Change is Good

It is with great sadness and annoyance that I announce the untimely change of my blog’s name from Ayelet Metayelet (traveling Ayelet) to Tales of a Wandering Jew. I recently found out that I am no longer the only Ayelet Metayelet. Over the 10 years I’ve been living away, some other Ayelet (clearly a lesser Ayelet) stole what I thought to be my very own clever rhyme, (surely no one has thought of it before me!) started traveling Israel and wrote books titled Ayelet Metayelet. Can you believe the nerve of some people? Now she’s Ayelet Metayelet and me? I’m just another wandering Jew.

Dog's Life (Or My week in 5 Chapters)

Chapter 1- a Chance Meeting at the Museum
Back when I was serious about researching (…) I went to see what the Museum of Diaspora in Tel Aviv could tell me abut the Jewish community in Yemen. Turns out – not much. But really, I wasn’t paying too much attention because when I got there I ran into an old old friend who I haven’t seen (not even once!) since I was 15! It was bizarre, looking at this grown man’s face and recognizing the awkward teen features that started it all. He is now a handsome confident man, and a translator for the museum. We reminisced about the good old days. He remembered some of my pen pals from back then: Bridgette from Germany, Pavel from Poland. Apparently I used to dump those I couldn’t manage by passing them on to him, which he enjoyed because it helped him practice foreign languages. It worked well from him because he now speaks fluent German and Dutch and Danish…

Growing up, I had about a 100 pen pals from all over the world. No one knows how I managed to write them all, keep a journal, write short stories and poems, articles for the magazine, and do my homework. (Oh wait a second, that’s right. I didn’t do my homework. Like, never.) Apparently even when I came to visit him all I wanted to do was write. I had an alter ego, he told me, her name was Monique and she wrote prank letters to people in the personals ads. Shameless! Of course I had no recollection of any of that. I think the most interesting thing he told me was that he remembered me as happy and energetic, “always with a smile,” while I remember myself as a dark and depressed teen. By the end of the visit I didn’t care so much about the poor representation of my people in a museum that is supposed to document ALL Jewish communities. Later on I found that we were actually better off than others. Moroccans or Ethiopian Jews had no representation at all!

Since running into him I’ve been running into people from my past on a regular basis, so much that it started to scare me. I always have to look my best because I never know who I might run into.

A side note: so far, this has been the extent of my research and I’m admitting it aloud in the hope that it will give me a very much needed kick in the butt.


Chapter 2 - a Chance Meeting with a Man in Black

Two days later I’m strolling Dizzengof Street (a very popular street in Tel Aviv, packed with restaurants and cafes and shopping) looking for a sunny patio to drink coffee at, when I notice a religious man standing on the corner and offering Tefillin for passersby (Tefillin, also called phylacteries, are leather objects used in Jewish prayer, containing Biblical verses. They are an essential part of Morning Prayer services, and are worn on a daily basis by many Jews).
I look at him, his red haired beard and his little sparkly eyes and gasp: “E***?” And he says, like he’s not surprised at all: “Ayelet!”
“I can’t believe it’s you,” I say. “It’s been… what… like, 4, 5 years?”
“Something like that.” His smile hasn’t changed. Still sunny and childlike.
“Sean, this is E,” I say. “You heard about him.”
And E says: “Really? You heard about me?” The two of them shake hands. Of course, I can’t even shake his hand because I’m a woman.
“Of course he heard about you!” I say. “It’s good to finally meet you,” Sean says. Truth is over the years I told lots of people about E. He had a huge influence on my life at the time. I met him on a beach in Thailand just before turning thirty and we became inseparable. I was single and broke, barefoot (Literally. I lost my flip flops and decided footwear wasn’t so important after all) and had shells woven in my messed up hair. I had shells everywhere, shell necklaces, anklets and bracelets. I was reliving my early twenties hippy days all over again. E and I were on two opposite spectrums of a decade, but somehow he was the wise one. I thought for a minute there that I was in love with him, because he was extremely bright and happy and full of light and insight and every minute with him was an adventure. He was a joy to be around. Soon enough everybody on the beach was in love with him. People talked about him. They said he was enlightened. “Aren’t you with E?” a British guy asked me once when I asked him for an advice about something. “Ask him! He’s a little crazy but he knows things.” “He is a truly great man,” said my friend Axel, a 50 something year old German man. I felt really lucky to have met him and special because he chose to share a hut with me and spend all his time with me. It’s possible that he chose me because I was more lost than anybody else, but at the time that didn’t occur to me. I was too happy. Everything was magic.

I missed him so much afterwards and for a while we e-mailed lots and lots. Then he was suddenly studying Judaism, and then it was yeshiva. I was a little disappointed when I heard he turned religious. I liked him better climbing trees like a monkey, cracking coconut for our breakfast with his pocket knife, taking me for rides on his motorbike. I liked him when he was a secular prophet, unassociated with organized religion.
And now there he is, dressed in black, with the hat and the beard. The whole thing.
“You want candles?” he says. For Shabbat he means.
“Sure,” I say.
“One? Two?”
“Sure,” I say and he gives me two. Only later I realize that a single woman is supposed to light one and a married woman lights two. Was that his way to ask?
“You want to put tefillin?” He asks Sean in English and then turns to me in Hebrew: “Is he Jewish?”
“No,” I say.
“What’s that? A belt?” Sean says, picking up the tefillin and studying them, “You Israelis are obsessed with belts.”
E looks up at Sean and laughs and I’m so glad to see he still has his sense of humour.
“You seem happy,” I say. “God bless,” he says. It’s weird. Why can’t I even hug him? It doesn’t seem fair. I remember the moment when we said goodbye, on ko-phangan dock. He gave me one of the world’s best hugs and told me he loved me. I was heading to Israel. He stayed.
We talk about friends from the beach; he gives me a phone number of somebody. Then I say: “you know, I thought I’d never see you again.”
“Don’t say that!” he says and then smiles big. “You know. We’re all gonna meet soon! Redemption day is coming!”
And to that I smile speechless and I’m suddenly sad and the moment is gone awkward. Some guy comes and asks to use the tefillin and I quickly say goodbye and walk away.
Afterwards I wish I stayed, I wish I spoke to him more. I waited to run into him for years, and now I have and I had nothing to say. We were so close once, best friends. Surely I could have invited him for a cup of coffee. Now I secretly wish I’d run into him again.


Chapter 3 – a Chance Meeting with a Baby

I made some money cleaning my cousin’s house the other day. (I’ve got a couple more offers since.) While I was at it, Sean took off to a nice café nearby. It wasn’t a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv we frequent often. When he calls me from the café I hear him talking to someone. “Who are you talking to?” I say. He tries to keep it a surprise but finally caves in. He apparently ran into my friend Doron and his new baby boy. Doron doesn’t even live in Tel Aviv anymore and since I came home we didn’t manage to get together yet. “It’s cosmic!” Doron announces, “I was just thinking of how we must get together!”
He has an incredible baby. Tfu tfu tfu, bli ayin hara. (against the evil eye, knock on wood and all of that.)
We had a great afternoon.
And a great wedding the next day. My friend Tsachi and his beautiful bride Orli.
I danced, I drank, I was happy.
I managed to AVOID running into an old boyfriend who was in the wedding. Funny how these things work.

Chapter 4 – Oh, the Haircut.

I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair but have been discouraged by cost and the difficulty (in Vancouver) of finding a good hairdresser that specializes in curls. Except now, in Israel, everybody is an expert about curls.
So I went with my mom to Ziona, her hair dresser who works from her basement in Sharia, a working class Yemeni neighbourhood on the outskirts of my town.
When we get there, Ima has to knock on the door to wake Ziona up from her afternoon nap. She opens the basement door to us and leads us down the stairs to a little room with a sink, a mirror, a towel hanger with bleached towels drying and that’s it. Ziona is about 55 and beautiful. Her hair is hidden under a scarf and she’s dressed modestly, as expected from a god fearing woman. She’s in slippers. She looks a million light years away from any hair dresser in Tel Aviv.
She cuts my hair, orders me to put my head down and goes to town on the diffuser. My hair is huge by the time I leave. A few more minutes and I would have had an afro.
I love my new hair cut. It’s fresh, it’s bouncy. It's totally hot.
Ima pulls a 100 shekel bill from her wallet and Ziona pushes it away. “I don’t take money from Ayelet,” she insists. Ima tries to argue and push the bill into her hands. I protest as well but eventually we give in.
On the way out kids are playing ball and street cats are eying us suspiciously. “In what fancy hair salon they would do that for you?” ima says.

Chapter 5 – the Hotel

As if the kindness I’ve been receiving is not already overwhelming, the day after the wedding I wake up early to a text message from a friend. “I got you a room in a hotel for tonight.” The details aren’t important, let’s just say that it’s a ‘combina’ (a great Hebrew word describing an action that is kind’a sneaky, always relying on inside connection of sorts, something grey, though not illegal.) The room was available, booked and paid for by a company for an employee that didn’t need it, and through our friend passed on the key. Who cares about the details? It’s fantastic! And the weather is unreal. We’ve been sitting on the beach a lot, consume too many cappuccinos and too much food, look at the waves, the surfers, the dogs. Sean decided he wants to come back as a dog in Tel Aviv, with a cool owner who would take him to the beach every day and not keep him on a leash. “A male dog,” he added quickly. We all know how specific you gotta be with requests from god. We spent the morning at a beach café looking at them run free, chase other dogs, dig holes in the sand, and surf waves. They looked as happy as can be, those lucky bastards. But on a second thought, we already have it pretty good as it is, sitting in the sun in our fluffy robes on a 5 star hotel room’s balcony overlooking the Mediterranean. Maybe, just maybe, we’re the lucky bastards...

Next – the Research

So yes. I haven’t done much. But I’m on vacation, right??? I’ll start tomorrow. Promise.

Here Comes Winter

To be fair to my friends from Canada – my other, colder home – I must confess. The weather has been less than perfect. Remember those photos of sunny beaches and blue skies? Long gone. Winter is back and it is nasty! But at least it’s never dull. It rains for a while, hard and violent, coming from every possible direction, making your umbrella useless (why do I even bother?) and soaking you to the bone, then it stops. A hole of blue sky forms in the big fat clouds and the sun shines warm through it, only to change moments later into an extreme wind storm, the kind that has pine trees bowing and palm trees dangerously swaying, their branches all brushed to one side in a fashionable do. The other day a lightening struck our house, enveloping the house in an eerie bluish burst of light, causing the heater to spark and followed with the most deafening thunder you ever heard, right there, outside our window. The weather forecast for the next 48 hours predicts hale, snow in the mountains, wind and floods. Already today, on the way home we drove through roads that suspiciously resembled small rivers. At Sean’s request, we took a drive by Tel Aviv’s seawall. The beach was covered in haze, the waves were massive and the water dark. Nobody was swimming, not even the Russian immigrants. I’m pretty sure it would be suicidal.

I talked about it with my friend Tal who had recently moved back here from New York, after living there for many years and whining constantly about New York’s cold and long winters. “Now I’m here and I’m still complaining!” she said, “the tile floors are too cold, the houses never get warm enough.” “It’s simple,” I said, “we must move to Thailand. Now there’s a winter we can endure.”

Talking about enduring – Israelis become raging maniacs when they’re behind the wheel.. It must be in the blood, because I find myself on edge whenever we’re in the car. I don’t even have to drive. I put the classical music station on to calm me down, do breathing exercise to try and not scream. Still on occasion I explode: “What the **** is your ****ing problem? Would it kill you to let me in your *** lane???” Sometimes I honk the horn while Sean is driving. Honking is a popular way of communicating here. People honk when you try and park, because, well, you’re in their way. This is always accompanied with large hand gestures and glaring stares. Yesterday we spend an hour an a half in traffic and by the end of it I hated everybody and everything about my country.

But then it’s 22 degrees and sunny again and Ima is making me special food (I do nothing but eat here. Research? What research? I’m eating now. Leave me alone) and my nieces and nephews come to visit and I forget I ever hated it and fall in love with it all over again.

On Beaches and Homes

So I decided we must do a little traveling. We rented a car for the day and drove north on the coastal highway. The Mediterranean accompanied us all the way, glistening to our left. After Haifa we drove north through the suburbs and passed the kibbutz I used to live at when I was 20, the magazine offices I wrote for. (I had such balls back then, I told Sean nostalgically, walking in there, fresh out of the army service and new to the area and telling them they must hire me!)
Eventually we made it to Akhziv beach, maybe half an hour south of the Lebanese border. I recently heard they opened a Banana Beach there and thought it would be the perfect place to sit and have a beer, eat some hummus and watch the sunset.

A few words about Banana Beach. When I was 22, after coming home from my first big trip, one year through India, Nepal and North America, I found a job at a new restaurant-bar-café on the beach in Tel Aviv. I never waited tables before but I thought I’d give it a try. I was back to working as a journalist at various magazines, but I needed more money to cover my debt from the trip AND save for my next one… my goal was to do it in six months and I didn’t care if I had to work day and night to accomplish it. My very first table tipped me 20 shekels on a 15 shekel bill. It was ridiculous. I decided I like waitressing.

Banana Beach was the perfect place for me. It was easy going, casual and the staff was young and hip. When summer came the place filled up and started opening 24 hours. We had regulars coming there every day and staying for hours, sometimes buying nothing but gallons of mint tea. The tables were placed on the sand, so I worked barefoot. I got to watch sunsets and sunrises, full moons and black moons (I mostly worked at nights until 7 or 8 AM but did have some day shifts). Airplanes flew above us from everywhere on their way to Ben Guryon Airport. I took breaks to go swimming, especially before dawn when the water was like dark blue velvet and warm like the air. I sat with customers, drank and smoked and played backgammon with them, flirted with cute boys, met some celebrities, some childhood idols: poets and writers and musicians. I ate lots of fresh watermelons and hummus, drank beer and cappuccinos and tequila. Every morning I watched the elderly Tel Avivis do their morning gymnastics on the beach, when the water was still calm and the sky blue and the air fresh and salty, untainted by car exhausts and smog. I loved every minute of it. It was the best summer of my life.

At the end of that summer, on the evening of Rosh Hashana (the Jewish New Year,) I stood with three other waiters and watched the sunset. It was common for us to stop everything and watch the sky or the sea. Sometimes the sky would get so crazy after sunsets, with strokes of purple or pink or orange and the clouds would arrange themselves in ways you didn’t know possible, or the moon would be especially big and glowing, and word would quickly spread between the staff and finally reach the boss who was trapped in the little booth that operated as a bar slash kitchen slash office. “You gotta see the sky!” somebody would say and he’d drop everything, a half made cappuccino or shake or whatever, and rush outside to admire it for a few minutes. The customers could wait. “I didn’t realize you were in a hurry,” he once said to a customer that complained about the slow service. Another time he recommended a restaurant more suited to the customers’ needs.
That evening, we all stood and watched the sunset. The boss treated us to a new year’s beer. We sipped the beer, basked in the warm glow of dusk and then one of us said: “I am so happy right now.” We looked at each other, we were all smiling and we all looked beautiful in that forgiving light and soft breeze. I was so happy I wanted to cry. It was a moment of pure joy. At work. In the service industry.

At the end of that summer Tel Aviv’s local magazine published a little review about Banana Beach. The city’s best kept secret – they called it. “The service is not great, the food is not amazing, but it’s the best place to hang out in the city, and now that the summer is over – we decided to let you in on the secret.”

Banana Beach changed after that first summer. It became immensely popular, then turned into an empire. The owners are not as lenient as they used to be and I’m pretty sure you can no longer drink with the customers or eat free ice cream from the freezer. We were their trial run. They learned from the mistakes they made with us. It is now a smoothly operated machine, which is probably why the following summer when I returned from India they didn’t hire me again. I thought my charm and my popularity amongst the customers would outweigh my waitressing skills and tendency to slack. It didn’t.

In recent years, Banana Beach opened a few more locations. I figured Akhziv would be perfect. Akzhiv beach is one of the most beautiful beaches in Israel, a favourite location for weddings, ideal for wedding photographs, with its wet rocks and little islands and lagoons. It also has some ancient ruins and more recent ruins you can visit. It holds all kind of fun festivals in the summer. Back when I was a teenager it was home to a bohemian artists, long haired hippies and runaway teens.

But when Sean and I made it there, on a Monday afternoon in mid February, the place was closed and abandoned. I peeked from the gate and learned that they expanded their operation and had some wicker bungalows for rent. But the whole beach was fenced and deserted.

Now if you know me at all you’d know that soon enough we were jumping the fence. After all, I’m a known trespasser. If you hang out with me long enough you’re bound to end up at a fancy hotel’s swimming pool (a hobby of mine,) crash a party (last time I scored free shots and free lobster while at it). I figured we’ll get in and take some photos so by the time the guards come we’ll be gone.

It was paradise, just what I needed to clear my head. White long sandy beach with no footsteps except for birds and dogs. And the water was not as cold as I remembered. I touched it with my hand and found myself wondering why Israelis avoid swimming in the winter! It was warmer than Vancouver’s water in the summer and I swim in that! (Sure, I’m a big baby about it, and take 30 minutes to immerse myself completely but still!) “My baby is Canadian,” Sean said proudly when I commented on that. I realized he was right. When I lived here, I used to walk the seawall in the winter and look at the crazy tourists and Russian immigrants in the water in awe. Now I’m thinking of joining them!

We finished our journey taking a scenic road up mount Avtalion. Back when I was living in the north, I happened to visit the villages scattered on this mountain several times to do interviews with artists, healers and entrepreneurs who lived in them. It became one of my favourite places in the Galilee. We got there just as the sun was setting over the fertile Bikat Bet Netofa. A patchwork quilt in shades of green and brown was spread from one side of the valley to the other. It was magnificent.

It seems like every time I travel in my country I travel in time, revisiting my old self. No wonder it can be emotional at times. My friend Carlin once said that whenever she goes home it feels like everything is her, the place is her. The smell, the sights, the air in Israel. It’s all me. It’s like I’m a part of the place as much as the place is a part of me. Everywhere we went I saw me, we passed a bus stop in Haifa where I once stood there and cried over my relationship, another bus stop where I hitchhiked as a soldier, surprising my boyfriend at his army base. Had coffee at a mall where I had my first job in the north, selling some product in a booth (I was a complete failure.) We drove under a bridge where I once kissed someone I thought I loved.

I’m trying to not be so sentimental. It is foolish, I know. And tiring to read. My mom is talking about selling our house. Once she does it they’re going to demolish it and build an apartment building on its ruins. “I can’t keep all this stuff for you,” she says, “I won’t have space.” So I spent today going through my things and purging mercilessly, practicing letting go. No more holding on to my second grade cut hair, the skirt I once really liked, the dozens of belly shirts I bought at the Goa flea market and would never wear, broken pieces of jewelry that once meant something, the hundreds of notes, letters, memorabilia from traveling. I have to let go.
Sometimes I wish you could do that with memories. Give them away, free some space. Maybe that’s what writing your memories does. Once it’s on paper, you’re letting it go.

I’m lying a little bit. I don’t think I really want to see them go. I just don’t want the ache that comes with them, that pinch, like hunger. I want my memories to be like favourite movies, something I can revisit and enjoy, then let go without a thought.
I might be asking for too much.

Back to Amsterdam for a minute...

People in Amsterdam love boots. They take their boots very seriously. Not just the women. Even the guys. Everywhere I see I find boots I wished I own. Leather and suede, heels and flats, pointy and rounded, they outnumber sneakers by 10 to 1. This obsession with footwear proved to be contagious, and got a little out of hand. While Sean commented on the architecture I commented on women’s shoes. It got me into some compromising positions, like the one that needed for me to take this next photo (I was really sneaky about it but I just had to document! I was in awe of this woman’s courage and ability to think outside the box, even if the final result was just hideous. Sean, surprisingly, thought she made it work. I’ll let you be the judge of that…)




Yesterday when we went to the Rijx museum (Holland’s Louver as some call it,) I pointed at some dude at a renaissance painting by Rembrandt and cried: “This is it! These are the boots I want!” Sean pretended to be looking at another painting, like he doesn’t know me. That’s when we both knew I have a problem. On the way home we stopped at a second hand shop and tried a few pairs under 50 euros. It would make a really good story if I ended up going home with a pair, but unfortunately none fit and I am still bootless.


Also today I got to watch a washing machine being carried up to the sky by a rope in the middle of a busy street. A crowd was cheering and tourists were taking photos as a group of young men pulled on the rope and two guys leaned outside the top window to pull the machine in. Two couches and a chest of drawers followed. Every house in Amsterdam has a bar with a hook extending from the roof for that purpose. How cool is that?

We had glorious weather for the last two days in Amsterdam and now it’s time to leave. If anybody wants a great studio apartment in Amsterdam, contact me for the info. It was a great place! (this is the view from one of the windows.)

February in Tel Aviv

I know, I know. I promised a blog and then didn't post anything. I've written potential posts for it, but they remained a word document, unable to cross over to the other side. The Wireless at my mother's house is a bit capricious (let me rephrase: the wireless signal I've been stealing from the neighbours has been capricious...) so I'm gonna post an old one from Amsterdam next and there are more coming! I promise!

But first: I am happy to inform that my amazing sister is now an amazing new mom to a beautiful little thing! She is still nameless, as she hasn't communicated her name to us yet. Mother, daughter and father (who arrived from Arizona FIVE hours before my sister was rushed to the hospital!) are happy and healthy.

In other news: it was 22 degrees today. That’s right. Welcome to February in Tel Aviv.
Sure, they tell me they froze their asses two weeks ago, that the temperature went down to 7 degrees in the day and as low as 2 over night (!) and that Wednesday is going to be stormy. But all I know is that it was sunny and warm today and we sat outside and had coffee in t-shirts and it sort of felt like summer in Vancouver.

I haven’t been to Israel in February for 13 years. Even before I moved to Canada I spent my winters in Asia because, well, I didn’t like the cold. So yes, I have memories of cold winters and I’m pretty sure it can get pretty nasty some days.

But 22 degrees! In February! I don’t mean to rub it in or anything, I promise you it is much warmer in your homes than it is in mine and as I write this I’m bundled up in my warmest attire by a heater.

Gotta go eat more of my mom's food.

Amsterdam

Ahhh, Amsterdam. How I love this city.
On my first visit to Amsterdam, when I was 20, I fell madly in love with it. I felt instantly at home. Here, I thought. I could live here! Have an apartment with view to the canal, a bike with a wicker basket, a pair of really hot boots and a set of fluffy scarves. I could live here. I could be one of them! I’ll have my favourite coffee shop where everyone would know my name, probably on Harlemerstraat, my favourite street. I’ll ride the trams free and jump the metro, like the locals do. At least once a year I’d have a near fatal brush with a tram (the silent killer). I’d hate it when August came and my city would be overrun by drunken tourists. I’d be an amsterdaamer.

It’s my ninth visit to Amsterdam and this time we have our own place, a funky studio apartment up two spiral staircases, in an old narrow house on the corner of Boomstraat and Boomwardstraat, right in the heart of Jordaan neighbourhood (the funky area, their very own Commercial Drive.) From our windows we can spy on our Amsterdaamers neighbours in their cool apartments, all hardwood floors and high ceilings, over stuffed book cases and white sofas. We can watch them walk home carrying groceries, riding their bikes with their blonde haired children behind them. I can actually pretend that all of this is mine, that I belong, that I’m a part of all this. But now I start to wonder, is that really what I want? Sure, it’s funky and charming and beautifully European, but in all honesty, it's not a very exciting place. Not truly. Not unless you’re a tourist easily excited by the prospect of legal marijuana, fascinated by the Red Lights District, and charmed by canals and trams. (And who isn’t?) But if you lived here... Well, good luck finding a pack of smokes and chocolate bar after midnight. The city becomes a ghost town at night, as calm and tranquil as the water in the canals. So quiet you can hear the sound of your boots echoing as you saunter down the cobble stoned streets (how do they manage to avoid getting their heels stuck in the gaps?)

I don’t know why I care so much. I do live in Vancouver, after all, not the most vibrant city in the world, and it’s not like I party all night long. But Vancouver is home now – I am no longer completely objective. I’ve learned to love its mellow nature and appreciate its calm. And when I talk about excitement it’s not so much that I wanna party all night as much as I love the air of excitement some cities have (New York, Tel Aviv, Montreal, London), that exhilaration in knowing that everything is possible, everything could happen. It's in the smell of the night, a buzz of anticipation that is carried in the breeze. A build up to something really special. A promise of good time, a hint of sex.

Still, I enjoy revisiting Amsterdam, sipping cappuccinos on terraces, strolling up and down canals and flaunting my ability to pronounce Dutch words accurately (comes with my mother tongue.) I love being able to say: "Berney's is just not what it used to be 10 years ago." and: "hey, this is new!" and: "I remember when you could smoke on the train." It is still one of my favourite cities. I just don’t think I’d end up living here after all. And that’s ok. Some cities are just more fun to visit.