To Stay: Part II

To Stay: Part I

As our little tour bus starts lurching around turns, I can feel that we’re in the hills approaching Jerusalem. I call up my uncle to schedule a time to meet up, pressing myself against a window and covering my mouth, trying to whisper so I don’t disturb the people who are still asleep. Later that evening he and my cousin come by my hotel overlooking the Old City, and we sit out on the terrace sipping wine (my cousin deciding on a caramel milkshake after calculating how long its been since he’s eaten meat). Now what? I look at my uncle in his black-suit/white-shirt orthodox uniform. He sits near me playing with his beard, staring off towards the lights of the Old City as if he’s seeing it for the first time. I kind of expect him to tell me what I’m supposed to feel. Maybe if the wine wasn’t so dry, maybe if it was a little cooler outside, if there was a breeze, maybe then I could sense the majesty of it all. My uncle’s eyes tell me what he’s thinking, that this is really the center of the universe. I’m jealous of his connection even as I have a sudden urge to smile and nod condescendingly, “Suuuuuuure.” After the requisite lecture about the need for my returning to study, to live in Israel, they're gone, and I find myself on crowded Ben Yehuda Street, navigating between throngs of loud, inebriated teenagers that actually make me wish I was back in Tel Aviv.

I figure the Old City must hold more answers. I mean, the Wall on Friday night, that’s supposed to be the beating heart of the Jewish people, right? But in thinking back to my previous visits, I realize that I’ve never really been emotionally impacted by the space, at least not in the way that I imagine I should be. On my first visit, during a Birthright trip, I was blindfolded and led up to the Wall with a group of other first-timers. This really dramatic and impactful moment was brewing in my head, and the first thought I had after the blindfold came off? “This is what it looks like in all those pictures.” I angrily challenged one kid who claimed that everything’s was “getting blurry,” that he was being infused with some single-serve spirituality after touching the stone. Another time, exhausted from the night before, I rested my head on the Wall to pray and quickly fell asleep, awakening as soon as my knees gave way and I jolted back to attention. Once, I admit, I actually got myself to cry. I had defined this as a prerequisite for connecting to God, because, of course, you’re not really affected by something unless you cry. But then it only happened because I made myself focus on the Holocaust, psychologically embedded within me through a few very specific scenes in “Schindler’s List.”

This time I pull off to the side, trying to find a secluded spot where I can clear my mind and commune with the universe. But there are just too many people, too many swaying bodies and chanting voices to develop any sense of concentration. Performance anxiety, you might call it. So I pray for quiet, for the ability to feel alone even while I’m being inundated by the sweating humanity around me, the reek of body odor so close that it could be my own. When all that fails I feel cheated, again. I guess I’m just God’s sense of humor, his love of clichés. I’m the guy who just doesn’t get it.

When my group leaves at the end of services, I walk at a pace slower than everybody else, purposely allowing myself to fall behind, hoping that they’ll make a sudden right turn and I’ll hear their light-hearted chatter grow dim as they disappear behind a corner of Jerusalem stone. But that kid from the airport, he scurries back when he sees that I’m lagging. I notice that, sure enough, his kippa is still on his head, clipped to his thinning hair. Meanwhile mine lies buried deep in my pocket, growing warm from brushing up against my leg.

He smiles. His eyes watery, it’s as if he’s looking through me. “Wow,” he says. And again, after a moment, “Wow.”

I look at him, and I can’t stand his smugness. He’s beaming cockiness, self-satisfaction at having made some “connection.” Part of me doesn’t believe any of it. This has to be an act, just him being who he thinks he needs to be. And I guess that makes me his dupe, a necessary witness he can always point to later for affirmation.

“There’s just…Something…It’s so special.”

This time he loses the words and I feel like gagging. Every additional, wordless, shake of his head is an affront, a mirror thrust in my face so I can see just how inadequate I happen to be. Glancing helplessly at the still-growing distance between us and the rest of the group, I realize there really is no way to get out of this conversation.

I want him to leave me alone, to find someone else to bother. I think about pretending to answer my phone, maybe acting as if I need to go back because I’ve left something behind. But then he offers up his question – “You felt it too, didn’t you?”

And I know that from amongst the rest of our band of mostly cynics, he has, for whatever reason, come to me searching for camaraderie. I suddenly feel bad for him, for his poor judgment. It’s just his luck that I can’t relate to him at all, that I happen to be one of the unworthy.

It’s to their ranks that I flee, letting myself get pulled towards the sages of Ben Yehuda with their yeshiva-bred American-English-accented Hebrew. Boys and girls, some as young as 16 or 17 years old, who by day feign the part of young religious devotees, and by night escape to their temples of overpriced drinks and pumping Western music. I belong here, enveloped in cigarette smoke, tipsy from vodka tonics, lightly-clothed hips grinding against me. This is real and tangible, something I can actually feel. This is the best that I can hope to find.

On my return back to the hotel at the end of the evening, I find our Israeli guide standing around in the lobby. I realize she’s dressed as she always is, in jeans and a t-shirt, except that perhaps for the occasion of the Sabbath, her shirt is a little nicer than it has otherwise been. She grins at me as I approach, beginning a controlled swaying motion and stuffing her hands in her pockets.

“You’re OK?” She asks, her smile wide enough that her words come out a little mumbled.

“Me? Yeah, I’m fine.” I realize that my face must be red from the drinks, my hair slightly fro-ed from the humidity. I feel my shirt soaked through, sticking to my back. “And you? You’re OK?” I ask, just to make conversation, to find a reason to stay down in the lobby with her instead of head back to my room.

She nods and looks away, pressing her lips shut over her teeth, the edges of her mouth still tensed in a smile. Finding myself completely alone with her for the first time over the course of our entire trip, I don’t know how to behave or what to say. She’s younger than me and yet I feel like the kid.

“Why are you standing around down here?” I muster, realizing too late that it’s the wrong question for the night.

“Waiting for my boyfriend.” She refocuses her gaze on me, and this time she’s pure confidence; it’s this look of hers that I’ve become familiar with. It’s a pure Israeli look, the one that flashes passion, that tells me she knows exactly what she wants, or thinks she knows. I’m intrigued, I want to find out more. There are so many questions I still need to ask.

But it all comes down to the bad timing I’ve become so used to in my life. We look up almost simultaneously to see a young bearded man with a buzz-cut securing his motorcycle in front of the hotel. She follows his motions with her eyes.

I excuse myself and wave goodnight before she has a chance to suggest introducing him. I purposely let the Sabbath elevator go up without me and smile drunkenly when I press the call button and see the little circular dot in the center light up.