Madame Model

It was the flash of color I caught in the corner of my eye.
She was just out of range and moving closer, like the East Coast hurricanes that come up the coast each autumn. As she came into view I gazed with the childish fascination that has always been my Achilles heel.
Long, smoothly muscled thighs blessed with no cellulite graced a six-foot frame that rivaled The Mod Squad itself, but it was the item below that had drawn my attention.
Tall, tall boots, shocking bubblegum pink patent leather delicately enslaved by two fake diamond ropes criss-crossing the top of her feet took my breath away. The boots went over the top of the knee cap, with big tin buckles locking the ankles and 4-inch silver spike heels that guarded her tinsel soles. They screamed at me.
The rest of the ensemble wasn’t much different. A white spandex version of the "little black dress" hugged her body. "At least her underwear is covered", I muttered, "but I definitely would NOT wear such a garment with that kind of an ass" – you know, the small-and-skinny-but-sort-of-droopy kind. A short jeans jacket at least partially hid the plunging neckline (why do they call it a NECK line when it so clearly isn’t?). A loud cotton-candy colored chiffon scarf hung over that.
"Makeup and hair courtesy of The Rocky Horror Picture Show", I muttered again.
Short, spiky black-dyed hair with its gel sparkling under the mall lights framed her face. Large hooded eyes were made larger with blue-black eyeshadow and heavy black eyeliner and mascara and the lines of her face were made almost gaunt thanks to muddy blush (rouge, my mother called it). It was clear that this young woman had never had the benefit of modern-day orthodontics in childhood; the narrow jaw did nothing to enhance her long white teeth, not quite contained in the black-lined lips stained purple.
Dan had not even noticed until I pointed her out to him. With restrained amusement, he asked politely if that was what I had been staring at. I could not believe that he had totally missed it.
"She looks like she is trying to be a model," I said. "Maybe she is? Or maybe just a wannabe," I added, a little crestfallen.
"More likely the latter," Dan commented. He is the master of understatement, an Israeli who spent his adolescence and adulthood in England. He was trained by the best. You can tell.
We were sitting at a café in the Negev Mall in Beersheva, sipping coffee and congratulating ourselves and each other on the salad and salmon we had chosen in deference to our new diet. I love people-watching and Thursday had been no exception. As we shared our pains and our pleasures while giving our agonized feet a break, I had been recounting with relish the deal I had just cut on a purchase in the Bedouin market. The vendor (a Bedouin, naturally) had started at 100 NIS on a feenjon that was definitely not worth the price, but one that I liked.
"So I started to walk away," I was telling Dan (who had gracefully excused himself when I began to haggle and silently drifted away from that embarrassing American woman), "and the guy called me back. He came down to 90, which was ridiculous. I told him 50. He refused and said I had no idea what a valuable article this was, a "real" Bedouin coffee pot. I laughed. And told him that I lived in Drijet (a so-far "unrecognized" Bedouin village in the south of Israel). Of course he did not believe me, but chuckled and said he knew a lot of people there. So I chuckled too, and asked him if he knew the Abu Hamad family and if so, which one. Suddenly his eyes changed in some imperceptible way and he brought the price much closer, to 65. Of course I still refused and insisted on the 50, and said so in Arabic. That must have been the clincher, because he immediately came down to 50. ("yahLAH! Because you are ONE OF US!") I had such fun!!"
Dan had just asked what my husband Sinai would say to my new purchase. "Oh, he won’t even know for a while," I said airily. "He will kill me for spending money when we are so broke, especially this close to Pesach. I will just ditch it in the closet and then put it in the kitchen when he is not around. He will never notice it, trust me."
Madame Model was giving her escort a run for his money, literally. A good six inches shorter, he was nonetheless broad-shouldered and muscular, the breadth of his chest emphasized by the heavy India cotton v-neck pullover. He feigned interest in every piece of jewelry she examined – and she examined them all, in each of the three stores ringing the cafe.
I could not for the life of me take my eyes off that scene, my gaze returning to the glitter every few minutes. Dan was vastly amused, pointing out mildly that there was nothing very special about this young woman; she certainly was not beautiful in any way, certainly not in face and not even in form.
Poor Dan. I was obsessed. "Are you STILL thinking about those boots?" he finally asked with some incredulity. He just did not understand my childish nature so I decided to explain it to him.
"Look," I told him, "I have always loved glitter, even as a little girl. This is just a more grown-up version of it. I know it is gaudy... " my voice trailed off at his expression, a funny mixture of amusement and disbelief.
"Tacky, more to the point," he murmured.
"Alright already." I was still involved in watching the jewelry expedition. A saleslady was giving it her all, miming her client fastening the necklace at her throat, gesturing with bracelet in hand and talking up a storm. Said client did not appear impressed, bending to pick up a pair of earrings with apparent disinterest. A few minutes later, they were out and heading for the next display case, this time checking out the fancy watches.
"You are REALLY very taken with this woman, aren’t you?" Dan said in distaste. It was palpable, in fact, and I did my best to rein it in. "Yes. But I will behave now." I smiled at him. It was time to go anyway. We still had to shop for a sofa for Dan’s new apartment and still had to be back in time to actually sign the lease.
We headed toward the mall entrance, droopy ass and bubblegum boots gone but not forgotten – at least by me.

Hey, that's me! 

My kids love Zarifi. They especially love her "khobez" -- Bedouin pita bread. I learned how to make it and bake that first week I stayed in the village, and throwing a twig on the coals was all I needed to do to make that fire mine. When my family came to Israel to live, we spent our first month living with Zarifi, her husband Younis (my first Bedouin friend), two of their kids (the others were already married) and various assorted grandchildren. Goldy and Zalmy, pictured here with Zarifi and breakfast on the move, learned how to get up at the crack of dawn to ensure they got their fair share. 

My Bedouin sister Zarifi in a moment of reflection. 

Dust Storm

A couple of days ago the sky blocked the sun, transforming it into a faint white disk hanging weakly above the hills. The air was caramel-colored and the wind whipped around our yard, knocking over lawn chairs, children... anything unanchored, basically.
Our dog Sussi had enough sense to lay low, only her nose raised, eyes squinting with cautious curiosity.
"It's a summer wind," my ten year old explained, shouting above the roar of the dry gale. The boy from across the street nodded agreement with my 7 and 8 year olds following suit. "It means that this is the first day of summer," he added.
I have always thought of dust storms as transitory events that happen only in the Midwestern Plains in the U.S. An hour or two, no more -- but not here in the vortex of the universe.
Like everything else in Israel, this storm was more intense, lasted longer and felt like an ancient memory welling up from my soul, one that reminding me of the trek from Egypt to the thunder of the Ten Commandments.
The storm lasted all day long and into the night, covering leaves and flowers with a dusty, flour-like coat. Greenhorn that I am, I found it fascinating, its cool wind outweighing the bother of the sand. So like a fool I left my bedroom windows open, all of them, screens rattling, storm howling and the dog silent in the face of its fury. I fell asleep to its music, in fact -- only to awaken an hour later because it was difficult to breathe.
Belatedly I remembered Zarifi, my Bedouin sister, closing the metal shutters regardless of the temperature outside when the dust storms raged through the village. Too warm inside? Live with it, baby. The alternative was my current ability to breathe freely as she well knew, not to mention the film now gracing the walls, floor and furniture in our house.
I tend to learn the hard way and it sometimes takes a while till the lesson sinks in.
My husband, on the other hand, is smarter. He got up and closed the windows.

Running For The Bus

The Number 5 bus from the Central Bus Station to Ben Gurion University in Beersheva was at the bus stop and I was still 100 feet away. I made a run for it; in Arad, the driver would have seen me and STOPPED TO LET ME ON. Not so this time.
In Beersheva, where the local Metropol bus drivers have been on strike for months now, protesting their minimum wage salaries with no benefits, drivers who ARE working have become hardened to humanity.
It is an unusual behavior for Israeli bus drivers, who are known for their friendly and accommodating attitude. Or maybe it's just the Egged drivers who are that way, I don't know. I have never ridden with another company until I started working in Beersheva.
I really needed to catch that bus, and I was irritated that the driver was looking right at me and still planning to drive right by. So I stepped out in front of the bus. I figured, if I block him, he will be forced to stop. And if he has to stop, he has to let me on.
It was a power struggle, but he finally gave in because I behaved like an Israeli. I wouldn't give up and I didn't give in. At last the door opened. "Next time I might just run you over, no matter what you do," he greeted me sourly.
"I don't understand you," I replied with some asperity of my own. "I am RIGHT THERE, literally a few feet away, you have barely pulled away from the curb, and you can't even stop like a mentsch to let me on? What IS this??!!!"
He then explained that the bus is really run by a computer which effectively locks the doors once he has closed them after the last passenger boards. There is a seven-second delay programmed before it will reopen so the driver can't just stop to let anyone on...
Uh huh. Interesting buses this company uses, I said. But it still did not explain his hard-boiled attitude, and I told him so.
"Look," he said. "I am working 12 hour days just to make a minimal salary, one that any cleaning lady can make. (I could relate to that; my husband is in the same boat, but he travels almost an hour each way to and from work.) "The guys who are on strike, they haven't worked for months. I don't know how they are living. But I can't afford to do that. It has been almost two years since I have had a job. They hired me because the regular driver is on strike. My family is desperate."
I didn't want to point out that some people would call him a scab -- but a moment later, I didn't have to. "You wouldn't believe some of the things people say to me," he added sadly. "An old lady spit at me, another cursed me out. Even kids. Teens now are not what we were. I would never have dared to speak to an adult, much less a stranger, the way these kids so casually do today, without even a flicker of conscience." I agreed with him there. I had seen it for myself on the same bus the week before. The kids were absolute pigs, nasty too.
"After a while," he continued, "you don't trust anyone and you don't like anyone either. You just want to get through the day and go to sleep and forget it all. That is what this country has come to. That is what we have been driven to."
I was shocked and saddened. True, I had seen some of this myself; but I never expected to hear it so bluntly from a bus driver. Now I knew something was seriously, badly wrong here.
"This can't last," I said. "There is an anger, a sense of hopelessness and a loss of focus and ideals, that is killing this country. Something has got to give."
"Hope it's soon," he said. "Don't know where we will be if it doesn't." When we got to the university, I quietly wished him well. He smiled, the first one I had seen on the trip. "Have a nice day," he said.
I was glad to get home to Arad, where the bus driver still stops when he sees me running, regardless of where in the street I am -- where my kids can still get on the bus if they don't have the fare, and are told by the driver to have their mom drop by the bus station later to pay for the trip.
In Arad, the drivers are friendly and regardless of how bad things get, they can always find some kind of word of hope to tell you, to let you know that in the long run, it's all in G-d's Hands anyway. And He is big enough to handle it.
Nice to be back in Arad.