My friend Hassan

It's been a while since i've been here...
I wanted to tell you about my year, my plans. But instead all I can think about telling you is Lebanon.
Me? I was in the army when the second intifada broke out, served a walking distance from Ramallah. Being in the middle of the hottest place in the world didnt understand and didnt care about anything that happened around me. Moreover, I arrived to Israel in the middle of the Gulf War. The most tragic thing about it was that my parents didnt have enough money to buy me that nice wrapping paper all the kids used for their gas mask cardboard boxes. I also was there when they shot Prime Minister Rabin. After that there was a lot of good music on the radio.

This is my first conscious war. I would like to tell you about it.
It feels nothing like anything u'd imagine.

Maybe I do have to start with some key events from my life in the past year.
John was here in March. He asked a lot of questions, and borrowed a lot of books on my library account.
I said "there are no answers, and i dont have time for these western propaganda books".
When he left i borrowed twice as many books for myself and started learning arabic. In no time I became a raging leftist on the verge of sending care packages to children in Gaza. It took me a little while and a big help from my friends to find the thin balance of mind.
Meanwhile I've finally graduated, after 5 long years of a lot of sweat blood and tears and much less sex, drugs or rock'n'roll.
* a deep sigh *
On the day of my last exam i was going to go to a meditation camp for 10 days of complete silence and mind cleansing. I've decided to be one day late, to spend my first night of freedom partying in Tel-Aviv. I had a party alright.
That was the day when the kidnapped those 2 soldiers at the border, and killed another 8. These events were preceded by a few weeks of rockets coming from Gaza, so the tension was built gradually.
On the next day I took refuge in Buddha and surrendered myself to the desert and the silence, somewhere deep in the south, 40 degrees in the shade, where you can see all the stars coming out at night, not even one missing.
On day 11, when I reached Nirvana and forgot all earthly matters, when my voice was finally returned, I was gathered with all the other dread-locked, barefoot people in a hall, where we heard a standard closing speech with a not so standard appendix...
"And now to something completely different. Ahm... Haifa was shelled, so check out with your families if you have a home to return to. But hey, dont forget, Buddha is still there for you, and Allah is too."

That's how my first war has started.

Beeing a Tel-Aviver imposes on you a deep sense of absurdity, irony bordering with sarcasm and randomness. We call it "The Tel Aviv Bubble". There's even a movie that came out this year called "the bubble", exactly about that. Tel Aviv to Israel is like the New York City to the US. But then it's nothing like it. And that's where the absurdity start from.

When you close your right eye...
Tel Aviv is as alive as ever, and it's alive 24-7 as it is. People go to work, people go out at night, dress nice, there are traffic jams, commercials, summer camps, birthday parties, companies hire new employees, people purchase real estate, it's hot and humid. And by Tel Aviv I mean the greater Tel Aviv, which is to say the "psychological Tel Aviv" - there where they cant get us.
So you sort of feel safe. The titles in the papers dont call it a "war", it's "the war in the north".
So on account of that my story might appear boring to you so far. It's not Darfur, I havent seen slaughtered bodies in a ditch and I didnt have to flee my home leaving everything behind. It's neither Kosovo, nor Chechnya, and not even Beirut; they have it hard.
But my narration is not meant to squeeze tears out of you, it's to bring it closer to your understanding, so you can grasp what a modern days war is like. I am one of you. I dont live in a refugee camp, I dont wear a veil that covers my face and I dont have beliefs in the supernatural. I live in a modern state, with a modern economy, a modern education system, and an annual pride parade. A state of law and order, democracy and high literacy. It's really nice in here, in case you had doubts.
But then this whole chaos. This never ending hassle. This swamp. This dormant Vesuvius.

One peculiarity of this place is that everybody knows everybody. Ok, so there are 7 millions of us. One half is arabs, russians, ultra orthodox and settlers. The rest of us, we all know each other. This saying is quite in the air for you, but once you have a friend from Israel or come to here yourself you'll know right away what i'm talking about. When I meet a random person from Israel abroad, after 5-7 minutes of conversation we find a common acquaintance. When John came here, on the second day he met on the street the only person he knew here besides me. That's why you're bound for the rest of your life to run into each one your ex-boyfriends every couple of years... if non of them is sent to Lebanon... after all we go in and out of Lebanon every couple of years too.
So I was going to tell you how it feels.
It feels like you know each and every one of those kids. Because it's not some poor black guys who go to Iraq to win their money for college, but it's your best friend's kid brother. You see him on the TV screaming "we're fighting for our homes!" with that terribly corny music they put in the background, and u get the shivers all over you because you know this boy, he's exactly like all your boys were some 4 years ago, when we'd meet on friday night for a drink and an update, and they'd talk about guns, and tents and sweat. In English "to do a line" is to sniff cocaine. In Hebrew it's when u'r sent to the front.
And I was there. they'd come after they havent seen their girlfriend for 28 days, and maybe killed a couple of the bad guys too. they would have all that funky ammunition and talk in a funny slang, and I would adore them for being so brave and handsome and forgive them for smelling so bad. And they are us. They sit next to me in class on the lectures, and nobody knows where they've been and what they've seen for 3 years. And they dont know anymore either.

They guy sitting next to me in the office was conscripted. A wife and baby-twins at home. My best friend's boyfriend was conscripted. Her cousine and her sister's husband too. I'm having friday lunches with these people! My classmate, who's also my jogging buddy, wouldn't jog with me for a while.

So you know that by the end of it all you'll have a few funerals to attend, and all of the dead boys are friends of friends anyway.

Another one thing that give you the shivers is that you realize that this is the nature of things in this state. A war for a generation. It's especially inconcievable when you're an immigrant. And me, I'm like you (as I already have pointed out) I was born in a country where the last great legends are dated from The Great War. Here the whole business have only started then. We have at least one war a decade, and still counting. People dont get too excited anymore. It's almost like a budhist thing - a war comes and a war goes. there have been wars before and there will be wars after. you just have to hold your breath for a little, and it'll be over.

And one last thing, don't trust anything you read in western papers about the middle east. It pays well to write stories in sepia (black and white), everybody loves to hate the bad guys. But the world is more like those hologram pictures where you see one image when you look from the right and another one when you look from the left, and both of them are the picture.

Having said all that, I've realized I'm taking this war too emotionally, and it's not something you can afford as a Middle-Easterner.
Boys dont cry.

Besides, i've got a plain ticket to Buenos Aeres, September 8th. As we say it in Hebrew, I'm going to go looking for myself.