Get Thee to a Nunnery

I've been very negative recently. I would like to write about something good, something indisputably good. I can only think of one such thing: The Minzar.

Is it the best bar in the world? Is it, rather, the most boring default destination for when nobody knows where to go? A true Tel-Avivian hears the words: "So let's just go to the Minzar" at least twice a week. Nevertheless, I opt for the first definition. The Minzar is the best bar in the world. The Minzar is the best place in this city. The Minzar is home. The Minzar is mother, ok, I'm getting carried away. No more Taybe on tap for me.

Let's tell this story as a story should be told, lets begin with once upon a time.

Once upon a time, in an ancient eon called the early 90s, when Sheinkin St. was still the hub of the dangerous, black clad bohemia, there were three bars worth mentioning in the city. The first was called the "Gloola" (pill) the second the "Midbar" (desert) and the third was the "Minzar" (Monastery or abbey).

I got to sip my first underage beer at the Gloola. My friend summoned the guts and asked some girl with black nail polish to buy us two pints. He called her "auntie", as that was the quaint slang of those bygone days "Hey auntie, buy us a couple?". I was surprised at how readily our newfound aunt assumed her criminal role.

We left the Gloola experiencing a dizziness previously unknown to either of us, pissed in an alleyway and started walking north joyfully. Soon enough we got beat up by two drunk English tourists, who thought they heard us swearing at them. We escaped them into a bar. That bar was the Minzar.

Actually no, that bar wasn't the Minzar. It was some other random place that - like the Gloola and Midbar - failed to survive the passing of the auntie years. I'm just desperately looking for an excuse to write about the sole survivor of those times, a seemingly charmless bar, perfectly undecorated, with bare tables spread around the alleyway about its entrence, with its one bathroom (of two) that only features a pissoir, all within choking distance of Allenby.

Call it Patriotism or Zionism, but I need to truly embrace at least one thing on our slender map. Love letters don't really call for excuses, I'll try to compose a quick one right now, and just get it off my chest.

Dear Minzar,

Is it because you are such casual place that I can practically visit you in my underwear? Is it because despite how casual you are, I once found myself sitting in your so called terrace, right next to a group that obviously just left an opera gala?

Is it because you serve Palestinian beer, making me feel that I'm fighting for a cause even as I'm getting myself silly drunk in the very napel of the bubble? Is it because besides this Palestinian beer you also serve that strong Belgian Maredsous that knocks everyone out for the evening?

Is it the wonderful artichoke and feta salad? Is it the veal sausages? is it the very fact that no one would expect a joint like yourself to produce anything better than a little bowl of peanuts, and yet you're one of my favorite restaurants in town? Is it Ari's spicy wings that nearly fried me alive from within just before the management made him subdue them? (I loved them just the way they were. ahhh!) Is it the pickles in the back room that can be subtly stolen when the beautiful blond waitress isn't looking?

Is it that beautiful blond waitress? Is it the equally beautiful not blond waitress who used to wear dreadlocks? Is it the other, even less blond waitress with the dark retro look? is it the other, fourth beautiful waitress? is it Ari and his lovely whiskers? Is it already five in the morning?

Is it the night Stellina cried on my shoulder tears that came directly from her broken heart? Is it that night that the Danish girl recognized me though we haven't seen each other for an entire decade? Is it the night Itka composed her beautiful crazy poem amidst all the noise and loud music in the main room?

Is it that our comfort zone is so small we can cross it in two leaps? (mind the stairs!)

Whatever it is, Minzar, I love you and all the monks and nuns who walk your narrow cloisters. I drink to you and to a city that only becomes itself after dark, and then grows more and more beautiful with every sip, every cig, every sound of laughter.

(all photos are from the Minzar's Facebook fan page)

Efros

Itka and I are experiencing an apartment move that's lasting for nearly a month. It seems we're moving in with Murphy, of Murphy's law fame. First the couple that's vacating the new place got held up and stayed two weeks longer. We spent those weeks on friends' spare mattresses and couches.

When we finally moved in a week ago, we found the walls too badly damaged for us to paint them. The painters could only start working today. We're staying on a matress on the floor till they finish.

As a result, we're still transitory, even though we're home. We haven't unpacked the kitchen utensils yet and only eat what can be cooked in our one pot and scooped with our two spoons (like toothless elders we thus subsist mostly on oat meal). I've been wearing the same shorts for a while and she found scores of ways to refresh the look of her basic black dress. We bought the bare basics: toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste. All else takes care of itself.

Guess what, it does take care of itself. We could easily keep living like this, simply and happily, with no need for our electric coffee-maker. I made coffee in the big pot today for the painters using one of the two spoons, hot black Arab stuff, pretty damn fine.

While stirring, I thought of my friend Efros, a black coffee efficionada who've been living on people's couches not for fiteen days but for fifteen years. Efros's story can be summed thus: she left Israel after her army service, a very young poet and playwright who recieved plenty of appreciation. She went to Paris and fell for a 39 years old French carpenter with a teenage daughter and lived with him in Belleville, where she discovered the world of Indian dance.

When the love affair fell through, she went on to India, then to England, gradually forsaking writng and all things modern and stable for the love of folk art. She went back to the carpenter in France, till that ended again, discovered the Gypsies and their music, chased them around Europe for a while, came back to Israel to herd goats and then discovered Cairo.

She learned how to Belly Dance and made a huge career of it, then abandoned that and went picking Kiwi fruit and flowers with the Bedouins in the Galilee and herding camels with the Bedouins in the Judean desert. She stays with us sometimes when hitting town, as well as with many others. At other times she stayed in tents or on rooftops. She has no address. This beautifully dressed, ever young gorgeous woman is a homeless person.

It's not easy. The politics of being a guest are demanding, even when you're as pleasent, attentive and generous a guest as she is. Sometimes the weight of the reambling life gets to the heart and she's hit with very somber blues, but more often than not she's a model of happiness, of freedom and of being oneself in the face of society's many demands.

If life Efrosized us for this month, it can only be a blessing, one to contemplate joyfully at night, in the empty room that's somehow perfectly full. I'll conclude with a song written for my birdlike friend. It was filmed at the Sde Boker boarding school during "Desert Poetry Days", at a performance that turned into an event against the Gaza war and got us all kicked off the scene, free to roam further.

Jerome

Six years ago, while I was living in Boston, my dad sent me two books as a birthday present. One was "Dancing Arabs" by Sayed Kashua. The other was "Life on Sandpaper" by Yoram Kaniuk.

I went through the Kashua book in two days and found it rather agreeable. Then came the Kaniuk. I knew him to be an experimental Hebrew author, a challenging one. His novel "Adam Resurrected", a peculiar tale touching on both the Holocaust and the gravel of Israeli deserts, whisky and sexuality, was turned into a theatre piece performed in an authentic circus tent. Another novel "His Daughter" was the darkest bestseller of Israel's 80s.

"Life on Sandpaper" turned out to be autobiographical in the wider, literary sense of the word. It opens with the words: "There was a war and I was wounded." The war was that of 1948. The teenage Kaniuk, who lied about his age in order to join the Palmach units, got shot in the leg on the slope on Jerusalem's Mt. Zion. Confused and somewhat shell shocked, he left the country as a sailor on a merchant fleet and wound up in New York. Here he spent nearly his entire 20s, working as a painter and living the Jazz scene. He was a close friend of Charley Parker and, having married a Broadway dancer, a familiar face in the glittier circles.

Stories of Sinatra, Brando and Dean aside, what made "Life on Sandpaper" sensational were the travel tales. Kaniuk and his friends found their way to Guatemala, to Newfoundland and to the further reaches of the American West. Everything in the book was written manically, rhythmically. I didn't realize that such writing could exist. Having swallowed it all, I went directly ahead and wrote a tale of my own travels in Eastern France to a similar beat. My life as an author was changed.

Two years later, while living again in Israel, I got a phone call. Ilana Shahaf of the Sde Boker educational center, an outpost of Hebrew intelligentsia in the Negev desert, asked a favor of me. She invited Kaniuk to speak of the desert in his works. He was freshly out of the hospital following a severe illness and needed a chaperon. Would I mind accompanying him?

I wasn't really into it. Kaniuk's writing was so good as to convince me he'd be an intolerable character. Ilana insisted and I found myself spending a whole day with my literary idol. on the long way south I learned more about him: his life through the bohemian 60s and 70s, running a theatre, drinking heavily and composing "The Last Jew", perhaps modern Hebrew's richest and most original masterpiece. I learned of the house north of Tel-Aviv which he shared in those times with his second, graceful wife Miranda, two daughters and a whole menagerie of animals, of his current life in the city, of the illness that very nearly killed him, of his astonishing sweetness and sense of humour.

In the desert, on a cliff top overlooking the Tzin valley, Kaniuk said: "People say the desert is beautiful, this isn't beautiful. This is awe inspiring. Paris is beautiful." Since then I was fortunate enough to visit Paris with him. He has become my most special and admired friend. Over the years I saw him go through at least one more serious illness and emerge victorious, publish two new books, have his work turned into a Hollywood film as well as into one of the finest television dramas produced here, make many other new friends and fortify his status as one of this country's true cultural treasures.

This week he is 80 years old, and completely in his prime. I can't remember myself being so glad at anyone's birthday, nor so greatful.

Tarweea

In the pocket of my late grandfather's leather jacket, my favorite hand-me-down/heirloom, I find a wrapped chocolate cube. It was served by the coffee at Ramallah cafe "Tarweea" and bears its logo. Tarweea, if I am not mistaken, is Arabic for "peace of mind".

I take the wrapped chocolate out and put it under the glass of my living room coffee table, along with the stone from Lebanon, the old book of Lenny Bruce routines, the cork of a champagne bottle that flew on some good night, over a year ago, and the small weaved memento of Baku, given to me by an Azeri friend in a place that is neither here nor Baku. I put on my grandfather's jacket and go out for a walk with Itka and Efros.

The sea is a deep cobalt, gushing underneath suspended concrete slabs of the new Ajami boardwalk. Above are the tiled pyramid rooftops of old ottoman buildings and a lighthouse painted with red and white stripes. Crumbling fishing vessles float calmly in a basin used continually for 4000 years, surrounded the smell of cooking squid and the exclamations of Asian tourists, awed by the sunset. I've never loved my friends like this, never been through difficult times with such a sense of calm, and yet rarely been so happy to be gently stepping out of them. This evening it's happening. If life is a journey in the pursuit of Tarweea, I have somehow docked at a safe harbour.

Emos

Flashky and I buy two pitas with falafel and a pack of Davidoff cigarellos. "I'll take you to a special place to smoke them," he suggests. "Let's go to the smoking lounge at the Dizengoff Centre and sit with all the Emos."

This word is new to me.

"You know, the young kids who get their hairs straightened and lots of piercing in their faces. It's the biggest fashion trend now."

"Why are they called Emos?"

"Short for emotionals."

We climb through the massive downtown shopping center to one of its upper tiers, where a tiny roon is devoted to the smoking public. The chamber is decorated by many an ad for "Golf" cigarettes, clearly a sponsor of sorts, but the real decor consists of home-grown graffiti. Several kids, ranging in age between 13-16, are sitting there. They all fit the description of Emos down to the piearced cleavage. I take a photo of two of them, Michelle and Shani.

Then we head out into the night, to an art opening, where I bump again into downtown ex-lover (I get set back about two days in my process of forgetting her each time I see her, and I see her about once in every two days, so there really is very little hope), to the Minzar, that ancient Tel-Aviv pub, where I find myself repremending a friend who recently turned away a true companion: "You don't give love up! You don't give love up!"

And later: "Roam free, butterfly. Just take care of your butterfly heart."

The dark moon is high. Everyone is struggling. At the end of the night we're out having pizza on Allenby, with another friend sitting on the railing that graces the sidewalk, losing the good spirit that characterized his evening so far. His own failed attempt at a love story hurts him about thrice a day. Now comes the third time.

He's being quiet about it, but I know: He's an Emo, we're all such fucking Emos. Otherwise we wouldn't be singing "operator" in the middle of the street. Otherwise I wouldn't be giving each of my friends a goodbye hug that's meant, first and foremost, to comfort.

Chat

There are lots of people I like on the various "chat" channels tonight. I'm supposed to be working but the little "bing!" of the Gmail chat, and the wee "click" of the Facebook chat are unstoppable. I think to myself: why are these people all alone in front of the computers? Most of them know each other. They could be having a grand party. Then I think: why need they have a grand party when they have chat?

Anyway, it would make for a messy party. On my Gmail chat I'm currently hosting the members of two couples that split up over the past 48 hours. Don't you know the feeling? Your ex-lover's name comes up and you know that with just one double click you can spin the lost relationship into new depths of disaster. Then, suddenly, the name of a previous ex-lover pops up beneath that of the first one. the names shift places, they nestle back to back, You wonder: what are the gods of chat trying to convey?

Currently on my Gmail chat list there's one proper ex and another girl with whom I once had a wonderful romantic adventure. Pretty cool. Facebook? only that same romantic adventure girl, nothing heavy duty. but wait! everyone on my facebook chat list is a woman except one man and he's gay. I count how many of them I find attractive and arrive at about 80%, leave the two married women out, and you still have a lot of potential romance and sexual tension in my lonesome nocturnal room.

Girls look surprisingly good in two dimentions. I go to my friends list to rate the top three loveliest profile photos. It is a beauty peagent like no other. The swimsuit bit and the evening gown bit are mixed, as every contestant is free to choose her attire freely. Please, my friends, I do not masturbate to Facebook, but I am fascinated by the state of romance today. This is where it begins - with little flirts and xx's, this is where it ends, with names resting back to back, like corpses in one of those multi-level burial plots they now offer in Israel for lack of land. Chat is both the maternity ward and cemetary of post-modern love, it's its inferno, purgatory and paradisio.

Well, not quite. You really have to meet face to face for paradisio. At least that.

The Forbidden City

We left Jerusalem at dusk and reached the wall 20 minutes later.

By nightfall we were here:

Palestine is a prison. The Gaza strip is hermetically shut - a mass dungeon. The West Bank is nearly engulfed by the notorious seperation wall and choked by countless roadblocks. Palestinians can only travel out of their small territory to Jordan, via a tedious process that involves much humiliation. Then they can continue further, but who has the energy?

Israelis can travel into the West Bank to visit Jewish settlements and settler-dominated central Hebron (which is an abominable ghost town). The big cities, though easily reachable by car, are forbidden to us. If we are caught there by the Palestinian police, we will be transferred to the Israeli authorities for interrogation and possible imprisonment. Leaving such places is the real problem: get caught at the checkpoint and you're in trouble.

Bereft of foreign passports but full of curiousity, we said: who gives a damn, then travelled to Ramallah.

Being illegal in a rustic city where a lot of people hate your guts is fun to begin with (makes you feel cool!)

Being there with Itka and Helene is the very definition of fun.

Helene the Quebecoise lived in Beirut and Damascus before and spent a spell in Ramallah as well. She knows her way around and has friends in town. I'll give only people's initials out of regard for their safety and omit photos of our Palestinians friends.

The first friend who came to join us was S. a true cosmopolitan and a very funny guy. He runs an NGO and smokes like a locomotive. His friend O., who put us up for the night, does important environmental work and smokes too.

Incredibly enough, I had a friend in town too. J, who rears from a remote island in the Baltic sea, volunteers for the Palestinain cause. She only came by briefly to have one beer with us at "The Blue" (Ramallah's equivelant of Tel-Aviv's Riff Raff), but that was enough to enchant her with Nordic salt lollies.

From the Blue we moved on to "Jaffar's" for to fill our stomachs, then to "Sangria", a delightful bar, then to "Zan", a trendy downtown spot. I was delighted to see women smoking the Nargila pipes, wining and dining in all the different nightspots. This is uncommon in the rest of the Arab world, including Palestinian communities in Israel, and cements Ramallah's reputation as a relatively liberal, fun-loving city.

Zan, we were told, tends to be more fun loving. The previous night a party was held and the house was rocked. The night of our visit was mellow. The DJ was horrible and spent most of the evening checking his Facebook page. We fought the mellowness with a few rounds of Ramallah-appropriate drinks: Taybeh beer and Arrak. When an Israeli and a Palestinian raise a toast, something's bound to spill.

The male clientelle did not remain indifferent to the fair-haired girls. One suitor posessed a very hawkish political mind. Luckily we made up foreign identities for ourselves (Itka was Ukranian. I was Gabor, or Gabriel, from Hungary.)

But lo and behold, there were other Israelis there. Such as S, a West Jerusalem girl, who is about to be married to her Palestinian beloved and may move to live accross the line.

Don't get too deep into that Hallmark woosieness, though. This is Palestine. O's living room wall is adorned with a bullet hole. Our late night conversation touched on some of the scarier aspects of our mutual history. It was a great conversation, no banal bullshit, and none of the PC politeness that often castrates such talk. I was awed by everyone in the room.

It was at about this point we started really worrying about how we would get out. If the soldiers wave us through, all will be well, I could even post the story on my blog without much worry. If they don't, we'd have to come up with a tall-tale. What would be credible? What would give us away? How can we pretend to have come from a settlement when settlers don't drive on Saturdays? Should we hide the memory cards of our cameras? delete the photos altogether?

All the worrying made us tired. We gave one last yawn and faded out.

The following day, the city was gloriously hectic.


I've never been in a town so rich with baloon vendors.



We learned incredible stuff about Ramallah, for instance: that Tel-Aviv is clearly visible from it. Here, zoomed-in for your blog-reading pleasure, but visible also to the naked eye, is the Ramat-Gan skyline, 40 Km. away.

and here's Jerusalem to the south, with the Holiday Inn tower and Callatrava's bridge sticking out as landmarks.

We were climbing out of downtown, towards the Muqata'a - the Palestinian presidential palace and the location of Arafat's tomb. This was one place Itka and I were definitely not allowed to approach. even the IDs of passersby are checked. We decided to give the place a peripheral glance.

Then, by some manouver that included switching into another set of made-up nationalities and momentarily leaving all of our belongings (including our hidden Israeli IDs) in the hands of two Palestinian policemen, we were inside.



This was as good as it gets. We left the Muqata'a breathless - and not only us two Israelis. S. was nervous as hell within the walls and was now beginning to regain himself. Helene was brimming with love for Ramallah. Look at her face and look at all our faces on the last photo of us taken in the city.

How I would have loved to conclude the post with this photo, but in reality the last image of the trip is that of that o so aesthetically pleasing seperation wall and the checkpoint personnel.

We made it through quite easily. one friendly wave at the soldier, and she waved us through. This is a wave that S. and O. can't give. The illusion was broken. For 24 hours we got an inkling of what it feels like to be Palestinian, to always fear uniformed presence, to be forever trapped between hostile checkpoints, to feel that you have something to hide, that you are guilty, even if you never hurt a soul. Then, suddenly, we were safe.

Русский Стиль

Russki Styl - now that's a cigarette!

It's horrid, to be sure, but what a packet, and what a name: Russian Style. These days, that means "sexy" to me. I'm a fool for all things Russian. This is a wonderfully mind expanding phase that began with the discovery of the old Soviet cartoons, went on to an unplanned visit in St. Petersburg and the backwater of Chudovo and ended with a renewed recognition in the sublime nature of Tchaikovsky's music (which, alas, is still on repeat mode and playing as I write this).

This northern exposure simply had to culminate a good bash. Itka, whose parents are Russian but speaks the language in what I refer to as a "Buzaglo" accent, decided to prove to us all that she's as Russian as dark bread. For her birthday she organized a visit to a Russian restaurant in Rishon Letzion, south of Tel-Aviv. She even rented a VIP minibus to take us there from Allenby St.

Itka instructed us to dress well, and mostly (exept for true blue Rock n' Roll rebel E.B. Dan), we all did, so it was a bit of a surprise to wind up in a industrial complex, climbing through a grungy hallway.

Up on top, however, tables were set brightly for our five course meal. Always on the look out for the exotic, I took a photo of the ever appealing jellied pork's hoof, but there were other offerings too: from crepes stuffed with salmon eggs and with meat to cherry dumplings. The price we paid featured all you can drink vodka and wine.

It also entitled us to a show. First all the lights were turned off, then came the diva.

Then came champagne ("champanska") for all who were celebrating events, including our Itka.
Then we danced.

Then others danced for us. The stars of Television's "Dancing with the Stars" including true celebrity Anna Aronov were performing before us. I sat next to Keren, a Ukranian at heart and a dancer herself, and we both melted. This was nearly as good as the ballet in St. Petersburg. Anna! bear my children!


It was a hard act to follow, but we went for it anyway, shaking our ovefilled stomachs to Russian, Georgian and Israeli Mizrachi music. While I vanished early (2:00 or so) Itka and her friend Itamar actually went on a dancing spree in different corners of the T.A. metropolitan area that lasted until 7:00 AM. Nevertheless, I think all of us deserve recognition for possessing a healthy level of Russki Styl. A night like this instills that in the heart for good.

Conclusion

It snowed insaely in Helsinki the last night I was there. I was staying over at Ulla's very cute flat and helping her with her homework. Some legendary theater director from Sweden was coming to town. In preparation for his workshop she had to get herself acquainted with "A Streetcar Named Desire".

I once tried to watch this film (made after the play by Tennessee Williams, pictured above). I fell asleep twenty minutes into it. Not this time. Once you reach a certain age, or go through certain things in life - which can happen at any age - this meditation on cruelty and dignity becomes indispensible.

Synopsis: Blanche Dubois is a house guest at her sister's apartment in New Orleans. Her past is unclear but she had suffered some form of loss in a small town called Oriol. Her brother in law, Stanly, is at one time attracted to her and dismayed by her. He does his best to expose the truths of her Oriol existance and ruin any chance she has of making a new life for herself in the Big Easy.

The young Marlon Brando is so charismatic as vicious Stanly, you nearly side with him even in very violent moments, and this tention of empathy is on point. Vivien Leigh does an over the top, theatrical Blanche, that consciously contradicts the Cinéma vérité quality of everything else in the film, but forget the film. It's the play that stayed with me the next day, trudged with me among the snow banks to the train station and then the airport, and landed with me (but alas without my luggage and phone), after many a storm, here in Tel-Aviv.

I came back to an apartment occupied by Efros, my own houseguest, to Itka, who gave me solutions for my lack of phone, and to others I havent yet seen, feeling I'm surrounded by people who love me and people whom I love, here and by the polar circle. The trip was good and important. It called for a conclusion to be drawn from it, and I tend to trust Williams here. This world is about care, care and freakishly good art.

An Evening with St. Pete

I cannot disclose the details nor show photos of my hitchhiking journey. They must remain an exclusive for the newspaper that will carry the article. I will tell you, though, that it went very well, too well, miraculously well. 48 hours (including two nights of sleep) after standing with my thumb up in Venice's Piazzola Roma, I was in a gas sation on the outskirts of Helsinki.

I ended up four days early for my Finnish appointements, and so decided to head on to Russia, arriving in St. Petersburg at night. It was a good decision. The lights on Nevsky Prospect were blinding and the sidewalks filled with elegantly dressed, beautiful women. I had a crepe with caviar on the street, then headed for a hostel to sleep.

The following day was cold.


The afternoon was colder, but the hostel supplied fine company: Piti, a landscape architect from Bangkok, fresh off the Trasn-Siberian railway.


We went into a canal-side dive for a drink and some food and met the local clientele. One guy was an art museum to rival the Hermitage.

His friend was a proper Nazi.

"We are getting out of here without a fist fight," I whispered on Piti's ear. The guys actually knew I'm Jewish (I never hide it), and my friend is obviously Asian, yet somehow it worked. We all made brilliant chums, shot down several rounds of vodka and beer and left with hugs.

Outside was dreary and getting drearier.

So we went to the Ballet.The Mariinsky company was presenting three works by George Balanchine, all set to non-narative musical scores. There was Tchaikovsky's Serenade for Strings, the staple work of the New York Ballet. Piti almost fainted by how good it was.


There was Ravel's "la Valse"

and Bizet's symphony in C. "This is the best, most beautiful show I've seen in my life", said Piti.

Outside, the snow ceased and a random pretty girl handed us a baloon. A new night was ahead.