Go West, Young Man

Thursday, August 6, 2009 -- Day 3


To be exact, I had to go a bit northwest, to Haifa. A rite of passage for most (not-under-duress) olim. To claim our “lift,” our shipment, all-our-life zapped into a 20-fit maroon “ZIM” container. (See its “before” picture).

This aliyah rite of passage is approached with equal bits of excitement and foreboding. Excitement, naturally. We get our stuff! Foreboding, why? Well, what happened to our stuff deep in the dungeon of a mercilessly-hot and damp cargo ship during its one-month voyage over the Atlantic and Mediterranean? Did Somali pirates negotiate its ransom? Did a crew member decide to use the container as his own personal “dumping” station? And how about that fear of all fears – realized all-to-many times, as with the home basement – THE FLOOD? Everything wet and ruined….

Foreboding, also. Dealing with the dreaded shipping and customs bureaucracy. Having to navigate your way – in Hebrew, nonetheless – through ruthless anti-social leathernecks bottled up in some steamy dilapidated building near the port.

And so I stuffed Adina and Coby in the backseat of our rented (1st of 4 rentals within the first 2 months – don’t ask…) Mazda 2 (as popular in the Holy Land as God) and we sped up superhighway Route 6 to Haifa. I put quite a bit of faith in the Holy One on the ride, to tell you the truth, trusting memory, a fairly good sense of direction, and rusty Hebrew to get me to the Haifa port… I would have preferred a GPS, but that is one of the only electronic products/appliances that we haven’t purchased in the past few days. To think we were leaving the consumer culture behind…

And we arrived. So ready to explode in pee that I left the kids in front of a pizza shop in the disgusting port area and ran down a seemingly endless series of corridors to a bathroom that hadn’t seen toilet paper in two years. There’s a lot to thank the King of Kings for here in Israel, especially when your kids aren’t kidnapped in a moment of absolute abdication of parental responsibility.

The Lord was certainly not there the next hour, as I hurried the kids past rows of porno shops on the way to the requisite steamy dilapidated building. As Bialik said, “we will be a normal state when we have the first Hebrew prostitute, the first Hebrew thief and the first Hebrew policeman.” We’ve got ‘em all! In spades, in a country whose cable company is called “HOT,” and brazenly brandishes advertisements for its after-hours adult-only programming.

Then we entered said steamy dilapidated building. Any hope of an air-conditioned office went out the window the minute we entered and felt like we were in a burned-out building in downtown Newark. We walked up the wide concrete staircase, ready for our end – Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci waiting to mow us down. The end came on the 3rd floor, with the first live office in the building – the home of Sonigo Shipping and about 40 other affiliates.

The All-Merciful One returned and blessed us with the miracle of air conditioning, but not enough cash. Yet, we were in the red-light district! – an excellent location to again leave your children in an unknown location and to search out the best black-market exchange rate.

The kids were again not kidnapped, and I was able to sit down and unwind my red tape with Batya, the curt, deep-voiced clearly not-customer-relations representative – there was no such person within 2 miles. I signed my name a gazillion times and handed over 2500 well-traded enveloped shekels to her. “Your lift is here. We’ll likely deliver it next week.” Good, good. “If it clears customs on Sunday.” Bad, bad. “In that case, we’ll bill you for the extra shekels. And you’ll have to pay the movers the balance.” What balance????

Shorn of money, dignity, wits, and any pretensions to the idealistic revelry of Israel, I then got the Muhammad-Ali upper cut to the face on the way out the door, as I stared straight at a massive map of the good ol’ USA, in all its continental glory. Like Bilaam’s donkey, in more ways than one, the map amazingly spoke to me. “You dumb ass, Robbins. You are just plain and simple stupid. You left this great country of 50 states, large and small. You left me, this map whose mantle you worshipped at, in red and blue,every 4 years, whose cities, villages, and hamlets you studied endlessly in the Rand-McNally on every camping trip as a child. Thrilled at the tri-section point of New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey? Crossing state borders, see if you’ll ever do THAT again.”

With that, I left, kids in tow, Leapster still a battleground between them, Amy likely still waiting for the refrigerator and washing machine delivery man to ante up back in Modiin. Still more red tape, not too mention eternal unpacking, for the rest of the century. Still uncertain about the whereabouts and whatabouts off our accumulated life-stuff, the foundation of our this-part-of-life to begin in Israel.

Stay tuned.