Desert Storm Operation

During my year teaching English in Israel, I had the opportunity to travel during vacation times. I had made good friends through our volunteer program. Among my friends was Ellen, the stoic and practical one, hard to frazzle and usually someone who made sound decisions, and Lizzy who was my soul sister and had the tendency to worry about others, including herself and just about everything else. That spring, we decided to go to Dahab in Egypt.

All the hip Israelis went there in the spring wearing baggy tie-dyed pants and smoking joints. It was also known for great snorkeling as it is on a little cove on the Red Sea. We had to stop for the night in Sinai and continue our trip the next morning. Our first night we found a tiny bunker-type room that looked like a cement sauna inside with benches and thin mattresses. There was no electricity and it was very hot but we had to keep the door shut as thieves were supposedly rampant. We were tired from all our travels so we went to bed shortly after dinner.

The next morning, we found a taxi fairly easily and started our journey through the desert to Dahab. It felt like hours in that stifling hot car, even with the windows down. When we arrived, we saw beautiful white beaches and clear waters. The beach had little tents everywhere for sleeping and some make-shift restaurants with cushions on the floors and flowing curtains. I hadn’t smoked pot for nearly 4 years, but the whole setting suddenly made me want to get high.

That evening I asked my friends if they wanted to get high. Lizzy said “yes,” and Ellen replied dryly, “Whatever you guys want to do is fine.”

Young boys with dark curly hair would often pass us and say in Hebrew, “grass, grass.”

“Do you think they’re selling pot?” I asked Ellen and Lizzy.

“Why don’t you ask the next one?” said Ellen.

“What happens if we get caught?” I asked.

“Well, you’re the ones who want to get high,” Ellen replied.

“Oh, dear,” Lizzy kept repeating which made me hesitant.

“Do you want to get high?” I asked her.

“Yes, I do but…” she gazed off into a far away land.

“Okay, so, should I ask the next guy who says “grass” to us?”

“Yes. That’s a good idea,” Lizzy said.

“But, what if we get caught? Do you think we’ll get caught?” I asked.

“Will you guys just make a decision?” asked Ellen, the equivalent of a man watching two indecisive women in a clothing store.

A young boy in a taxi slowly drove by and said out his window, “Grass, grass.” I walked up to his car. We spoke in Hebrew. He had pot but we had to get in his taxi to go get it. Of course, this started another dialogue between me and Lizzy with Ellen once again saying, “Will you guys just make a decision.”

The three of us got in the back of his taxi and he sped away, far away from our happy land of tourists and tents on the beach to a place we probably should not have gone. He stopped in the middle of the desert far from the sea. There were some tents and a type of café with men clothed from head to toe in white flowing garments and sitting on pillows in the sand. He led us to the café. We were the only girls there. He had us sit at a table where a teenage boy and an old man were playing backgammon.

“Order a drink while I go inside and get your stuff,” he suggested as he disappeared into the café.

Each of us ordered a Coke and we sat quietly. Lizzy looked paranoid, Ellen looked bored and I sat trying to look like we had come expressly for some cold drinks. The boy and the old man finished their game. Our taxi driver came and sat down with us.

“Do you play?” the teenage boy asked us. He had a gold front tooth and a red and white turban wrapped around his head. The old man smiled and had lots of missing teeth.

Lizzy shook her head shyly.

“I play,” I said.

He set up the board. The boy and the old man probably assumed I had notions of the game. But, I knew backgammon well and had learned it at a very young age. Within the first roll of the die, I was playing better than expected. Five minutes into the game, the boy was smiling nervously, his gold tooth shining and the old man heartily laughing. Our taxi driver sat quietly.

Every time I’d make a move, the boy would shift on his cushion and Lizzy would laugh apprehensively. None of us knew how the boy with the golden tooth would react if he lost. After much concentration from both parties, I won the game. The old man said something in Arabic to the boy, then slapped his thigh and shook with laughter. The boy looked at me with a little resent.

“Okay,” laughed Lizzy trying to break the tension a little.

“Let’s play again,” the boy said hoping to win this time and bring the score to even. He started to set-up the board.

Before I could respond, our taxi driver stood up and said, “Let’s go.” We paid for our Cokes and followed him.

“Let’s smoke a little together,” he said and led us to an empty tent. It was black outside except for the twinkling stars above. The boy left to go find a pipe. I don’t think he was used to smoking pot. He seemed harmless so when he came back, we began to smoke together. The more I smoked, the harder it was for me to understand Hebrew and when I spoke, my ridiculous accent echoed inside my head.

Lizzy and Ellen fell silent. The boy began drumming on his legs and the music vibrated and filled the tent. He was actually a pretty good percussionist (or maybe it was just the pot). We accompanied him with some clapping and swaying, then abruptly he stopped and we all laughed. We lie down staring up into the dark, relaxed. Then, he decided it was time to climb on top of Ellen. She remained calm.

“Hey! What are you doing?” I yelled.

Lizzy quickly left the tent and appeared seconds later holding a huge rock above her head she must have found in the sand. “That’s enough!” she hollered in Hebrew.

The boy got a frightened look on his face.

“Don’t overreact, you guys. I’ll handle this,” Ellen managed to say from her pinned-down position. She talked to him quietly in Hebrew, trying to reason with him. Whatever she said, it worked.

He got off of her and we told him to take us back. At first, we followed him as he wondered aimlessly in the dark desert. He couldn't find his taxi. I began imagining the worst-case scenarios, one being he had planned on someone taking his taxi so we'd be stranded with him and possibly his friends for god-knows-what. But, soon enough, we came upon his taxi. This was a huge relief.

It wasn’t too long into our drive when the boy started his own paranoia attack. “I can’t drive! I can’t drive!” he cried “I’m too stoned. I have to stop. Let’s go to my friends’ house and wait," he said.

Suddenly a vision of going to his friends’ house for a pre-meditated gang rape entered my head. I became fixated on this thought and could barely contain my fear. I had no idea where we were. In fact, no one had any idea where we were. We could be murdered and thrown out into the sand without a trace.

“Take us back now!” I said sternly. “You have to drive. You can do this. Stay calm.”

“Oh, no. Oh, no,” he cried, “I have a headache. I have to stop.”

"This is really bad," moaned Lizzy, "this is really bad."

I stared out the window and deliberated jumping out of the car and rolling as I hit the sand, the car speeding away.

“Keep driving. You’ll be fine,” said Ellen calmly. “Take us back now.”

I promised God I would never smoke pot again if we got back safely. We finally got back. Ellen got out of the car and walked quickly ahead of me and Lizzy. I managed to catch up with her. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

”You guys totally overreacted the entire night. You’re the ones who wanted to do this and then you lost complete control. I’m going to bed,” she barged on ahead.

Our evening ended with the three of us quietly staring in our tent. The next morning none of us said a word about our frightful evening. It wasn’t until years later while Lizzy was visiting me that we told this story to a group of friends and the two of us laughed harder than ever at our dangerous evening.

“I can’t believe we did that,” Lizzy said shaking her head, “I forgot about that night.”

“We are so lucky nothing happened,” I said.

Considering all the things that could have happened that night, we certainly are lucky we weren’t left in the desert without a trace.

The Magical Mystery Tour

When I was 21 years old, I lived in Israel as a volunteer. After three months of intense Hebrew study and working on a kibbutz, I was sent up north to a small village near Tsfat. I was going to live with another American girl, Ellen. We were to teach English together at the English Center.

We had first visited our place a month earlier. It was a labyrinth of furniture so walking around was nearly impossible. Our house had served as a home for volunteers over the years. It looked like a squat. Our bathroom had a shower with no shower head, just a pipe sticking out of the wall. Spiders were encrusted into the frost of our tiny freezer that was big enough to hold two ice trays. Our fridge smelled like decomposing garbage and our kitchen cabinets were full of dirty red plastic dishes.

In our front yard which was overgrown with abnormally long dead grass, were old rusty bike remains, and if you dug in the sand at our front door, you could find huge black sleeping scorpions. But, we heard the people were friendly and inviting and we wanted to have a real Israeli experience with the people and the language, so we figured it was worth it and we’d make our house nice little by little.

I happened to arrive by bus one evening by myself. Ellen was to arrive a day or two later. I had a big duffle bag and a rolled-up carpet wrapped in plastic in hopes to make our dump feel more like a home. I knew no one so I was planning on finding another bus from Tsfat to my little village.

I tried to get some information but no one was around. So I sat in the bus depot waiting optimistically. Not long after I sat down, a balding stocky dark man around 30 years old approached me. He was slightly effeminate in his ways.

“Hello! You speak English?,” he asked.

“Yes,” I responded.

”No more buses tonight. Where you go?”

“No more buses? Are you sure? I’m going to Moshav Biria,” I replied.

“I drive tour bus. Waiting for next bus to bring my friend. I know Moshav Biria. I give you ride if you like.”

“Okay,” I said feeling lucky as I was sitting all alone and he probably was right about there being no more buses.

“Let’s go," he said waiting for me to get up and walk with him.

“What about your friend?” I asked

“It’s okay. I bring you and come back.”

“Are you sure? We can wait,” I said not quite sure if this was the best thing to do.

“Sure. Let’s go! I help you,” He heaved my heavy rug over his shoulder. I followed him to a white and red bus. We climbed in. I sort of knew the way, at least I recognized which direction to go. At a fork in the road where he should’ve turned right, he took a left.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To my place. I just need to check my messages and see if my friend called.”

I did not like this answer. He turned on the radio. A Phil Collins love song was on. “I love this song,” he smiled and began to sing out loud. “You like this song?” he asked.

I told him yes even though it made me feel like gagging. This was getting uncomfortable. Not long after, we parked in front of some nice apartment buildings. He turned the engine off and started to climb out.

“I’ll wait for you,“ I said trying to minimize my risks of sexual harassment, murder, rape, mugging, and kidnapping.

“Come. Come,” he beckoned, “only a minute.”

I began to gather my belongings before getting out of his bus.

“Leave. Leave. No worries. We come right back.”

I followed him up some stairs. I looked down at his parked bus to see if by chance he had arranged someone to come steal my things. What was I thinking? We went inside his apartment which was neat and clean and well decorated. Maybe he was gay and I had nothing to worry about.

“Sit. Sit,” he motioned to his couch. “I make you tea.” He put on the kettle then came into the living room to check his answering machine. He had no messages. “My friend will probably call soon. Then, I go get her.”

“Okay,” I said looking around and taking in his place, his things, any hint of craziness I might find though I had no idea what a murderer or rapist’s home might look like.

He brought some tea and chocolates to a low table by the couch. “I’m tour guide,” he said. Then he went to a chest of drawers and pulled open a drawer full of post cards. “Look,” he showed me all his thank you letters from past tourists.

I sat quietly drinking my tea and eating a few chocolates. I was starved from my long bus ride and hadn’t had dinner. I was hoping his phone would ring and we’d leave. He showed me card after card, smiling with nostalgia and feeling proud he was so loved.

“I also do massage at the spa,” he showed me a brochure of a hot springs spa. “I work there. Very nice.”

I looked at the brochure quietly.

“I give you massage. I’m very good.”

“No thanks,” I said.

“Yes. Yes. Just your head. You will like. Lots of nerves in our head. Need to get the energy out,” he came to sit next to me on the couch and the next thing I knew, I was semi-reclined, my back against his chest. I felt awkward in this almost sexual position and remember hoping he wouldn’t get an erection. Luckily, he never did as far as I could tell. This did relieve me to some extent.

He began using his knuckles to apply abrupt circular motions all over my head in a slightly painful manner. He did these tight little movements over and over. It felt like he was making tiny knots. Finally he stopped. He got up, left the room and seconds later came back holding a pair of red silky shorts in has hand, the kind Jane Fonda would’ve worn in the 70’s. “I do your legs. Put these on,” he said.

Was this a joke? I felt like laughing. “No thanks. I need to use your bathroom,” I said.

I went into his bathroom and when I looked in the mirror, I was terrified at what I saw. He had massaged my normally long curly hair into a giant afro. Frantically, I tried to smooth my hair down to no avail. I had to get out of there. He needed to take me home. But what if he refused? What if he wouldn’t let me go? Panic. I left the bathroom. “Take me home now,” I said.

“Okay. Okay,” he said not at all ruffled.

The first thing I did when we got in his bus was verify all my belongings were still there. Indeed they were right where I left them.

“I guess my friend not coming,” he said as we drove back, his radio turned up loudly.

Please get me home safely, I repeated in my head, bargaining with a higher power. The closer we got to my home, the more I began to panic about the situation…me with a stranger in a bus. I wouldn’t feel safe until I was in my dilapidated house with the doors locked. We finally arrived and I got out feeling blessed and relieved, “Thank you so much,” I said.

“Very welcome,” he smiled and drove away. I watched him and waited until I saw his bus far away before I walked inside my house. Two days later when my roommate Ellen arrived, I told her about my tour bus adventure. Several weeks later, she was walking to town when lo and behold, a red and white tour bus stopped alongside the road and the same fellow proposed to give her a ride.

“I know who you are,” she said to him supposedly giving him an evil look. After that, he promptly drove away.

A month or two afterward, she claimed to have seen his photo with a warning for a man posing to be a tour guide! Throughout our year in Moshav Biria, we would occasionally see him scouting the streets in his empty bus. Once in a while a group of army kids would get in and he’d bring them up the hill. I guess he was just a lonely guy. Maybe he was a pervert? Who knows what would have happened had I put on his red silky shorts…would he have made a pass at me or just massaged my legs or both? I’ll never know but he does deserve to go down as one of my Israeli adventures, my magical mystery tour bus man.

Claire Scissorhands (Part II of Mona Lisa and Van Gaga)

The day finally arrived. Claire, two and half years old, was finally introduced to some great artists: Van Gogh, Botticelli, Leonardo de Vinci, Picasso and more.

You must be thinking, "It’s about time! I learned about art history when I was one year old." I guess we are just not pushing our children as much as we should these days. Claire’s arts and crafts teacher arrived with her important assistant, the art historian. If you remember, the teacher needed a specialist for her class of three toddlers. First, the art historian (today I am convinced she has never worked with children) laid out portraits including Mona Lisa, Van Gogh’s self portrait, the Venus, one from Picasso and a couple others. Then she asked the children, “Which one do you like best?”

Claire, very enthused, proceeded to show me a new boo boo on her finger. Angélique stared blankly without contributing much to the discussion. The art historian posed her question again; confused she wasn’t getting any answers, “Which style do you like the best?” (Maybe using the word style would elicit a bigger response.) Then she explained the styles and asked the children to choose their favorite one.

Trying to engage Claire, I pointed to the 6 or so portraits in front of her. “Claire? Claire? Which one do you like?” First she chose Picasso, then she chose Botticelli. She wore a bewildered look on her face as if to say, “Hey! Where’s the paint? When are we going to paint?” Inside I was bubbling with rage thinking, “They are little kids, let them have fun. Why does it have to be so intellectual already?”

The art historian explained to the children the following, “You are going to make your own portrait. You can choose the eyes, ears, mouth, and nose from any of the portraits you like. First you need to draw a big circle on your piece of paper.” She handed out a piece of paper. Claire automatically started scribbling.

My friend who teaches pre-school told me teaching circles is good for children 3-4 years old but that it takes a lot of practice and it is very hard. She does weeks of activities just to help children understand what a circle is. For example, she plays games using balls and then has a specific activity of making balls with clay or painting circles. She may work on the whole concept for months. So, when Claire was asked to draw a circle from thin air, I held my breath. “Claire. Let’s draw a circle.” I handed her a pencil. She began to scribble dark vertical lines. “Let me help you,” I took her pencil and drew a big circle that was supposed to serve as her portrait’s face.

Then, we were told to let each child cut out the eyes, ears, mouth of each portrait in front of them. Claire is just learning to hold a pair of scissors and is excited to just open and close them. To actually use them efficiently is at least a year or two away. “This activity is hard for Claire,” I said trying to just state the obvious, “she is not capable of cutting things out with scissors yet. She is still learning to hold them.”

The assistant looked concerned. Had she prepared an activity that surpassed a two and half year old capacities? Yes. But, the teacher was not going to let me rain on their portrait parade.

“The goal is for her to get acquainted with the scissors. You can help her.” I let Claire pick and choose her portrait’s eyes, ears, nose, and mouth and let her hold her scissors and attempt to cut the paper along side me while I cut bits of the face out for her. It was hard getting her to pick these things out, she was uncommitted to the entire portrait concept. She enjoyed using a paint brush and glue though the concept of where eyes and other pieces go was not registering nor of any interest. I let her do as she wished since there was enough structure to stifle any creative fire still alive.

The assistant came over and tried to reason with Claire, “Look, Claire. You see, you have two eyes and here you have a nose, and then your mouth. So, where do you think her mouth goes?” Claire listened intently and then glued bits of paper that were scraps of rectangles and strips and glued them this way and that, unconcerned that her portrait had no mouth and the eyes weren’t where they should be.

Soon the teacher came over to us. She was persistent in Claire learning to cut and put things together in a logical manner. She sat Claire on her lap and helped her open and shut the scissors ad nausea and made her cut out a mouth and then a neck which she felt was very important for the portrait.

My pre-school teacher friend told me making portraits is an activity for much older children, kindergarten level and older. She told me the whole concept of a face takes months and lots of time. Claire focused on painting with glue over and over until the entire paper was shiny and resembled nothing close to a portrait. Tziki’s portrait was spectacular because the teacher insisted on everything being precisely so. The teacher announced the goal is just for the children to become aware of faces and how to put them together.

Several weeks ago, I made a reference to my friend Jeeves that all French coloring books have two pictures on each page, one is the picture un-colored for the child to color, and the other picture is colored so the child can copy it and do it correctly. I absolutely hate this! Jeeves told me the French are extremely influenced by the philosopher Descartes who believed in taking things apart, analyzing them, and then putting them back together. Descartes was one of the first people to compile an encyclopedia.

Seeing all this structure enforced in a simple toddler’s arts and crafts class may reflect these concepts. Or, another theory is simply that the teachers are not trained in pre-school education. However, it’s easy enough to talk to people who are competent to see what is appropriate, don’t you think? These beliefs of coloring in the lines, copying something color by color and focusing on a finished product makes me feel like I need to enforce originality and creativity even more to tip the balances back to something “healthy.”

I’m so close to pulling Claire out of this class, but if I do, then I should at least tell the teacher why. Will I seem mean and judgmental? And if I do seem that way, does it even matter? If we stay, Claire will be doing projects out of her league. Now is the time for her to have fun, use her hands, smear paint around without an agenda, feel sticky glue dry on her hands and enjoy the sensation of peeling it off. I think my true desire is to just get back to basics and enjoy the simple things. Why complicate things?

Le Coq

Do I really need to write about the dog shit problem again? I know it seems like an obsession, but if I just come up with a couple likely theories for why there is so much, then maybe I can assuage my resentment.

Where I live, 90% of my time is consecrated to watching where I step. In my neighborhood, there are some sidewalks I have actually written off as not fit for pedestrians and I prefer to walk at-risk in the street. (Does this mean I’d rather get hit by a car then step in shit? Hmmm, an interesting thought to ponder) Our neighborhood is “nice,” but still, someone’s dog shat in front of our door the other morning. My husband luckily avoided it, then got our hose and sprayed it off onto the street. He was livid. “This means our neighbor walked his dog this morning and actually let his dog stop and shit right in front of our door,” he shook his head trying to wrap his mind around the neighborly love.

My neighbor (not the one who owns the dog), owns her house and takes vacations often to ski in the Alpes or swim in the warm seas off of Sardinia with her husband and two children. Recently she said to me, “You know, this neighborhood has a lot of money. It is very sought after.” But she said it as if she was somehow not one of them because she is a teacher (and in France, it is a wide belief that it is much better to be a civil servant than some private corporate money-making fuck face).

That being said, I was trying to come up with a theory regarding the “shit = nice neighborhood” equation and figured maybe if our neighborhood looked neat and clean, the neighbors would feel guilty since nice and neat = money = bad person. So, it’s better to cover the wealth with shit…dress it down a little, you know? Then we’ll feel okay about it. Although the “we’re not worthy” idea is not very French, pretending to be poor when you have money is very French so this theory is plausible.

There is the Emperor’s New Clothes theory. If no one talks about the shit, there is no shit unless someone with balls says there is and then the rest of us can agree. But, I think there has to be some deeper connection, a type of Utopian poop harmony. A deep rooted almost sacred belief we might never fully understand, like the holy Indian cows and the joy their people get in lighting the dung on fire and then using their hands to waft the fumes into their faces.

Yesterday, my English friend, Jeeves and I were walking down the street, garbage whirling around our feet, poop smudged here and there on the sidewalks. In an attempt to throw away a candy wrapper, Jeeves missed the garbage bin. His wrapper began to merrily roll down the street. I think I even heard it singing a tune.

“Oh, damn!” said Jeeves.

”I don’t think it’ll make much a difference if you leave it there,” I said.

“I’m not going to pick it up,“ he explained, “I don’t want to look silly.” He said something to this effect. But, you could tell it did play a little on his conscious.

A French person would have enjoyed haphazardly chucking his wrapper into the land of “someone else.”

Getting back to my neighborhood, the other day as I was pushing Claire in her stroller, uphill during le mistral (super strong winds) and Eva held my hand and the two of us dodged poop together, a gust of wind blew some plastic bags into our faces and then the bags wrapped themselves around the stroller wheels. I cursed the garbage while Eva and I tried to free the wheels. And then that remark from my neighbor popped into my head again, “This is a very sought after neighborhood.”

So, I couldn’t help but raise this topic while my husband sprayed the shit off the sidewalk in front of our door the other morning. “Is this a rich neighborhood?” I asked. “Marie said people here have loads of money. Is this supposed to be a nice neighborhood?”

“This is not a fancy area. It is nice and affordable for middle-class families. That is why it is sought after. God, I hate when people make comments like your friend. She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. You know where the fancy areas are, we visited them.”

“I know, but, I’m just wondering what a French person’s standard of nice is. Sometimes this feels like fucking third world,” I said. After living in shiny Orange County and clean Scottsdale, my standards are nothing like a French person but still, could it be that contrasted? I mean is this it? Is this “as good as it gets”?

So, I need to keep searching for some explanation to calm my nerves. I want an answer that will let me say, “Yes! Now I get it. That’s why it’s like this.” So, I have one last theory and it is related to the French mascot, le coq, the rooster. First, let’s look at how France chose le coq. Who came up with this mascot? Was it a round table full of noblemen preparing their soldiers for a battle?

“Beloved knights and warriors, we have a battle to fight. Our colored flag is no longer enough. We need a mascot like the other territories! The English have the bulldog. The Welsh have…the leek! Let’s choose something fitting for us.”

“Here! Here!,” agree the men.

“No matter what happens, we will remain impervious. No matter how many bloody bodies of our own we shall be standing amongst, we shall persevere. No matter how much human feces and waste are left in our path, we shall stand proud!”

“Yeah!Yeah!” scream the men.

“I anoint each one of you in oil…and his highness’ feces,” he holds up a golden platter with a mound of crap. “We shall sing even while standing in our own shit!”

The men whistle and cheer!

“Therefore, we choose le coq, the rooster, because the rooster is the only animal who still sings while standing in his own shit.”

“Here! Here!”

And voilà! I think I cracked the case. I feel better.