Prosaic (Mosaic) Interlude #10

A National Trust

My name was used against me. I thought because of the Arab sound and my dark Minnesota tan, I only was given a week's visa in Israel. Everyone else on our bus from Egypt was given two or three. I did not really care. After a day's trip up the Sinai Peninsula with assorted American tourists, Brits and sweaty Egyptians in week-worn Galhebeas, stinky toe-jammed sandals, a week of another culture was all I wanted. I did feel targeted, although by then it was not such a infringement (see “The Cheeky Lad” in Finding me—and Them: Stories of Assimilation and my blog post of 5-15-17 “Shuffling Through London.”) In hindsight, targeting gets easier to ignore each time it happens. The question is, is it something reversible, something over which you have say or control. In this case I really did not. Objection may have been costly. City hall is hard to fight, and the Mid-East is not the place to learn how.

I arrive in a cab, in a torrential rain. In back of me, down glistening moonlit streets, shadowy sniffing mongrel dogs, I see the Mediterranean tossing white-capped giants, each one threatening to consume Tel Aviv. I'd come from where Moses had crossed, led these generations past into Canaan, where he saw the bush burn and emerged with his tabulations, his percipient calculations for an honest man. I give the cabby the last of my green currency and make his night. A matron welcomes me to a youth hostel's terrace. I swing my duffel bag down heavy, producing a thud that breaks through the pats of roofless rain.

“Welcome to the Tel Aviv Hostel. I show you to your bed.”

We start walking down the hall. I see green walls and a frosted door window. Around a small red table some guys drink beer and talk loudly in German. I have a working knowledge of the language, but this is fast and likely quite idiomatic. Elvis plays on a old faded 8-track player behind a well-lit bar tended by a burly Belgian who looks like a young Pavarotti. He sings, but not nearly as well. “From where do you come?”

“USA, Minnesota. Ever been there?”

“America, really.” She looks at me surprised, suspicious. “I thought you were from a South American country, Venezuela possibly.

“No, certainly not. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota,” I say, a bit insulted. “So how about you, where do you call home.”

“I was born here in Tel Aviv,” she says quickly, as a footnote to our conversation. The implication I take away is that my nationality is of major importance, a talking point. Her's is not. Just like it was to the Israeli border guards earlier today. “Here it is, four bunks to a room,” she measures as we poke our heads in a plywood room with a lone light bulb hung in the middle. The bunks are two to a wall. Each has about four feet between the upper and lower bunk. It is meager conditions and reminds me of a POW barrack. I can't expect much for one Shekel a night. I nod, unimpressed, throw my bags on an empty bunk, and go back to the little hostel bar. The Germans raise their beer mugs, signaling me to join them. I try to follow the German and quickly lose interest. I notice the red head at the adjoining table. She has her sandaled feet up on the next chair and shouts flirtatious words to the Belgian behind the bar.

“Man, who is that, she's beautiful.”

“That's Marina.”

“Where is she from?”

“New Jersey.”

“She got something going with the bartender?”

“He wishes.”

“So she's fair game for a fellow American?”

“I think she is hoping for something more exotic. . .and erotic,” they laugh, that loud gut-propelling German laugh.

“You think I'd have a shot with Marina?”

“You, you're just a boy. No, a woman like that would chew you up, spit you out, and build a better man.”

I am right out of college, 24, and ready to get down to business. This trip is like my last taste of the world before I sell my soul to corporate America.

“Yeah, you're right. Dumkopft, what was I thinking,” I say, smacking my forehead.

Marina smokes and looks sexy doing so. A little ash misses her ashtray and I follow them to the floor.

“Hi,” she says matter-of-factually.

“Hello. Enjoying your trip?”

“It's alright. How 'bout you.”

“Just got in,” I say like a cowboy, a drifter, a bad-ass cool loner who blows into town and blows out before the dust clouds let you know him. “Came up from the Red Sea area, Sharm El Sheikh. Did some diving, saw some chariot wheels.”

“Where are you from?” She asks me with no particular curiosity. She is warm with a playful happiness that makes me trust she won't question my name or my nationality. We are countrymen though, kindred patriots, and our world just got smaller. Well, mine did anyways.