Greetings From Far Far Away

A Journal

On Monday morning, before sunrise, my husband and I loaded a big van with two giant suitcases, two small trolleys and a massive crate holding our massive dog, under the influence of many pills, and got ourselves on a plane to the United States of America.

The airport was not as busy as we had anticipated, and since we could not give our pre-packaged dog away so early before the flight, we unpacked him in the big concrete nothingness outside the airport and waited for two hours. Ben went to get us both coffee, Jacob, our dog, was in distress he was too high to show. I called my mom to say goodbye, she put my dad on the line. He spoke about the war. I didn’t know how to answer to his predictions, other than by saying things like ‘wow’ ‘yea… I don’t know’… I wanted to add how I wished no more lives will be spared and the hostages would return and my dad responded with pessimistic dismissal. I blurted out something like “I hope people don’t just act out of vengence”. My dad said we must restore our defense, otherwise we would be in no position to rescue the hostages. I noticed how I referred to our government and army as ‘people’ whereas he so easily says ‘we’.

The ads in Ben Gurion Airport are a living testemant to Israel’s decay. I remember Israeli supermodel Bar Refaeli looking at me, gigantic from every corner, selling interchangable clothing brands, all of which couldn’t get enough of Israel’s first “sports illustrated” covergirl. Over time those became her eyewear campaign for Carolina Lemake showing face only, in less color. Then her and Kim K for Carolina Lemke in huge black sunglasses and turtle necks took over, looking into a dark future where even models and ex sex-tape scandals show no skin nor eyes.

Now “Gindy Real Estate” ads cover the check-in floor. They feature soldiers with bullet-proof-vests wrapped in an israeli flag above the words “your home, your safety”; a white smiling family above the words “Your home, Your family”; tiny hands holding a falafel ”Yout home, your taste”. They haven’t been replaced for a while nor have the messages they propagate - patriotism, militarism, family values and apropriated food. I didn’t think I’d live to see the day I say I miss tax-evading supermodel Bar Refaeli.

After crating and releasing Jacob multiple times we all finally got on board. Only once we were flying over Greece, and Ben had double checked Jacob was under us did I relax in my seat, knowing we’re all going to make it to America. I was determined to write a short script on the plane inspired by Lena Dunham. Out of intuitive dialogue writing, the focal point was pooping during anal. To my left, a fare-haired orthodox woman was chanting from the Tehilim. The over head light above her seemed like god himself. I was at the right proximity, trying very hard to spell ‘sodomy’ in English.

Two big orthodox men were standing in the aisle for a long time, looking and asking around for something I couldn’t figure out. Finally the woman in front of me suggested to them she should switch seats with her son, so they wouldn’t need to sit next to a woman. I was somewhat angry. I thought about how the orthodox woman wouldn’t ask me that. I also thought how helpless these two men were till a woman went out of her way to make them comfortable.

My writing was distracted by an old movie the generous woman’s son was watching in front of me - Faye Dunaway, I think, all naked and blonde. A head on the right corner blocked the screen. The religion of the man in front of me extended to displace a woman from her chair, but not to displace his eyes from Dunaway. God’s ways are mysterious.

Upon reviewing my script it seemed like a comedy skit without punchlines. I took a break and battled a piercing headache. I catch again Faye Dunaway in a yellow dress touching a fake-tanned cowboy’s gun saying seductively “but you’re too scared to use it!” If someone bothered to write that, why shouldn’t I write my shit story.

The other orthodox man in front of me was, like me, laboring on a word document. He tested different Hebrew fonts, then typed chants in Aramaic, chants I recognized. I didn’t recognize what I was writing. The events too far away from the reality that inspired them, and the phrases were variations on ones I had heard on TV, just like an AI program would write, without requiring spell checks.

I finally ask my American husband, discretely via an iPhone note, for the spelling of “Sodomy?” he nearly shouted in a shameless southern-like annunciation and I sweated. It dawned on me how embarrassed I was, by my own writing.

I finished something eventually, and I haven’t yet read it to him.

I like to picture myself on flights like Faye (not Dunaway) from Rachel Cusk’s Outline trilogy - quiet, observant, British, collected, intelligent, (and I add) skipping meals, unbothered by flight attendents, and showing quiet disgust at the food served; In fact kind of like the light-haired orthodox woman to my left. Contrarily I couldn’t get comfortable, spilled granolla all over myself and repeatedly needed to grab things from the over-head.

(I hear fae is a pronoun now). Well fae was a hot mess on the plane.

Ben was troubled thinking of our dog, drugged in a pitch-black cargo area underneath. I thought how lucky he was to cross the atlantic ocean in his life-time, to be international.

Upon landing Ben and I’s status mirrored exactly - I was soon to be an immigrant, I was the spouse; he was a local, a citizen, however one who’s long forgotten the sound and looks of his homeland. Our weight changed - I was excitable and dissoriented, Ben seemed more grounded. A woman had asked him where he had come from and when he said “Israel” she said “welcome home” and cried.

Our Cana’an breed dog, so far away from his natural habitat, was surprisingly fine and took a big solid dump outside JFK, marking new territories.

I had a larger-than-life coffee and a glazed donut in the brisk air, the flavor is so specific. Nothing went smoothly - Ben forgot his American phone, we took turns going in and out the airport to pee, use the wifi and buy more donuts while the other one was out with the pup and luggage. It was getting cold and took a red-nose selfie with Jacob, to which my friend replied “Are you okay?”.

Finally out of a larger-than-life car Ben’s aunt came to our recue. We loaded the car while a long queue was waiting. Ben managed all the suitcases, and Jacob, while I was teetering behind with the crate coming apart. I gave his aunt a hug, got myself in the backseat with Jacob, and watched us be driven through foreign land for 6 hours. An hour of politics talk kept me awake, then I dosed off. In the middle of the night we were welcomed at our hostess’s home in Richmond, Virginia with a hug and a home-made meal.

“We could have stayed in Tel Aviv, the missiles were deflected in the air most of the time, and we had a shelter.” I told Ben’s aunt over lunch the next day. She was tearing up and I said I was sorry. She asked “for what?” She spoke of her time volunteering in Zambia, building mud huts and dealing with an awful white woman running that project. Then she spoke with equal passion about Taylor Swift. Ben’s aunt is an amazing woman, I thought. I also thought - were we in need of her rescue like HIV orphans in Africa?

I thought I had run off feeling like the oppressor, an illegitimate occupier of a land not my own. Ironically we landed in one of the Confederate capitals, where there’s a long embedded history of colonialism. Was I meant to come here with my American husband? Only third generation to immigrants on both sides? The feeling of trespassing, I come to realise, follows me nonetheless.

The next day I wore a sweater with an American flag and my hostess asked: “Are you so happy to be in America?” I must have been. We were shown around a sweet, liberal, queer-infused city through the most picturesque autumn, and were handed keys to our hostess’s beautiful, century-old, cosy home for as long as we need. I was stunned by how suddenly my own home had gone unsafe.

Houses here seemed amazingly unguarded, seemingly made of cardboard, utterly unable to survive bombing or prevent intrusion. So inviting were the porches with armchairs and hammocks, now decorated with different sized skeletons and gravestones. Here, those must be laughable things I thought.

I picked up “Blueberries” by Elena Savage, out of our hostess’s astounding book stacks and landed upon this - “To know and not to understand is perhaps one definition of being a child.” Claudia Rankine.

Halloween made Americans seem child-like to me, and lucky to be so.

We were taken to a Halloween parade. My sweet companions who I seemed to speak their language said all sorts of indecodeable things: “favorite halloween treats” “swedish fish” “three Muskateers”, various movies I had never seen, mutual college memories. I noticed Ben was faking it as well. I was relieved. I wasn’t alone.

My grandfather whom I have never met would read daily the newpaper, cover to cover, to study Hebrew. My grandmother on my mom’s side spoke seven languages and taught none to my mom so she would only hear Hebrew. Here I am, third generation to them, in a halloween parade pretending none of this is foreign to me. The collective thrill of people was so unfamiliar to me. Is that the thrill in which these people’s ancestors tortured bodies hung on trees, or watched women go in flames? But what have I got against these awfully sweet people in their sweet costumes welcoming me into their culture? Didn’t you last week want to be Lena Dunham?

News keeps coming (or I seek them, more than before?) - villages in the north of Israel were now evacuated as well; armed Jewish settlers in the West Bank shoot innocent Palestinians and attempt to evict the last of families out of their villages. When I mention it to my mom she deletes a message she sends, then diverts, too complicated for her to respond, to hold the complexity, perhaps it’s easier from afar. My mom hears a deafening sound outside but no sirens. Something had exploded before it landed and wasn’t deflected.

India Moore shares a video of protestors near my home in Tel Aviv, where tireless public outcry manifests weekly for years now. Never did I think it would come to be over the lives of kids, babies and loved-ones held hostage. Moore puts ‘Israelis’ in quotation marks and that hits home, literally. Is their pain too collateral for her to take seriously? Their nationality, my nationality, not only by choice, is a false narrative to be dismantled at all cost, in any circumstance? Is their existence a false narrative to her? Is their loss and pain not real enough to lay aside her countering narrative? When would we cease to counter narratives rather than share pain? How can a self-appointed human rights advocate feel right to capitalise on human pain, to put people in quotaion marks. Humans who only wish to reunite with their families. Humans who pay a price incomparible to anyone protesting in Grand Central NY. I logged off the gram and took a day to recover, unable to speak my mind to anyone.

I am rude, not deliberetely, to all kinds of gestures of courtesy and kindness towards me. I am slow to decipher what is said to me “Do we think anyone’s coming?” the woman near me asks before she puts a bag down on a chair between us, I’m caught off guard, “No… I mean go ahead.” Do I wish to be caught in my otherness? Does a part me wish to scream “I’m not from here!” while the other wishes to assimilate so seamlessly that no one would ever bother asking?

I ran my dog outside. A dog owner refused to let our mutually interested dogs play, even after asking. Deeply hurt I was about to give up walking into the fenced dog park but Jacob insisted. Inside the park I was asked what breed Jacob was, resulting in me disclosing we’re both from the Middle East, and I’m from Tel-Aviv. She was a nice woman with purple dyed hair from DC. She asked if my family was okay. I said “they are mostly safe, but it’s very depressing”. Before she left she asked for my name and I forgot to ask for hers. “I pray,” she said, “I’m gonna pray for you and your family.”

My mom told me that when my family all moved to the States, long before I was born, my brother was digging a big hole with an Israeli kindergarten friend. When he was asked why, he said, “to put all the Americans there”. He grew to learn he had to live with them. They’re family now.

That brother sent me a song this week, saying it made him think of me. I was squatting on a chair (not sitting on it for some reason) in an unfamiliar kitchen at 4 in the morning (still jetlagged) holding my phone to my ear and cried, thinking that should close the first episode of my TV series. “And I’m freaking out in the middle of the street/ With the complete conviction of someone| Who’s never had anything actually really bad happen to them… Something’s coming, so out of breath, I just kept spinning and I danced myself to death”.