Tmol Shilshom

The condensation from my water bottle drips down between my toes and I adjust my backpack, feeling the sweat congregating in the middle of my back. Someone shouts something at me and motions into the distance, perhaps asking for directions, but I just shake my head and say, in English, “I don’t know.” They force a smile and walk off.

At the Carmel market I point to something that has caught my eye and ask “how much?”

“50 shekel.”

I buy it, but moments later, don’t know why. As I leave, I wonder what it is about this black and white photograph of a Bedouin leading a camel into the dessert that fascinated me so much.

A few days here on my own and I’m already gearing up to leave the steam of Tel Aviv. At the restaurant where I meet my friend, finally seeing a familiar face after days of new introductions to people who intersperse English into their Hebrew solely for my benefit, she tells me she has some news.

“I’ve decided to stay an extra month.”

“Really? You like it that much?”

She doesn’t hear me. “I just sublet this place from a girl on Craig’s List. Did you know they have a Craig’s List for Tel Aviv? I’m supposed to meet her to give her the rent later today. Minutes from the beach.”

“What about everything back home?”

“I guess I’m just not ready to leave.”

She sits with her side to me, in profile, and looks out over the street, her eyes brightening greedily to absorb the view, all of it. More than anything, I wish I could love it as much as she does.



Walking back to where I’m staying in Neve Tzedek – the posh, West Village-y part of Tel Aviv – I pass Arab workers on scaffolding, scaling the exterior shell of a hollowed-out brick building undergoing renovations. They watch me as I ascend the sloped street on my way to the new glittering residential tower at the top. I drift past in a haze of uneasiness. The sound of hammering and sawing shakes the windows of the apartments around me but then lulls into a distant trickle of vibration as I turn the corner.

In the room where I sleep, with my green suitcase throw open in the corner, I consider the painting that hangs over the bed. It’s abstract, I can’t make out what it’s supposed to be, but the first name of the artist, it’s the name of the girl who I’ll always associate with this city. It seems too perfect how she has followed me here like this, quiet and subtle in a way that reminds me of what I used to call her in my own head – “little mouse” – because of the hushed presence she always seemed to have around me. I think about this guy I know from home, an amateur psychic of sorts, who would label this as one of life’s many synchronicities. Inevitably, I spend a considerable amount of time dwelling on it.

The room’s floor-to-ceiling windows face west towards the water, and as the sun sets over the Mediterranean I’m given a view of the entire gleaming coast, from Old Jaffa up towards the northern parts of the shore. I throw myself onto the bed under the painting and open the journal I haven’t written in at all during this trip. Nestled between the pages, at the point where I last visited the words, is the postcard the girl gave me a few years earlier.

“It’s this nice little café in Jerusalem,” she said at the time, after just having returned from a visit of her own.

“Exactly the type that you like, in a little nook you wouldn’t otherwise notice. And it doubles as a bookstore. You should go there when you have a chance.”

“No way,” I responded. “We’ll go together. I’ll take you there on a date.”

She rolled her eyes at me, a move that, at some point in our relationship, became automatic for her. “We both know that’s never going to happen.”

I stare at the card, flipping it over in my hands, half expecting to find some personal message scrawled on the back. It remains blank, just as it has always been, and I wonder why she never wrote anything on it. The edges have become fuzzy from wear, from its use as a bookmark, a placeholder.

Out in the hallway, I hear my host coming back into the apartment with her boyfriend. She says something I can’t make out. He laughs. They chat with each other in alternating languages – she in English to him, he in Hebrew to her.

“Tmol Shilshom,” I say out loud. The name of the café.

The next day, I decide, I’ll go to Jerusalem.



Tmol Shilshom lies hidden at the end of an alleyway that cuts away from the busy Ben Yehuda area. I only find it after I ask around, after I speak with a few locals who all claim full knowledge but each of whom only adds a piece to my finding the spot. A staircase lined with hanging plants leads up from the pock-marked streets into a courtyard with slivers of shade and a wide pocket of sun pressing down onto the middle.

I find a seat just at the top of the stairs under a piece of the overhanging roof and take out the postcard. Rubbing at it absent-mindedly, I try drying the sweat that has worked its way through my pocket and contributed to the warp in the cardboard. I notice that the picture on the front side seems to show this same courtyard, except the image is doctored with brightness, glowing in suffused color. It doesn’t look right.

Glancing around me, I wonder where she sat when she came to this place. The seat I’m in, she might have used this exact one at some point, our contact separated by the distance of a few months, a few years, of both consequential and inconsequential occurrences, most of which I can’t remember anymore. We didn’t speak, and then we did, until we didn’t again, and I count that it’s been eight months since the last time, on the phone, with me on a Chelsea street surrounded by hipsters spilling out of art galleries, holding cheap beers and cocky grins.

“This is all wrong,” she said at the time.

She was right.

“What’s happening between us?” she continued.

I didn’t know. “I don’t know.”

“Nothing.” She said it, but I thought the same thing. “Then why keep doing this to ourselves?”

The hang up, the end, capped with a forgettable flurry of text exchanges for a few late-night hours a couple of weeks later, felt like a sigh of conclusion. And yet now all I can think about is how we never managed to be here together, how I took a postcard from her hand and buried it away between dead words, letting years pass with shoulder shrugs and passivity and noncommittal responses to her expectant, wide-eyed pleas for me to notice us. All of it, a dismissed opportunity, so that I’m left with just this picture that’s too cute, too colorful.

I’m busy making the past into something I think it was until a waitress finally notices me and approaches with
a menu.

“Achad?”

“What?”

Another American who can’t speak Hebrew. “One?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

She stalks off and leaves me in the courtyard again. I lean closer to the wall next to me, trying to hide as much of my body under the overhang as I can, away from the exposed sun that’s passing slowly from one side of the Old City to the other. Down below, at the street level, I hear muffled voices, footsteps, and then just the distant tap-tap of work on the rail line that’s supposed to, one day, run down Jaffa St. Then a movement rustles some of the flowers at the bottom of the stairs and I direct my attention at it.

A cheeky smile stretches across her face when she sees me, her eyes narrowed into squinty nonexistence.

“So you made it. I knew you’d find it eventually.” She pulls out the chair on the opposite side of the table and sits down, confident in a way I never remember her being.

I motion to her postcard lying on the table.

“You kept it?” she asks, surprised.

“Of course I did.”

I hold it up so she can see the frayed sides, the evidence of what it has endured over the course of these last couple of years.

She nods sarcastically. “Another story for you to tell.” The smile doesn’t leave her face.

I don’t say anything.

“That’s what it is, isn’t it? A story. You’ll go home and write and brood about it after the fact, when it’s already too late for it to be anything more than your dramatized version of the past.”

“Not always,” I try meekly.

“You still talk to the computer screen when you type? Still make all those faces like you’re having a conversation with it?”

“Maybe,” I answer, feigning shyness. “There isn’t anyone there to watch me and point it out.”

She makes a face and changes the subject. “Ah! So hot.”

“Not as bad as Tel Aviv.”

“Well, nothing is as bad as Tel Aviv.” She fans herself unsuccessfully with her hand and sticks out her tongue for effect.

“Japan. In August. That’s worse than Tel Aviv.”

“Not all of us, sir, have traveled as extensively as you.”

I shrug apologetically. “You should have seen me when I was there, I was like this giant walking around in a tank-top and shorts, popping into art galleries and palaces and getting all these looks from people.”

“Were we even speaking then?”

“You know we were. I called you all the time.”

“I don’t remember…”

“You remember. Come on. I got back and called you when I was outside your apartment. I hid behind the corner on 31st St. What was on that corner? Like some coffee shop or something? A Guy & Gallard! I hid behind the Guy & Gallard and jumped out at you as you were coming up Park, trying to figure out where the heck I was.”

“You’re so weird.”

“You totally find it endearing. Stop acting like you don’t.”

“Maybe I did at some point. Maybe that sort of stuff gets tiring too.”

I look away for a moment, dropping my eyes to my hands with their chapped knuckles and dry cuticles, victims of the sand and sea water.

“Have you been inside?” she says when I don’t respond, when she realizes that my smile is gone and I can’t look her in the eyes. “It’s a little library/bookstore sort of thing. But I like it more out here.”

“Coffee?” I ask, trying to match her efforts of pulling us back towards the mundane.

“Yes please.”

I motion to the waitress as soon as I see her again. She stops to take our order.

“One regular iced coffee. Cold coffee. Whatever it’s called. The one with the ice cubes, not the crushed ice thing. I always get those confused. And a second cold coffee with half regular and half decaf. No milk, no-”

“That’s OK,” she interrupts me, “I can order for myself. Besides, I don’t drink that anymore.”

“You always drink that.”

“Not for a while now.” She looks up at the waitress, repeating my order and then adding her own. “Toda.”

“You’ve been good?” I finally ask when we’re alone again, realizing that I don’t know anything about her life over the past few months.

“Yeah, I think so. Mostly good. You?”

“I guess I’m OK. Depends on the day, you know? Like everything else.” I pause. “It’s funny, I actually had a dream about you a couple of nights ago. I think just being in Israel reminds me of you. You float into my consciousness.”

“Well I’m flattered. Do I want to hear this?”

“I’m going to tell you anyway.”

“Of course you are.”

“So in this dream, I find myself in the Upper East Side and I’m just strolling around, which, you know, I don’t usually do.”

“I know. God forbid you should just stroll. Everything has to have a purpose for you.”

“Right, I admit that. I can’t help it sometimes. But, humor me, by some miracle I’m actually doing this strolling and I know that I’m somewhere near where your parents live, just because that’s the sense I’m getting. I don’t see any street signs or anything, but it’s a feeling I have, like in dreams when you just know something without knowing why you know it. I’m strolling. I’m strolling. Nothing is happening. Maybe I start whistling. Doop dee doo. Minding my own business. Strolling.”

“A lot of strolling.”

“Lots. But then eventually I see someone who looks like you, from the back.”

She furrows her eyebrows critically.

“No, not like that, like your hair, and a massive backpack on a small frame. That’s how I remember seeing you so many times, lugging around a crazy backpack. Totally you, with your laptop and huge law books, going to or coming back from studying at some coffee shop. But I’m not sure that it’s you, so I’m all nervous to make a mistake, to come up to some stranger and be like, ‘oh, sorry.’ I would hate that. But at the same time I’m nervous that it is you and that we’ve run into each other so suddenly, unexpectedly, the way we always spoke about, the way we were always scared would happen. No contact for however long and then, BAM, there we are seeing each other again.”

Shouting breaks out somewhere below us and we both turn to listen. It echoes and rises against the tight walls of the alleyway downstairs, and then slips into a dark corner and cuts away. She returns her attention to me.

“So I don’t know what to do, but I just find myself moving closer, coming up next to you. Then you swing around, see me, and your face lights up, maybe despite yourself. You give me a hug, you reach up and kiss me. And everything is just normal. The kiss, it feels familiar, relaxed, like we’ve always just known each other without pause or interruption and everything has always been fine.”

She sits quietly, unsure of whether I’m done.

“And that’s it,” I add. “That’s the dream.”

“What do you want me to say?”

I think about her question. “Nothing I guess. I don’t know. It’s just a dream.”

“You always remember such specific details about your dreams. I don’t know how you do that.”

“Who even knows if that’s how it happened. Maybe I filled in the holes and didn’t realize it. Maybe I made it into what I wanted it to be.”

“Everything is a story with you.” She says it again, without realizing she’s repeating herself.

I start coughing, straightening my body.

“What’s wrong? You sound awful.”

“I’m fine, just some lingering thing from the trip. I always end up getting sick when I come here.”

“I know. You’re a mess.”

“I hope they let me onto the plane.”

“Maybe they won’t let you leave. Keep you in quarantine and then make you do Army service.” She laughs.

“Maybe you have the black lung, like I had a few years ago.”

“You coughed for over three months. Maybe I got it from you back then and I’ve been a carrier ever since. How do I get it to go away? What’s the cure?”

“Well,” she says, giving it some serious thought, “you can do what I did – wait. And then one day you’ll wake up, and it’ll be gone. You just need to give it some time.”

The door to the café opens behind me and I turn to see if it’s the waitress coming with our drinks. But she strolls past again with an empty tray.

“Great service,” I say, to no one in particular. Across from me the chair rests against the table, tucked neatly underneath. The postcard starts a mild flutter in response to a breeze that begins to roll through. I put my hand down on it just as it’s about to fly off, returning it to the journal and shutting the pages.

“Mah?” asks the waitress, accidentally overhearing me.

“Nothing,” I respond. “Klum.”

“Ah, good. Very good Hebrew,” she tells me, and then disappears back inside the café.



That night, on the way back to Tel Aviv, I grab a shared-van Sherut. I’m one of the first to board and I have to wait half an hour for it to fill up so that we can leave. In front of me, an Ethiopian man sends text messages and simultaneously smiles at the ones he receives, his phone making an old-fashioned ringing noise every few seconds. Behind, two couples chatter about something. The Russian driver pulls the van out of the lot and immediately starts speeding his way towards the shore. I begin nodding off as soon as we’re outside of the central part of the city, when we hit the snaking downhill slalom that winds its way past sparse Arab villages and the occasional lone walker strolling through the darkness.

I’m pulled back into a droopy-eyed half-consciousness when the voices around me begin rising, becoming accusatory. The van seems to wobble sloppily between the lines of the road and I can’t quite understand what’s happening, or if it’s really happening at all, if this is all just another dream. I hear shouting, and the driver’s voice, defensive. Somewhere in my head a distant panic builds, the idea that he’s falling asleep behind the wheel and will manage to drive us off the road and into some chasm. But the fear is too far off to grasp and I can’t seem to make myself care. My lids fall heavy, resolved to pull me away, return me into the black.

It’s there that I see her again, walking around in the lobby of her apartment building wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, relaxed and indifferent. I arrive attired for the evening, ready to go out. There’s the sense that I’m not there for her, that she shouldn’t see me like this. I try hiding, but unsuccessfully, slipping off into the mail room only to find her coming directly towards me, knowing in the way I’m dressed that there’s a whole life I’m leading which she isn’t a part of. She flashes a polite smile that shrouds her surprise and disappointment. I just nod and neither of us says a word. We both disappear.

I’m awake again when the Sherut arrives at the Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. The passengers disembark and the driver acts apologetic. Everyone seems to be friends again and some of guys pat the driver on the back, laughing everything off.

Outside I find myself among lazing cabbies in lawn chairs and dark men with sweat-glistened faces sprawled out between puddles of motor oil and melting ice cream. Some women watch me pass and lick their lips, shouting something when I ignore them and cast my eyes to the street. A set of people with beers in hand ask me something but I have a hard time understanding them and leave in an apologetic flurry.

A block away from the station and Southern Tel Aviv opens into an abandoned expanse of discarded corn chip bags and timid blinking lights directing nonexistent cars and pedestrians. I stroll with my hands on the straps of my backpack, occasionally reaching under my shirt to pat at the building sweat. Ahead I spot the towering residential complex where I’m staying, its bright air-conditioned rooms stacked atop the small hill at the head of Neve Tzedek, announcing the transition from low-income sprawl into comfortable gentrification.

It takes me half an hour before I’m finally in the lobby, heading up to my floor. In the room, I find my host making something in the kitchen.

“Hey, how was Jerusalem?”

“It was OK.”

“Just OK?” She takes a bite out of a slice of apple and holds another piece out to me.

“No thanks.” I wave it off. “I don’t know, it was the same I guess. I’ve been there so many times before. It’s becoming just another place I know.”

“That’s good too, no? That it’s so familiar to you.”

“In some ways.”

She bites into the apple again. “You didn’t do anything new?”

“I visited a café I’ve never been to.” I drop my bag and pull out my journal, removing the postcard from between the pages.

“Tmol Shilshom,” she says, reading the postcard. “It’s a book you know? By Agnon, a very famous Israeli writer.

I shake my head. “I didn’t know.” And then, “what is it? A name? Does it mean something?”

“It translates as 'yesterday and the day before yesterday.'” She hands the card back to me and opens the refrigerator, taking out a carton of eggs. “Want an omelet? I’m going to make one.”

“I’m OK, I ate before I came back.”

“Well let me know if you change your mind.”

I leave her cracking eggs into a bowl and head to my room at the back of the apartment. Inside I strip down from the day and jump into the shower. Afterward I sit down on the bed and take out my journal again, flipping to the fresh page marked by the postcard. I notice that the card itself is beginning to come apart. A fissure down the edge, starting from one frayed corner, is splitting the cardboard in half, separating one side from the other. I squeeze the sides tight between my fingers in an attempt to reunite the pieces, but they separate again as soon as I let go.

Throwing myself back onto the bed, I let the journal and the card fall to my side and I stare up at the ceiling. The balcony door is pulled open and the sea breeze coming off the ocean whips up the curtains so that they twist around themselves, tumbling waves rolling into cartwheels of cotton. The humidity pads my skin with a salty powder and I become conscious of my shower becoming undone.

Tilting my head back so that I’m looking at it upside-down, I focus on the painting hanging over the bed, the one with her name scrawled in the corner. I roll over onto my side and consider the image, trying again to decipher the two black lines gliding across the canvass, mingling at a few points but ending at different ends as accented final swirls that cut back just before falling off the side and onto the wall behind.

It’s now that I finally make out what it is, that I notice the scene of complimentary silhouettes, of a man propping himself up on one arm and using the other to drape over the woman that lies beside him, his eyes tenderly downcast, watching her as she sleeps.

“Tmol shilshom,” I say to myself. The words sit there, alone, like an answer to a question I haven’t been asked.