A Minute to Myself (10)
It's Finally Over (6): QUEEN FOR A DAY

Get Your Words Off Me: Excerpt Two

THE ROMANCE OF THE HAIFA-TIBERIAS BUS

The man I had just spoken to briefly, inquiring about which bus would be leaving next for Tiberias at the Haifa Central Bus Station, walked slowly down the aisle of the bus once it had pulled in and we had started to board. Was he going to sit next to me or was he going to claim an empty seat? Holding his duffle bag high, he seemed hesitant as he walked down the aisle. I was sitting next to the window in a seat between the front and middle of the bus; he would have to decide fast. I wasn’t sure if I wanted him to sit next to me; I had met enough people, especially men, on this six-month visit and besides, I was leaving in two days, which was why I was in Haifa that day, purchasing a plane ticket to London.

Six months in Israel had been a great experience, but I was ready to leave. The war in Lebanon (the 1982 war) had broken out two months before, a friend had been injured by shrapnel to the head and another friend’s best friend had been killed. It had been more than enough reality for me. I was drained by my inability to do something while the killing went on; all I did was deliver cookies to resting soldiers. I felt that I needed to get started on my life, not this hiatus, and the solemnity of that time made it even more critical to leave and find a purpose.

It was Friday afternoon, so there was a lot of activity on the bus, people on their way home or to visit friends or family for Shabbat. Indecisive for a few seconds standing over me, he finally sat down, next to me. We exchanged introductions. And with that we began a three-hour conversation in halting English and Hebrew, from Haifa to Tiberias, and what would, unfathomably, become a relationship that would extend for more than 24 years.

After six months of half-day Hebrew classes at only partial attentiveness, my Hebrew was not very good. And after years of school-English, with two years out of school, his English was not very good. But we managed to communicate.

I thought that this tall, skinny man with short black hair and an intense look of innocence and intelligence was a high school student; young even for me (I was 21 at the time). But it turned out that he had already been in the army for two years and was on a two-day leave from fighting in Lebanon. The difference between my impression and the reality was great. He didn’t swagger and talk about his experiences, as so many others did, boasting of their experiences; he wasn’t even wearing his uniform. When we arrived at the Tiberias bus station, he asked if he could come visit me the next day. I was hesitant, since I was leaving in two days and I already had a few men who I needed to say goodbye to already. But hey, one more couldn’t make my already bad reputation much worse. (This was the first and last time that I would have, I think, a bad-girl reputation, and I quite enjoyed it.) At home I was always so shy and hesitant with men, but here, in Israel, I had made connections easily and was enjoying the attention.

On Saturday afternoon, while his parents were napping after their Shabbat meal at their hotel, he came to visit me. We continued our broken language talk as we walked around the kibbutz where I was living. When it was time for him to leave, we exchanged addresses, and he warned me that we were only friends. Considering that even for me in my new racy persona we had only talked, I laughed at the idea that there could be anything more—that he could even think that I had been attracted to him in any way. He still seemed the high school student to me, and I had already graduated from college. And he was off, and I was off to say good-bye to other friends.

The next day I flew to London and from there I was to go, within a month, to Perth, Australia. I had always dreamed of living in Australia. Things had really worked out: one of my friends in the extremely basic Hebrew class was from Perth and she said that I could stay with her when she went back to make her arrangements to return to Israel to marry her kibbutz boyfriend.

But my plans changed in a London dorm room, when I realized that it was important for me that I live someplace where my very presence was meaningful, would add value and significance to the very ordinariness of life. So, I altered my plans, deciding to move to Israel rather than Australia. I am not a religious person, I question God’s existence, I question the validity and usefulness of religion, what with all of the wars and conflicts it has engendered, but my heritage, who I am as a person–as a part of the continuity of generations of Jews—I felt that I needed to live within that identity and honor it. Especially growing up during the Vietnam War and then Watergate my skepticism for things American was great, it should have been for Israel, too, especially since the war in Lebanon had started, but I felt that this was a statement of self that I needed to make, that I needed to tether myself to something and not just wander through life on my own behest.

While I was in New York preparing for my move, I exchanged a couple of letters with the boy from the bus. I remembered his dark intent eyes and his inviting smile; I had no idea who he was, though. My reaction to one of his letters (in which he talked about the war and losing friends showed a depth that connected to me) either showed that I was truly ripe for love or that this man really was to be my true love: I told a friend, “I could fall in love with this guy.” There was something about the letter and his sensitivity that touched me. I have no idea what I wrote in my letter, but apparently it ignited a spark, too, because he wanted to see me again when I returned to Israel.

After turning up at the airport for the wrong flight (I never told him on which flight I would be arriving), and then finding out which kibbutz I was living on, he came to visit me a few weeks after my arrival. He arrived very late at night, having taken a helicopter from the Syrian border and then hitchhiked to the kibbutz. It was awkward, he was there for the weekend, yet we barely knew each other. Meeting this man I had barely thought of or knew as I was embarking on my new life, and then to be confronted with his determination to see me may have helped ignite something in me. He had lost his schoolboy aura by the time I had returned; he was an officer in the army by then. He seemed more capable and in command whereas before (on the bus) I had felt so much ahead of him. It turned out that he was about two years younger than I, but it didn’t seem so anymore; he had lived through things and matured since we had met.

The next day, along with some members of the kibbutz (a different one), we drove in the kibbutz van to the beach and the seaside town of Akko (Acre). It was a lovely spring day, with clear blue skies and rolling waves on a roughly pebbled beach with the worn ramparts of the ancient city behind us. We jumped through the waves (something we would do many times during our courtship and beyond) and talked, excited rapid words to match the energy of the sea. He looked so handsome with his sharply delineated V-chest and powerful arms, and Speedo (oh, the appeal of a 20-year-old buff, olive-skinned six-foot man in a Speedo cannot be denied), certainly not the boy I had envisioned in his blue polo shirt on the bus. In that moment of watching him, of seeing his confidence and ease, I realized, again, that I could love this man. He must have had an epiphany as well, since we left the beach holding hands.

That led to two years of dating. During that time he completed his army service, and I studied in Jerusalem,then Tel Aviv, and finally got down to business and started working in Ramat Gan (a satellite city of Tel Aviv). Since he was still in the army and generally stationed in bases far from the center of the country, we would meet a few times a month. The unexpectedness of when he would come to visit or my going to see him on bases in different parts of the country (occasionally flying to get there) added an aura of excitement to our relationship. Add that to the fact that I had no family in the country and he was shedding his religiosity, we became pretty close and dependent upon each other.

A few months after he finished his army service, we got married and he started studying at university while I worked to support us. Sounds like a good beginning. And it was. Only beginnings don’t last forever, they progress into middles, and sometimes ends, bitter ends.

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