To Stay: Part IV

To Stay: Part I
To Stay: Part II
To Stay: Part III

Back in the city the air suffocates after the clean dryness of the desert. A few of us go to hang out in cafes with poor air-conditioning and dirty bathrooms, discovering how impossible it is to find good iced coffee. Some aren’t coming back on our flight, having made plans to stay after the rest of us are long gone. One guy tosses around the word “aliyah,” saying it with the conviction of someone who, in the course of two weeks, has decided that he needs to move here. He alternates between looking up and checking the text messages that are steadily streaming in from the waitress he picked up on Shenkin Street. A torrid love affair seems to be in the works, with her promising to move to New York until he’s ready to come back to Israel. Another guy, a self-proclaimed master couch surfer, scours websites for places to crash – “Dude, this girl’s an anarchist who likes Capoeira. Perfect!” He has separate plans to go diving in Dahab, compliments of an Israeli relative who seems overly eager to fund his misadventures. I imagine that his trip won’t be complete with at least one scar, or a near-death experience.

Despite myself, I’m jealous of them all. Strange to think that only a few days ago this was the city that I was bursting to escape, where the stench of life and industry mix in a way that reminds me of every other city in the world. And yet now, even though it’s still just as frayed and bruised and unkempt as I remember, I don’t want to go.

I call my uncle on the last day – “I’m sorry we couldn’t spend more time together.” Part of me doesn’t know what we would have done even if we had that time, but I say it anyway because it makes sense in my head.

“Soon. When you come next time.”

“Well,” I break in, “I don’t really know when I’ll be back again.” And it’s true, because now I feel a need to see more of the world before I commit to revisiting the same place that I have already revisited so many times.

I can almost hear him grinning on the other end of the line. Have I said the same thing to him before? Perhaps I have lost all credibility in that regard. “Have a safe flight.”

Back in the hotel as I’m repacking my stuff, I look out the window at the Tel Aviv coastline snaking around some hotels and fading into the black remains of an old nightclub. A little further along, Jaffa peeks out into the sea.

I have so much more that I need to see, to ask, to try to understand. Every person who I pass on the street, who walks by and glances at me, they’re a story I haven’t yet uncovered, a world I still haven’t explored. I’d ask for whatever I could get, maybe just a few more minutes before I have to go. But I’m greedy, and so I want months, years, a lifetime to spend in every seedy corner, every holy nook that I can find. Even then, I don’t imagine that I’ll get this place any better than I do now, the way it picks you up and throws you down and leaves you sad and crazy and happy and confused and angry and scared and hopeful. But maybe I’m OK with that. Maybe I wouldn’t have it any other way.