[Some of you were confused by my reference to The Terminally Ill Sea. Some years ago the Ahava beauty products company that uses Dead Sea minerals decided, for public relations purposes, to refer to the Dead Sea as the Sea of Life (in the same way, and the same spirit, that Islam, the Religion of Jihad, is now the Religion of Peace).
So effective was the message, and/or so feeble my brain, that I now imagine I see pickled herring and gefilte fish waltzing in the waters.
I find that Terminally Ill Sea or Very Sick Sea or So Sick You Shouldn’t Know From It Sea are acceptable compromises between Dead Sea and Sea of Life.]
[We had planned to return to the refugee camp Sunday morning, but Rachel had an early morning appointment in Tel Aviv and we were forced to leave Saturday night.
The trip back was nightmarish. My night driving is awful – I’m blinded by oncoming headlights – and the rain made it worse. Every passing vehicle threw mud or wet sand onto my windshield. If all that weren’t enough, one of my headlights wasn’t working.
After what would have been a white-knuckle trip if I weren’t knuckle-challenged, we arrived to find the walls covered by slugs leaving silver (en)trails and worms fantasizing they are rattlesnakes coiled on the floors.
We looked at each other in silence until Rachel, pithily eloquent, said “What a dump!”]
[About three days after our return I could no longer stand it: Despite the incessant rain I had to do laundry and hang it on the lines. Passersby would snicker, or shake their heads (many have several heads) in deprecation. These reactions didn’t bother me. They merely reinforced my image of being strange.
The only one who spoke to me is an aging American who said “Moshe, why are you hanging laundry in the rain?”
“Do you remember Lillian Roth’s “I’ll Cry Tomorrow”? Well, this is the sequel, “I’ll Dry Tomorrow”.]
[Alienation of Infections: I am preparing to file two suits. The first is against a grey and black cat who has become inseparable from my Chaleria. Always alone, always on the lookout for me, always prepared to be petted by me, Chaleria now pals around with this creature and is increasingly indifferent to yours truly.
The second is against my next door neighbor, a man who has always ridiculed my affection for the felines, a man always quoting Talmudic sages about how consorting with animals makes one ritually unclean. It appears that while we were away two of his visiting granddaughters became enamored of the creatures and he began feeding the cats scraps at the children’s behest. And he has continued feeding the furry flea-ridden things even though his granddaughters have departed. They line up at his door, instead of mine. I suppose I should be pleased. But I’m not.]
[Purim approaches and all the young M.I.T’s (Morons In Training) here barrage each other day and night with firecrackers and cherry bombs. What a dump, indeed.]
GOODBYE 34: FATTAL ATTRACTION
It was the best of vacations. It was the worst of vacations.
We got off to a very bad start. We had been hoping to go to the Hod where we have been regulars for ten years and feel quite at home. The procedure used to be that you call a hotel from a list provided by the Defense Ministry’s Department of Cripple Care, make your reservation, and inform the DMDCC who send you the authorization papers. Recently the policy was changed. You now call a particular travel agency which makes the arrangements for you, then sends the authorization. [Why the new procedure? Most likely, this being the Middle East, the travel agency paid off a DM official. Also possible, the travel agency is run by a relative of a DM official. Less likely, DMDCC clerks complained of having their daily snooze interrupted.]
When I requested the Hod, the travel agent said it was filled, and steered me to Le Meridien David (formerly the Hyatt), which is directly across the road from the Hod. When we arrived at the hotel we found the papers had not been sent. After seemingly endless discussions, consultations, phone calls, etc, the matter was resolved. But our sense of unease remained.
We requested a low floor, so as not to have to climb the stairways on Shabbat, and were given room 115. On entering the room all premonitions of disaster disappeared. We thought – despite being on the lowest floor – that we were in heaven.
Not only was the room fine, it had a large terrace half of which was covered so we could sit outside in inclement weather. And, being on the ground floor, we could step off the terrace on to a broad lawn stretching to the outdoor pool.
Plus… both the dining room and the spa were on the same floor as the room which meant that an obese snail like yours truly was never required to exert himself to get where we wanted to go.
It would be an understatement to say we were delighted. We would have been happy just being away from the refugee camp and our fellow refugees. And, to increase our sense of being detached from everything, we never looked at a newspaper or even opened the television. [In truth, on our fifth day we opened it but quickly turned it off.]
The room service was so good it was annoying. Within minutes of calling the front desk, whatever it was you wanted was delivered. And minutes after that the front desk would call to find out if we had gotten what we wanted, and if we were satisfied.
The food was varied and plentiful, though heavily spiced. When Rachel said she wanted salt-free food she was introduced to the chefs, Nico and Doron, each of whom prepared special dishes for her and ceremoniously delivered them to our table. I suppose I should have been annoyed that Rachel and Nico would blow kisses to each other, but I was happy to see Rachel being delightfully girlish and too busy to require conversation so I could continue stuffing my own face uninterrupted.
The massages were fine, especially one that I consider the best massage I never had. Shortly after it began I fell asleep. The next thing I knew I was being awakened. “We’re finished. How did you enjoy your massage?” asked the masseuse.
“Fine” I replied, even though I realized that I hadn’t been touched once I fell asleep. It is customary to be told to turn over, but I awoke in the same position. No matter. The sleep was wonderfully deep. How she passed her time was of no interest, though I thought it was in very poor taste when she commented on my snoring.
We largely avoided the other guests, many of whom were not Israelis, with an especially large number of South Americans. One woman said “Don’t you remember me, Moshe?”, which drives me nuts as these days I prefer to forget in order to survive. Turns out she was a nurse in Tel Hashomer Hospital when I was there after the Yom Kippur War, and married one of my legless colleagues. “Of course I remember you” I lied. For the better part of an hour she entertained me with “Do you remember X? He died…” and “Do you remember Y? He died…” Each death was related with details of the circumstances, causes, etc. It was painful to realize how few of us, though we had certainly earned it, were permitted to live happily ever after.
“You are one of the few boys still alive from that gang” she said. Thanks for nothing.
One couple we met, fellow Evil Settlers, were from Efrat and they were a delight. We were fortunate they were up for one day only as the last thing we wanted to talk about was ‘the situation’.
Among the rare negative aspects was the shul, a converted guest room that became a can of sardines during weekday services. For Shabbat, with over two hundred men in attendance, a public meeting room was used. It somehow seemed appropriate to pray while seated on a barstool.
The hotel was part of the ever increasing Fattal chain, and a strange personality cult seemed to have developed. The well-appointed game room for children was called Fattaland, which sounded too much like Fattah Land. And the youth club – “here young people can really let go without adult interference” – was called Fattalstation which, at first glance, I read as Fattalestein. Apparently all the hotels in the chain, whatever their names, were thoroughly Fattalized.
I did say it was also ‘The Worst of Vacations’. The following is not for the genteel, or those with delicate sensitivities. You have been warned.
I always wanted to be part of the majority. In America I was a Jew among Christians. So we came to Israel and found ourselves Ashkenazim in a Sephardi majority. Among Ashkenazim we are a western minority among an Eastern European majority.
So you can imagine my delight to learn that, at long last, I am part of a majority. I am one of the 70% of males in my age group who have an enlarged prostate. It is still relatively new to me and it is a major lifestyle change. I am learning to cope with watering the lawn eight to ten times a day, not being able to sleep for more than two consecutive hours at night without the need for micturition, limiting travel and all activities both in time and setting so as to be within shpritzing distance of a toilet, or a forest..
An example, heart-rending for me, was canceling our plan to go from the Dead Sea to Eilat on Thursday night to see/hear Valeri Gergiev conduct a fully-staged ‘Boris Godunov’ by the Maryinsky Theatre of Leningrad. I adore Gergiev, ‘Boris’ is my favorite opera, and this – especially at my age – was a once in a lifetime opportunity. But even if I survived the trip, how could I sit through the opera? Most of you are probably saying ‘big deal’ or ‘why the fuss?’. A few of you will understand.
Adding to my woes was another problem, more mundane but no less annoying. In scientific terms [!?!], too much was coming out of one end and not enough out of the other.
Some of the new pills I’m taking have chronic constipation as a side effect. When we arrived at the hotel I was, if you’ll pardon the expression, already two days in arrears. After the binge eating that customarily follows in the first days at a hotel, by Tuesday I was in my fifth day in arrears.
I could barely move. I simply lurched. You gentle and genteel, not to mention gentile, readers don’t watch grade-Z horror films like MEN IN BLACK with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. Those few of you who have seen it may remember the alien Big Bug who disguises himself as a human (Vincent d’Onofrio). Remember how he staggers about? That was me, in all my swollen wobbly majesty.
What to do?
I went to the front desk and asked if there is a house doctor. There wasn’t, I was told, but one could be called. I didn’t need a diagnosis, just a laxative. Is there a pharmacy? The closest is Arad, some thirty kilometers away. I was desperate enough to make the trip, then remembered that the Hod across the road had a doctor with whom I had become very friendly over the years. So I staggered over there.
This gentleman, now in his seventies, had been house doctor for the Leningrad Philharmonic in the glory days under Yevgeni Mravinsky before coming on aliya. There were few in Arad, where he lived, or the Dead Sea area with whom he could talk about Russian music. With my wide [though shallow] knowledge of Russian composers and musicians I was the perfect listener. It is no exaggeration to say I love this man, and one of the reasons for preferring the Hod is that I could spend hours listening to him.
Fortunately he was in his office, with no patients to bother him, and we spent a delightful hour with me listening to his anecdotes, at the end of which I walked out with an enema and a packet of laxative pills.
I staggered back to the room and prepared to give myself the enema, which he assured me would “clean me out” within five minutes. Happily for me Rachel was at the pool so I was able to work in privacy.
Alas… how can I be delicate about a matter of such indelicacy?
Some of you may be familiar with the description of an idiot: “He couldn’t find his rectal cavity with both hands.” That was me, though I don’t take it personally as I have only one hand. I poked, prodded, pushed, squeezed, the liquid flying all over with nary a drop entering the proper orifice. The enema was now empty and I remained full. I finally swallowed several of the laxative pills and hoped that before I burst, things would work themselves out.
It’s funny how circumstances can make you see history in a new light. You all translate King Louis XIV’s famous “Apres moi le deluge” as ‘After me, the flood’. With my hard won insight I now believe that Louis may have been constipated, taken some laxatives, then made his famous statement which should be translated as ‘Behind me, the flood’. For, apart from tremors, it wasn’t until nearly midnight when my flood began, continuing til early morning, and allowing us to enjoy the remaining days of our vacation in relaxed comfort.
On Friday, the day before our departure, Rachel wrote a long letter of appreciation to the hotel. She addressed it to Mr. Fattal. She ended on a personal note, that years earlier in Jerusalem she had taught two sisters named Fattal who had mentioned their uncle is in the hotel business.
She handed the letter to the manager when we checked out. He glanced at it and exchanged a smile with the clerk.
“Is something the matter?” Rachel asked.
“He died years ago…”
Still, a memorable vacation.
moshe
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