The first time I visited Israel was to meet my grandfather on his death bed, all while a war was breaking out on the Lebanese border. I was mostly there for moral support; it was the first time my mom would return since she’d left with my dad in the 70’s, having emigrated after a different war. They divorced when I was a kid and fled to opposite coasts of their adoptive United States—mom carrying me in tow to sunny, happy California—dad trudging alone to grey, academic Boston. I thought I had it bad only seeing my dad on holidays and birthdays, but their parents shut them out entirely once they left for America and had been out of the picture my entire life. Growing up, I didn’t give Israel much thought—something about it felt off-limits or irrelevant—until recently, when my mom saw on Facebook that her father was sick. Hoping to make amends before it was too late, we set off for the holy land.
I turned the opportunity into a month-long excuse to ignore my failing relationship with a girlfriend, and to postpone a few other decisions surrounding my precarious living situation and work life. I did get to spend a lot of time with my mom, however, and we did meet many distant family members. But by the last week I was there, I still hadn’t seen my grandfather. Apparently, he was so far along in his prognosis that he couldn’t endure the intensity of meeting his estranged adult grandson.
The war that had started simultaneous to all this, had begun after Hezbollah militants kidnapped two Israeli soldiers. Israel then pummeled southern Lebanon with a massive show of force, levelling dozens of towns and villages with air strikes. Now there were talks of a full-on ground invasion. Cursory research on the issue led me to believe that Israel’s response would be disproportional. But I kept my mouth shut, because at 27, I’d become the kind of person who disliked holding strong opinions. And to be honest, I was scared of pissing off these newfound family members, especially some of my male cousins, who had served as soldiers.
I wasn’t always like this. I was different when I was an undergrad at UCLA, where I majored in philosophy and made a reputation out of being one of the most argumentative and contrarian students in the department. But then I graduated and had to hold jobs, which meant turning down the volume to get along. I stopped focusing on things outside of my immediate control. Comfort and serenity became my prerogatives. It only took a few years, but I transformed into someone wholly unrecognizable, turning my deficit of character into a personal credo: Cultivate your own garden, as Voltaire said in his little novel Candide, which is one of the only things I remember reading in college.
So, three weeks stuck in Tel-Aviv and only a couple days left on my trip, with a war raging to the north, and my grandfather refusing to look at me while he was dying, I did what everyone else around me was doing. I escaped to the beach.
My cousin Gideon said he’d meet me at the Hilton where I was staying and walk me to his favorite spot, but the morning we were going he texted he was running late. He gave me brief directions and told me to meet him there.
It was a pleasant if hot thirty-minute walk from the hotel—one where I could see why so many American Jews from claustrophobic, Northeastern cities, reached spiritual awakenings in the idyllic climate. I put my stuff down in the sand near some people and waded into the water. For about fifteen minutes I floated on my back and tried to empty my mind. But I grew bored with the silence, stood up waist-deep in the Mediterranean, and scanned the beach for my things. I saw my bag and towel had disappeared. I’d set them between an elderly man tanning on a reclining chair and a young couple reading under a cabana. Where there was once my blue beach towel and my black North Face backpack, there was now an empty patch of sand. I tried to rush back but moved slow motion through the water around a bloom of jellyfish. The translucent, pink membranes bobbed in place like they were guarding some invisible border between the beach and the sea.
I hurried to look around. The elderly man nearby was snoring peacefully. His sunglasses reflected the sun in a point of light on each frame that hurt to look at. He must have missed everything.
The woman behind me under the cabana yelled something in Hebrew.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Speak English?”
The elderly man snorted awake and shielded his face from the sun.
“Sorry,” I said to him. He mumbled in Hebrew, and I started towards the couple.
“A man moved your things,” the woman said. “We told him they were yours, but he said he knew you." She and her partner sat cross-legged, wearing sunglasses, and as the sun bared down, it seemed like everyone in this country had sunglasses except me.
“He’s over there,” she said, pointing in the distance. Near a green flag indicating calm waters lay Gideon. “He said he knew you.”
Her boyfriend squinted behind his Ray-Bans, his blonde curls emanating like a halo. “I was going to kick his ass,” he said. “Do you know him? I kick his ass if you don’t.”
“Thanks. I know him, it’s okay,” I said. I hadn’t drunk water in a while, and I think it was starting to get to me.
“Good,” he said. He reclined on a rolled-up towel and flapped open a newspaper to a page of photos showing the kidnapped soldiers.
The woman tied her dark hair into a ponytail. “He’s always looking for a fight,” she said. “Last week he shoved a guy at the bar and almost got us kicked out.”
“He was flirting with you,” he said.
She traced a loop next to her head with her forefinger. “I think he scared your friend away,” she said.
Gideon was Shoshana’s son and my cousin. He was a few years younger than me and had recently finished mandatory service in the army, but still moved through the world like life was one extended, military operation. His moving my things without my knowledge typified the kind of control-freakery he’d been exhibiting all month. It was starting to piss me off.
My towel was spread out next to him and my bag was placed at the top of it like a pillow. The neat pile of my belongings was eerily overbearing.
“Sorry, man,” he said. “Had to get away from those people.” He adjusted his sunglasses. I finally found my cheap pair at the bottom of my bag and put them on. Gideon was lying down and seeing him tan made me aware of the sunburn developing on my neck and chest which felt hot and already dry. I was running out of time to fix my farmer’s tan.
“Why, what happened?” I sat on the towel.
“They ask a million questions. About Grandpa.”
“You know them?” I said.
Gideon put his hands behind his head. “They’re friends,” he said.
The waves were breaking along the beach and carrying me to sleep when a thrumming mechanical noise rose in the distance. I tried ignoring it, but it got louder until finally I opened my eyes.
A column of helicopters came flying up the shoreline in our direction. The rotor blades chopped through the air in unison, roaring like a battalion of machine guns. There must have been around twenty of them swooping over the water, low enough I could see the young faces of the men inside. Sand whirled around us, whipping my legs. Gideon’s hands were still interlocked behind his head, unconcerned. The old man from earlier was still beached on his chair looking sound asleep, and the couple under the cabana remained focused on their reading. Beyond them, children splashed in the water and families were descending from the boardwalk, lugging coolers and chairs, soccer balls and boogie boards, glancing up only for a moment at a time. Eventually, the helicopters shrunk into oblivion on the horizon, and the noise vanished along with them.
When I woke up, Gideon was talking to the couple further down the beach. They were dressed in white T-shirts now, and the man was leaning on a small mesh bag containing the giant cabana. I could barely catch the harsh Hebrew syllables flying between them until they strolled closer. The man patted Gideon’s bare shoulder and said, “Tonight, eight o’clock. Be there, be square.” Then the man turned to me and pointed. “David! You coming tonight?”
“Got nothing else to do,” I said, flashing a thumbs up.
We stayed at the beach for another few minutes. My pale skin was burning, and I wanted some time alone before checking on my mom at the apartment.
“Let’s go,” Gideon said. “You look like a sad tomato.”
We walked along the boardwalk and stopped at the corner where he’d head towards his house, and I could turn towards the Hilton. We hadn’t spoken a word.
“You should actually come tonight,” he said.
“Sure. It’d be good to meet more people out here,” I said.
The walk sign flashed green across the street.
“You going to your hotel?” he said, his feet on the crosswalk, pointing the half an hour trip to his place.
There was nothing I wanted more than to crash into my hotel room, close the curtains, and nap away my sun daze. Gideon observed me coolly while I ruminated. Mom was at his house with my grandfather. I only had a couple days to meet him until I had to leave, and the family expected that I keep showing up until he was ready. Even though the past month had taken a toll on everyone, it passed relatively easily on me since I was off the hook. Mom on the other hand was enmeshed in a family drama, watching her father deteriorate while trying to overcome a decades-long rift. Sure, I wanted to be a good son, but I also wanted a vacation from the conflicts crackling around me, and maybe more importantly, a vacation from myself.
“I’ll come with you to say hi,” I said. “Let’s see how Grandpa’s doing.”
For the first time that day, Gideon smiled. “Good. Yalla, let’s go.”
On the walk over, sirens wailed, warning people to get inside but the streets were already empty. It was Saturday, so if people weren’t at the beach, they were home for Shabbat. We ambled down quiet sycamore lined sidewalks towards Gideon’s house, the air fragrant with citrus. Along the way, a rusty Honda pulled into a driveway in front of us, and a woman in a black dress and headscarf burst out of it with a baby in tow, rushing into the apartment building. Her husband strode behind with a blank face, looking at me for an uncomfortable few seconds before entering his home.
“What are the chances a rocket actually lands around here?” I said.
“They never hit Tel-Aviv. They make their weapons in basements. Don’t worry,” Gideon said. Israel had also just finished an anti-missile defense system called the Iron Dome which they used in the North, closer to the war.
Inside Gideon’s apartment, a soccer game played on low volume. He lived with his mom and our grandfather now. Everything in the room was old and a layer of dust coated the furniture: the credenza, the blinds, the floor lamp, even the rotating fan above us on the ceiling. I repressed the urge to sneeze. The living room was empty, so my mom and her sister were likely in my grandfather’s room with the nurse. My body was itching all over with sand. I wished I went home when I had the chance to take a cold shower.
Gideon opened the refrigerator door. “Want anything?”
“I’m good,” I said, slipping off my flip-flops. The linoleum floor was cold against my feet. The whole apartment was freezing. A massive industrial-sized AC rattled in the window. It was like walking into a morgue.
I sat on the dusty camelback couch and Gideon handed me a glass of carrot juice—a drink my grandfather used to make by blending the carrots he grew in the backyard of the apartment complex, and that Gideon had started doing himself after he got sick. Sirens still wailed but far away now, in another neighborhood.
“I hope this didn’t ruin your trip,” Gideon said, pulling up a chair to the coffee table.
“Nothing’s ruined,” I said. I just hope I get to meet the guy.”
“I meant because of the war,” he said. “But yeah, you should get on that.”
“Ball’s in his court,” I said.
On the TV, a goalie punted the ball halfway down the field where the other team retrieved it, passed it around, and then lost it out of bounds. It all looked incredibly boring, but the fans roared in the background, chanting Hebrew. Clearly, they appreciated something I didn’t understand.
“It’s crazy it’s your first time visiting,” he said, leaning back in his chair. He had this way of keeping me at arm’s length. Whenever we had a conversation, he would size me up like this, his head titled slightly back so he was always looking down on me. Whatever his mom told him about our family he must have internalized without a second thought. When he looked at me, he saw the son of traitors, not his cousin. Sometimes he would loosen up after a drink and bullshit with me like we were family, or at least cordial acquaintances, but never in the bright light of day.
“I wanted to take that birthright trip,” I said, “but I never got around to it. By the time I thought I would, I missed the age limit.”
“I have a friend who works security on those trips,” he said. “You know every group gets an armed soldier to protect them? American Jewish girls love him. Hooks up with one every time.”
I sipped the juice to avoid his creepy stare. I knew how much he loved the fact that those girls romanticized Israeli men. His habit of one-upmanship amused me when I first met him because I’d heard Israelis could get that way. It was a kind of Mediterranean lad culture. After knowing him for a couple of weeks I wondered if he really thought he was better than me on some intrinsic level. Or maybe I was being a sensitive American, nurtured in the nerf-padded childhood of the upper-middle class where boys were generally taught to be nice. I wanted to think it was all a cultural misunderstanding, but the longer I spent time with Gideon, the more I understood he was an asshole, plain and simple.
“Why don’t you do it too?” I said.
“I can’t go on Birthright,” he said. “I’m from here.”
“No, why don’t you work security like your friend,” I said. He had been in and out of work since finishing his military service and was living off unemployment now.
“Doesn’t look fun to me,” he said, his face darkening. “I don’t like American girls, and I’ve been everywhere on that trip. I want to do my own thing here.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
He went to the kitchen and grabbed the pitcher of juice from the fridge. I had landed a hit and it felt good. He came back and refilled his glass, then held the pitcher above mine, mostly full.
“You drink slow,” he said. “No good?”
“No, it is, just not that thirsty,” I said.
He sat the pitcher on the table and put his feet up. “Does it feel weird being here when you don’t speak Hebrew?”
“Everyone speaks English,” I said, “so not really. Even if the accents are funny.” I kicked a foot up even though I wanted to leave. The hairs on my arms had been standing it was so cold in the room. “I could have tried learning it from my parents, but Spanish is a lot more useful where I’m from,” I said.
He grunted. The sirens had stopped, but almost as soon as they did, my grandfather started coughing on the other side of the wall, and muffled voices in his room grew louder. My mom and her sister only closed that door when he looked particularly bad, and they didn’t want us to see him, even in passing.
“Maybe today’s not the day. I can come back another time,” I said, returning my feet to the floor.
“You think you’ll come back?” Gideon said.
I felt guilty for disliking him. I stood to leave. “Yeah, my flight’s on Monday so I can swing by tomorrow or Sunday or something.”
“No, I mean to Israel. Do you like it here?” An ambulance wailed down the street. I had
the nauseating sensation that it would arrive downstairs, and in a few minutes, they would carry my grandfather out on a gurney.
“I’d like to,” I said. “But probably when things quiet down.”
“There’s always a war. You’ll have to wait forever for that to happen,” Gideon said.
My mother and her sister charged into the living room, arguing in Hebrew. I had blonde hair and fair skin like my mom, Miriam; Gideon had dark hair and dark skin like his mom, Shoshana. The Sephardic roots travelled through their blood all the way back to Spain, while our blood teemed with Russian and Polish DNA. The diaspora had sprawled across Europe and the world and finally landed in this cold living room.
“When did you get here?” my mom said, standing at the edge of the hallway.
“Got back from the beach a little bit ago,” I said. “How’s he doing?”
My mom hadn’t slept much the past few days, and her eyes were bloodshot.
“Can’t stay awake for more than ten minutes at a time. Has a nasty flue,” she said.
“He’s awake now? Should I see him?”
Mom looked back at Shoshana who stood at the sink washing a bowl of grapes. “Maybe later,” my mom said. “The nurse needs to take care of some things. And I was just about to go.”
“Yes, later. Come by later, always later,” Shoshana said without looking up at us.
The sand on my legs started to itch, and I could almost see the showerhead in my hotel bathroom.
“It’s always a pleasure,” my mom said. She picked up a beach bag from a kitchen stool and heaved it on her shoulder.
“I can carry that,” I said.
“No, it’s fine. Let’s go. We’ll come back tomorrow.” She walked to the door.
“Gideon, text me the address for tonight?”
He was fixed on the soccer game, standing now. “You got it dude.”
While waiting for the hotel elevator, my mom finally spoke. “She’s driving me insane,” she said. “Argues about every little thing. I say we should prop up his head; she says no he should lay down. I say we should give him a cold compress; she says warm.” She held the bright yellow beach bag hanging off her shoulder with two hands, her face red from the sun.
“She’s probably just stressed. I wouldn’t take it personally.”
“She makes little comments about us finally coming back but too late. Asks me questions about your father even when I say I don’t want to talk about him.”
The screen next to the elevator button said thirteen and wouldn’t budge. Calm muzak played in the corridor.
“Do you need me to stay longer?” I said. I knew she would say no, even though she wanted me to stay, but I had made a life out of ignoring subtext.
“Do you want to?” she said.
“Of course, I want to. I just don’t think I can, but I want to make sure you’ll be okay here alone.”
“It’s fine, I’ll be okay,” she said. The elevator still hung at thirteen. We had rooms on eight, and I didn’t mind walking, but I wasn’t sure if my mom had a hike in her. She pushed the lit-up elevator button several times but to no avail.
“Gideon’s the same way,” I said. Makes little digs at my Americanness or lack of Israeliness or whatever. Acts like he’s joking but I know he’s not,” I said. People were trickling into the hall, which was now packed with sunbaked bodies.
“Maybe we should walk,” I said. “I can take the bag.”
“I hope you’ve had a good time at least,” she said, handing it to me. She looked past my shoulder at the group waiting behind us.
“You know how family gets. It’s normal to get a little pissed at them,” I said.
“Yeah, thanks for coming,” she said, patting my shoulder. “Have fun tonight.”
I knocked shoulders with what felt like a dozen guys on the way out of the bar. Nobody budged an inch in this country. We carried our drinks to a picnic table. It was a hot night, and I hoped Gideon’s friends would prove to be friendlier and more fun than he’d been. And if they didn’t, I’d be happy to get drunk and watch the pretty women walk by. Gideon sat next to me, and his friends sat across from us.
“There’s this dude who stole my stuff, you think you could kick his ass?” I said to Gideon’s friend across from me.
“What?” he said. He was wearing a yellow button-down shirt opened to his solar plex. I pointed to Gideon next to me. “This guy right here, he stole my stuff. Could you kick his ass for me?”
He turned to his girlfriend, and she shrugged. You try to break the ice with a joke and end up drowning in frozen waters. “Like at the beach,” I said. “I’m kidding. Remember? You said that.”
He leaned back. “Oh yeah! I’ll kick his ass. No problem.”
Gideon explained that he met Yoni in the army in bootcamp when they traded cigarettes, and Yoni had met his girlfriend Tamar shortly after the service.
“I was the bartender,” he said. “She was on some date with this loser I knew from high school, and I kept making her laugh while he could barely keep up. She pretended to go home so the guy would leave, but she came back to the bar. Rest is history.”
Tamar flipped her hair back over the red strap of her sundress. She probably loved hearing Yoni tell the same story to new people. “He wasn’t a loser,” she said. “He was nice. Just wasn’t for me.”
“She thinks everybody’s nice,” Yoni said. “Can’t say a bad word about anyone. Even Arabs.”
Tamar slapped his arm, and Yoni started laughing. “Don’t say that” she said. “Now David this all Israelis are assholes like you.”
“They are,” he said.
I wasn’t shocked to hear him say that. I assumed everyone hated the other in this part of the world. I just wished they’d keep a lid on it around me so I wouldn’t have to do something ethical, like speak up. I just wanted to get drunk and enjoy the breeze that brushed by us now and pretend nothing meant anything.
“Do you still bartend?” I asked Yoni.
“No, I work security for Birthright. You ever go?” he said.
I caught Gideon’s stare out of the corner of my eye. It conveyed that whatever I suspected was true and to play it cool.
“No, it wasn’t for me,” I said.
“This is David’s first time in Israel,” Gideon said. “His mom is my aunt, and it’s her first time back too, since she left in the seventies.”
A Drake song I couldn’t put a name to came on in the bar. It still amazed me how American pop culture lingered in every corner of the world. Then again, these two countries had become closely intertwined. The Tel-Aviv shoreline extending in the distance looked like Miami. I drank some beer, and it tasted stale.
“You didn’t want the free trip?” Tamar said.
“Just never got around to it. My ex and I wanted to visit Asia and South America, so I kept putting it off.”
“Israel’s in Asia,” Gideon said.
“No, the Middle East,” Yoni said.
“Middle East isn’t a continent,” Tamar said.
“Continent, shmontinent.” Yoni said, standing.
Tamar shushed him. “He’s an idiot,” she said.
“Speaking of, there’s the idiot who sells pot around here. Anyone want some?” Yoni said. A man in a white linen outfit and maybe a few years younger than us, was leaning against the wall outside the bar talking to a waitress.
“Is it good?” I said.
“It’s terrible. From Egypt. But it gets you high,” Yoni said.
“Then it’s good enough for me,” I said.
“Yallah,” Gideon said, “go get it.” Yoni left the table and disappeared into the crowded bar.
“You meet any girls while you were here?” Tamar asked.
“Here and there. People are very nice, but it’s been mostly a family trip,” I said.
“David’s not over his ex,” Gideon said.
I took a deep sip of my beer to not say something I’d regret.
“He might get back together with her. That’s why he’s leaving early.”
“That’s not why I’m leaving,” I said.
“Then why are you leaving, David?” Gideon said.
“I have some other things I need to take care of. Like I might move out of California for this new job,” I said. “I don’t know, I need to figure it out.
“She cheated on him but he’s still in love,” Gideon said. “Hopeless romantic.” Tamar looked at me, her mouth slightly dropped open.
“Shut up, Gideon,” I said. He looked straight ahead and tittered. I turned to him, my cheeks hot, and I swear I could have punched him.
“Kidding, kidding,” he said.
“We’ll see what happens with all that,” I said. “But I’d rather not think about that right now.”
Tamar obviously sensed the tension between Gideon and me. “Well, what do they say? If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be” she said.
I took another sip of my beer, eager for Yoni to return with the joint. Suddenly, sirens blared, and people at the tables next to us and the ones leaning outside the bar smoking cigarettes looked at each other, momentarily frozen.
“What should we do?” I said.
“It’s fine,” Gideon said. “Just ignore it.” He swiveled around searching for Yoni, who was still lost to us somewhere inside the bar.
Then, people down the block shouted. They pointed up.
“Oh shit,” Tamar said.
Dozens of bright lights with comet tails raced across the sky, then were intercepted by other lights floating up from the earth. I didn’t have to ask any questions. This was the Iron Dome. Rockets had finally reached the city. Tamar gasped and those around us took out their phones to record it.
Yoni appeared next to us, out of breath. “Look at that! They can’t fucking touch us,” he said. He lit a joint and passed it to Gideon. “Let’s watch the fireworks,” he said.
“I’m going to head out,” I said and got up from the table. I hated that it seemed like I was taking a stand for something. I’m not sure that I was standing for anything more than wanting to be left alone, and for not having to watch the rest of the night unfold.
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Gideon said. “Just chill.”
“I think the weed’s not hitting me right and I’m still pretty tired from the beach,” I said. “Think I’ll turn in early.”
“Israel’s intense,” Tamar said, patting my arm. “But you get used to it.” I thought I saw a lingering sadness behind her eyes, but she may have just been stoned, and so was I. So was everybody.
A couple of days later, the morning before my flight, a caretaker in maroon scrubs led my mom and me into my grandfather’s bedroom. He lay there, curled in fetal position, shivering under a clean white sheet. His head was bald and grey and slick with sweat. My mom sat on the mattress beside him. She touched his shoulder. I knew she wanted some kind of closure from this trip. All she could ask for was an ending.
“Would you like to meet your grandson?” she said. “The next generation?”
She pulled open the blinds and a line of sunlight ran across his face. His eyes fluttered, they were green, like mine. I put my hands in my pockets and felt the heat of the sun on my face. I was looking at a man who was ready to stop suffering. He might have been the only one around here who was ready for that.
“It’s good to meet you,” I said.