Sun-set in Jenin

Recently I was stopped by a woman who kindly pointed out that I was parked illegally. “Slicha”, I said apologetically, “ b’Englit ?”. “Sure,” she said, in a broad East Coast American accent “I can do it in English too” and she repeated her diatribe of abuse for the horrendous crime of my having parked half up on the curb outside my own house in the dead end quiet backstreets of Zichron Yaakov. I was confused. I thought that my newfound Israeli Citizenship entitled me to drive, if not park like an Israeli. Still it came as a bit of a culture shock, the way Israeli’s drive, and after my first month here I declared to all that I was never leaving my home town of Zichron again, a vow my husband annulled immediately, and thank G-d for that for a few days into the Pesach break I was ready to venture out again.

Israel’s roads are notoriously badly signed. Decisions made at break neck speed must contribute to the toll of lives if not to the toll on Israeli nerves, and so it was that we found ourselves in Tiberius instead of Tzvat. It was a hot and windy day but we found a place to park in a run-down outdoor parking lot where to the delight of all, I proceeded to deposit our only credit card into a parking meter into which it disappeared never to be seen again. So I decided to read the instructions “b’Ivrit”, which apparently did not say put your card in this slot. After stumbling around Tiberius with no money we discovered our twelve year old still had some Aussie dollars, so we negotiated a ridiculously high interest rate (with the twelve year old) and managed to exchange many dollars for a few shecks. Tiberius markets are no fun without money and a pack of annoyingly poor teenages and so we moved on to Tzvat, stopping for a dunk in the Kineret and an ice cream on the way.

A few hours later we reached the holy town of Tzvat where our oldest daughter had been learning and couch-hopping the previous year. She knew all the alleyways, the artists, the cafe’s, she knew each and every nook and cranny of the Old City. She took us up the back streets through shortcuts and unknown walkways pointing out important and significant sites along the way, like where Raffi threw up all night on Purim and where Sarah found her stray dog. We sat outside the Bagdad cafe and ate a kosher l’pesach meal and watched the little children dodge the traffic, our son leading the way with his Israeli army kippa and a cap gun. We were safe, he was armed.

Our daughter decided to stay for the night and sent us on our way down narrow winding roads that lead to dead ends that back into private dusty yards that go nowhere. Finally we followed someone who led us down the hill out of the old city up a one way street, the wrong way and back on the highway accompanied by The Beatles, singing “On our Way Home....”

My husband seemed to know what he was doing so I devoted myself to separating the children who were entangled in a blood battle over Mario and besides I have a notoriously bad sense of direction. Then he looked at me and said something he has never said before in his life. “Maybe that last turn was a mistake “. The sign to Jenin should have been a dead giveaway but then maybe we were just heading in the direction of Jenin and not actually going through it. Or maybe it’s OK to drive through Jenin, maybe everyone drives through Jenin? Maybe it just gets bad press? By now the traffic had thinned down to one car, ours and as darkness set in doubt miraculously transformed into certainty - this was NOT the way home. My husband is always reluctant to turn around; so we drove a bit further our relationship, indeed our lives more at risk with every passing meter, until he saw the checkpoint ahead. He then conceded that perhaps there were better ways to end our days and besides we both knew, no checkpoint guard would ever let pass a family in a rental car driving on the wrong side of the road, no matter how brave and neutral Australians are, and besides, now we were Israelis.