side by side and then dove in, and swam out towards a break between jetties.  The waves were big but even, and tranquil out past the breakers.  When we got about even with the jetties we stopped. 

“Should we go back?” I asked, treading water.

“No, let’s swim all the way around it”, he said, motioning to one of them.

We stroked a little further out and then made our way all the way around the jetty, not going fast, stopping here and there to tread water and chat.  At the end, we swam back down to the beach, found a bit of sun, and sat down.

“I’ve never done it before,” he commented.

“Me neither.”

“I was always afraid of going past it, you know?" he continued.  "But sometimes you just have to do it.  There are no sea-monsters out there on the other side.  You can see that now that you've done it.  I wouldn’t have done it without someone there with me, but now, I think I would be fine even doing it alone.  This is the way of things you know?  They seem scary until you do them, and once you do, you realize that they're really not bad at all.”

We chatted a bit more while we watched the youths training, and then we walked up the beach.  I took a sherut taxi home.

It was now about 8 o clock in the morning, and Roman and Talia were beginning to emerge from their room.  I showered, said goodbye to Talia as she went off to work, and then loaded a few boxes with Roman into his car to drive to the post office.  We said farewell and he went off.  After shipping my boxes, I ran some final errands and then met Dana at our favorite café in the Shuk.  We had an iced coffee, and then went to Anati’s kitchen, one of my favorite restaurants in the Yemenite quarter, for a kubeh soup.  

“You’re leaving?!” asked Anati in Hebrew, after getting a quick scoop from Dana.  

“Yes I’m returning to the states.”  I replied in Hebrew.  She looked at me accusingly.  “And the last meal I wanted was your kubeh.”

Her face broke into a bashful smile and she shooed me, and then went into the kitchen to prepare the dish: a beetroot broth with meat filled dumplings, one of the best to be found in Tel Aviv.  After eating Dana and I went down to the beach, took off our shoes, and took a walk on the sand.  

“Are you going to write a final blog?” Dana asked.

“I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I mean, what do you say in it?  How do you sum up four years?  It seems if anything like I ought to just write an entry about a small story, something in one of the final days here, or something.  Trying to reflect on the whole thing seems impossible and heavy.”

“What about writing about this past weekend.  You did a whole lot of things -- it was really a great one.”

“Yea, but somehow it doesn’t feel right. I prefer it as it was, as a series of events and some memories.  Writing some summary won’t quite feel genuine.”

I paused for a minute, then continued, “I don’t know.  I’m not sure if I’ll continue with the blog now at all.  Maybe it’s served its purpose.  I started it as a way for my American friends to stay up on my life here.  But now… well, I guess that if I keep writing it it’ll be kind of something for my friends here to keep up on my life there.  Isn’t that funny?”

We walked along, speaking about this and that, and sat on the sand for a while.  When we left the beach, we passed a house covered in murals and paintings.  A short, energetic man appeared, and beckoned us to come in.  It turned out that this strange house was actually the man’s art studio, and he's a quite well known muralist, Rami Meiri, who has done many familiar paintings all over Tel Aviv.  I bought a print off him and also a book, which he signed for me and dated: October 27, 2014.  A significant date.

“How did I come past here so many times and never know about it?” I asked Dana when we left.  “How strange to have really genuinely new experiences, and discover a little gem like this, on my last day.”  

Dana drove me to the airport, we said adieu, and then I went in.  The attendant at check-in, a young, bored guy with a clean-cut faux-hawk, declared my checked bag overweight, and told me to reduce it by three kilos.  Then, when he saw that my “carry-on bag” was a completely filled daypack weighing about 15 kilos, he started laughing.  

“That can’t go on.  Eight kilos max for the carry-on.”

“What!” I said.  “Who checks!  It’s the carry-on!”

“Look, I’d let you through if it were only one flight.  I don’t care.  But you have 3 legs in this trip, and you’re going to get slammed somewhere along the way.  You’ll have to pay the extra bag fee and check it one way or the other -- you’re better off doing it now.”  He pointed at my other, totally filled backpack.  “And what’s that?”

“My personal item?”

He laughed again. 

The airport was practically empty and there was nobody in line, so I stooped to reorganize my bags there.  While I did it, he said he was sorry I had to pay.

“It’s okay,” I said.  “I’m mostly annoyed that I spent so much energy stressing about it this week.  I should have just packed, committed to paying for an extra bag from the start, and been done with it.  It's never worth it, this kind of stressing, is it?”  

Soon enough I found myself in the large corridor in the airport where once, for a whole year, my own body-sized photo had stood.  The ministry of tourism had put up photos depicting Israeli sports, and through a twist of fate, a photo that Roman took of me on one of our climbing excursions had been selected to represent the sport of climbing.  Now, instead, there’s an exhibit about airplanes.

Walking down that hallway, I reflected that indeed, it’s been quite a long and strange journey. How funny now to leave Israel.  I've had so many experiences here, positive and negative, small and large.  They’ve even seemed to accelerate right up to the last minutes.  It’s simply impossible for me to conceptualize that it’s over.  Even getting on a flight doesn’t feel like the end.  I’m just not sure when it will actually hit. 

Tel Aviv is my home, my whole world, today.  Tomorrow it will be, for me, but a shrinking dream.  But I suppose that the consolation is what I’ll carry forth with me.  Although memories fade, my personal growth from this place, if I am mindful and diligent, should only strengthen.  And the friendships; well, when I arrived here I knew nobody.  Now I have family.  There’s not a whole lot else to be said about it. 

So I’ll say nitraeh, my friends, but not farewell.  Write me and I’ll write back.  And if you’re coming to my part of the world, don’t be shy.  I can’t wait for our next big adventures.  I hope to see you all soon.