Tarachansky: Sex and the surreality

Scene from a Tel Aviv bar. (Photo: Lia Tarachansky)

The Word “Palestinian”

Four girlfriends get together at a hip neighborhood bar. One of them is the DJ. She puts on happy songs, they drink and laugh.

“I want that one,” Maya tells me as she points at some guy at the bar, like picking out cat at the pound. I whisper over-confident words of encouragement and send her on her way. The opening night to the London Summer Olympics is playing on screens in the background.

“Seriously? She wants him?” Noa yells into my ear, as Maya stumbles off. She has a determined look in her face, and no one will stop her. The drinks are pouring, the stumbling gets stumblier.

With every round the music and the laughter gets louder. I just finished a long, intense production for a mini-doc with the BBC, I’m celebrating. The others tag along the excuse.

Four men our age walk in. They see our long, half-empty table and join the celebration. The one next to me turns out pretty cute. He asks me questions while the TVs in the background show the parade – country after country, excited athletes marching in an endless column into the stadium. Belgium, Belize, Benin, a few more drinks.

Iraq, Ireland, Israel, the bar roars with celebrations and cheering. The owner buys everyone a round.

“Born in Russia?” He yells, repeating after me to make sure he heard me right. I can see the sides of his mouth curl. (“Russian” in Israel means easy. At least that’s how the Ashkenazim (White Jews) and Mizrahim (Arab Jews) see us.)

“Yes, actually, from the Soviet Union”

“So you speak Russian?” he flirts.

“That would be the natural conclusion,” I add unamused, “What about you? Any other languages?”

“Hebrew and Arabic”

“Walla?!” I wake up.

Maybe I’m wrong, I think to myself. In the country of stereotypes, I know better than to talk politics in bars as even something small like “what do you do?” or “what language do you speak” can turn into a public shaming.
But maybe I’m wrong.

“Lesh inta behk Arabi? [Why do you speak Arabic?]” I ask excitedly

“What?”

“Lesh? Ya’ani, Inta baool inta behk Arabi, Mazbut? [Why? I mean you said you speak Arabic, right?]”

“Sorry, that’s too complicated for me,” he answers embarrassed, not expecting to be caught in his lie. Niger, Nigeria, Norway.

“Oh”

And here I go revealing myself.

I can see he gets anxious. He scootches a little bit away from me, and with the slowness of a SWAT soldier dismantling a bomb asks, “so… why do you speak Arabic?”

“Actually, I don’t really, but my roommate is Palestinian”. As soon as that word comes out of my lips I know it’s over. I’m relieved.

The table budges a little and the group of men readjusts itself, unsure if they heard what they think they heard. I’m not ashamed. I’m amused, maybe even proud but damn it sometimes a girl just gots to get laid and the chance of finding an anti-racist or even a non-racist in this country are so slim you learn to keep your mouth shut.

He sends a little look of alarm to his friends. They heard right. They’re trying hard to hit on my friends, but now they half-listen, spying on our conversation.

“And… where do you live?” He keeps going, the words pronounced slowly, precisely.

I think he almost expects me to say “Mars”

“In Jaffa”

“Oh!!!” he sighs with relief, “So she’s not a Palestinian, hahah, she’s an Arab!” He laughs at my ridiculous ignorance.

“Well,” I throw the gloves off, “I don’t think she would call herself that,” he stops laughing.

With a wicked smile I add “I’m pretty sure she identifies herself as a Palestinian.”

“Oh,” the air deflates out of his lungs, “she’s one of those…”

Pakistan, Palau, Palestine. My friends start cheering and clapping. I join in. He slides over to the end of the table. His friends and everyone else at the bar looks at us confused. Then at the screen, then back at us, irritated. We don’t care, it’s so over we might as well have fun. Maybe it’ll turn into a bar fight, maybe they’ll dismiss us as idiots.

One of his friends asks David, the only man in our company “So are they Arabs or extremists?”

===

The Artist
Pt 1.

Tel Aviv. With its boiling hot sidewalks and dripping air conditioners. With its tired dogs, lying lazily on the sides of coffee-shop tables, waiting for their owners to finish reading the news. Tel Aviv, with its careless pretty ladies in droopy shirts eating gourmet food in a slouched lotus position on restaurant stools. Their hair capes over their backs and falls, tempting the seculars and the hasids alike.
At my favourite coffee shop big dogs fight for space on the floor, by their owners. Hideous paintings take up most of the wall space and the waitress ignores me while slowly gliding past my repeated “excuse me”s.

Only tourists stop to pet the bored animals. Their owners ignore them, like overpriced accessories. Every once in a while a hand slowly glides down from the salad bowl, past the espresso, and stops in the air. The dog raises its head to receive its petting. The hand pets, the mouth continues chewing.

I’ve had a crush on the owner of this coffee shop for months. I think maybe he’s noticed by now. As I do my writing and editing he sneaks looks from behind the bar. Over the months we’ve acknowledged this game and now when I walk in he nods a recognizing nod and continues cleaning the espresso machine. I never talk to him, he never talks to me. I type away on my silver supercomputer and he cleans the espresso machine. I pay, pack up and leave. He nods a recognizing nod and continues cleaning the espresso machine.

But then once… I came in, after the gym, hoping he wouldn’t be there. I was in my work pants and sneakers. Hair back, no makeup. I ordered an espresso with milk on the side and opened my book (The Berlin Diaries by Christopher Isherwood). He sat next to me before I could start the first sentence.

“You didn’t really come here to read, did you?” He asks, staring.

I blush.

“I’m Tzahi”

“Lia”

I don’t remember what we talked about. Something about his coffee shop and recent renovations.

“You used to have a bathtub in the back”

“Yea, we’ve pulled it out”

“Now tell me the truth,” I flirt, “did you ever just leave cleaning the espresso machine and take a bath in-between customers?”

He looked at me with a facetious smile, “all the time.”

“Really?” I’m shameless, “and what are you going to do now that it’s gone?”

“Come, I’ll show you,” he gets up and extends his hand for me to take. My heart is pumping. He has the air of an artist. He has the words of an artist.

We walk past the customers, past the bar and the confused waiters, past the construction curtain. I melt. He shows me the space of the future kitchen. He smiles. He looks at the floor, turns around, and kisses me.

He invites me over to his house if I ever feel like it.

I do.

Pt 2.

“Do you want to see the picture?” he opens his door, lighting the outside panel with his phone. A railway printed with a distancing effect. It is strangely safe, like I know what’s coming, like I know what I’m there for. In a big, open room, piled to the ceiling with scraps of intentions. With crooked framed paintings of the artist’s friends. An unused guitar on a messy chair, a medieval helmet on a bar stool next to speakers and boxes of clothes. Someone lives here but you wouldn’t guess.

A bed is standing by a wall but it’s hardly used. The artist sleeps on the sofa. So he’s not awakened at night by the sudden realization that he’s all alone.

He talks. He talks. He talks about his poetry. Poetry written by a tired soldier in an unused trench. Poetry written by a man with blood on his hands. For over thirteen years. He talks with the assumed interest of a typical Israeli man, I don’t even try, I know this conversation is one-way. He’s not the shy coffee-shop owner, he’s the man who talks, as long as someone is listening and I’m listening and I’m not running away, so he continues. The excitement slips away and the artist is gone, he is shirtless, he is tired and his shoulders are slouched. His legs rest open against my own.

“Just don’t fall in love with me,” he says as he rolls another cigarette. I look at him silently. “You don’t have to worry about that,” I answer. I am strong but fragile and my hips pose well. They can play and silence but they can’t erase. “Thank you,” he answers with unusual gratefulness.

His voice fills the high ceilings and in the monologue he suddenly wakes up with a question – “what did you say you do?”

“I’m a journalist”

“What do you write about? Art? Cooking?”

“I don’t, I do video, about the conflict”

“What conflict”

“You know, the occupation”

“Ah… well, we all have our evil.”

“Excuse me?”

“You know, our cousins.”

“Cousins” is a condescending Israeli way to say “Palestinians”. When security guards at the airport racially profile passengers and see someone who looks Arab they report into the walkie-talkies “we have a cousin behind the woman in the blue dress.”

“You mean the Palestinians?”

“What about them?”

“Yes, what about them?”

“Nothing, why are you so excited all of a sudden? I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with them. Every people has an evil. Maybe…” he philosophizes, “they just have a little more than us.”

I leave.

In the darkness of the mold-stained hall he calls me, so the light from the street doesn’t reveal. He tries to kiss me a cold goodbye, and my hips disappear. There’s only pose now and twenty endless seconds of fear.

Somehow I’ve made it, stumbling with an open beer in my broken hand. People are somewhere laughing, but they’re too far away. In the unlit sides of streets my feet know the way.