“All right, kids. Everybody off and follow me. Leave your bags, we’ll be coming back to the bus after the luncheon.”
Ten minutes later, we’re all sitting at circular tables in a large ballroom on the second floor. White linen covers the tables, and uniformed waiters rush about. This is more formal than I’d expected.
A few minutes later, the boring part begins. A man who looks vaguely familiar takes the podium. I scrunch my eyebrows, trying to place him. Not sure, but I’ve seen him somewhere at another diplomatic function. Russia? Possibly. That was a long time ago, and I was still pretty young. He introduces himself, but his name isn’t at all familiar. In any event, he’s from the U.S. Consulate. His presentation is predictably boring, and like a lot of diplomats, a tremendous number of words leave his mouth, almost all of them canceling out the other things he’s said, until the end arrives and there’s no meaning left at all.
The truth is, I don’t listen at all. Instead, my mind keeps returning to Dylan. The look on his face when he closed his eyes. I don’t think he knew he has a slight smile on his face, a look of near ecstasy as he sang. Dylan will never be a hard core musician, but what he lacks in talent and experience, he more than makes up for in passion.
He wanted her to know
What he couldn’t say with words
My heart nearly stopped when he sang those words.
A view from forever.
How am I ever going to survive going home? Saying goodbye? I love him.
After that thought, I sit up, suddenly interested. The speaker from the US consulate is introducing the Deputy Chief of Mission from the British Consulate, a woman named Wendy Li. A petite woman, obviously ethnic Chinese, but I’ve seen her. I’m certain of it. But where? Almost certainly in China, but I wasn’t sure.
Li begins to speak about the challenges of diplomacy in a country with the conflicts and tensions Israel deals with. She’s got a much more engaging presence than whatever-his-name-was, and instead of standing behind the lectern, she walks in front of it and moves around as she speaks, arresting everyone’s attention.
I lean close to Dylan and whisper, “I know her. But I don’t know where from.”
He whispers back, “Not a clue.”
“I didn’t think you’d have one.”
Li continues to talk, then says, “Now, earlier in my career, my first overseas assignment was in Beijing. And while we weren’t dealing with the same kind of conflict as here, there were plenty of tensions. In particular, we were preparing to turn Hong Kong back over to China after many years, all at a time when tensions between the United States and China were very high due to spying activities….”
I tilt my head, then lean back to Dylan again. “That’s it. I met her in China. Has to be.”
“Weren’t you a little kid then?”
“I was eight when we moved back to the United States.”
Li must have heard something, even as she spoke, because her eyes move to me and stay on me for an uncomfortable minute. She then continues to speak.
I stay quiet for the rest of the presentation, and the question and answer period. Once that’s complete, Mrs. Simpson stands up and says, “We’ll meet back at the bus in ten minutes, everyone.”
I can tell Dylan wants to run for the door so he can grab a cigarette before we all board the bus. No dice. I grab his hand as I stand, because Li is approaching me, a curious—and guarded—expression on her face.
“Excuse me,” she says. “I couldn’t help but notice you…. is your mother Adelina Thompson?”
Shock hits me. If anyone was going to ask about me, I would have thought they’d ask about my dad.
I nod. “I am… my name’s Alexandra.”
Li smiles. “Oh, yes. I don’t know if you remember me, I’m Wendy Li. You attended the Easter egg hunt at the British embassy in … was it 98? And you fell and hurt your knee.”
“Oh my God,” I say. “Yes! I knew I remembered you from somewhere. I was seven when that happened.”
“You’ve grown up to be a very beautiful young woman. In fact, you look very like your mother.”
That’s… an odd compliment.
“How is she?” Li continues.
I open my mouth to speak. Then I close it. I don’t have a good answer for that. How is she ever? She’s neurotic and has random rages and when she isn’t harassing me and the other girls, she’s hiding in her room. The only time she’s ever happy is when my father is traveling.
Which has been a lot this year.
Li’s face softens. With some kind of understanding. She says, “Would you be so kind as to relay a message to her when you see or speak with her?”
I blink. This is bizarre. “Of course,” I say.
Li nods, then says, “Please tell her…” She swallows, as if hesitating. Then says, “Please let her know her old friend Kent still wonders how she is doing.”
“I’ve never heard of any friend named Kent,” I say.
She shrugs. “Your mother will know. And it’s a message she’ll appreciate. I promise you. It was a pleasure to meet you, Alexandra. Perhaps we’ll meet again some day.”
The woman turns and walks away. Dylan asks, “What was that all about?”
I shake my head. “Not a clue. That was … weird.”
“Will you tell your mom?”
I nod. “Yes. Of course. I don’t know what to make of it. And I doubt she’ll tell me.”
Mrs. Simpson pokes her head in the doorway. That’s when I realize we’re the only people left in the ballroom. “Dylan and Alex. You two… come, please. No hiding out and kissing, we have a schedule.”
Chapter Fourteen
Goliath (Dylan)
After we leave the embassy, the next stop is the high school. It’s an older school, built of the same tan stone as every other building in Jerusalem, and like the rest of the city, it has a radically different feel than Haifa and Tel Aviv. As if it’s been ripped out of the past. Even the students here are dressed more conservatively.
Well, not all of them. Mrs. Simpson and the principal of the school conduct a small assembly, where we are introduced to our host students.
I size up my host student as we approach each other to shake hands.
“Amir,” he says.
“Dylan.”
We shake hands. Amir wears blue jeans, a pair of Converse shoes with the Grinch on the sides, a Morbid Obesity t-shirt and has a necklace with a golden Mickey Mouse pendant. My first impression: a hipster with lousy taste in music.
“You have everything?” he asks, eyeing my one bag and guitar case.
“I do,” I say.
“Come!” The students are dispersing. That’s quick.
“Hold on,” I say. “I need to say goodbye to someone.”
I turn, looking for Alex. She’s standing thirty feet away, talking with a girl who is far less trendy than Amir, which is probably a good thing. “Alex!” I call.
Alex raising a finger, as if to say, “One minute,” then she turns to me.
“I’ll see you later?”
She smiles, then leads forward and gives me a kiss on the cheek.
Then I’m headed off with Amir to God knows where.
It turns out it’s not far at all—we don’t ride or take the bus, but rather walk the three blocks from the high school. Amir lives in a narrow townhouse in a row of identical townhouses, all of them made with the same blocks of stone as every other building I’ve seen. On the doorpost is a narrow rectangular case, maybe six inches long, with brightly-colored and elaborate decorations. Amir touches the doorpost in an obviously-reverent way as we enter the apartment. I make a note to ask Amir about it later. For now, I follow him through the door. I’m promptly swamped with introductions to his parents, Aaron and Hannah, and his four younger brothers and sisters, whose names I don’t catch. The rest of the night we spend talking. I learn that the box on the door is a mezuzah, and there’s one on every door in the house, and they have something to do
with prayers or scriptures which are handwritten and placed inside the box. Amir’s family is not Hasidic, but they are very conservative Orthodox Jews.
Then I get a stunning and pleasant surprise. Despite their surplus of children, Aaron has arranged for me to have my own room during my stay here. It’s the size of a closet, but it only has one bed in it. Apparently it belongs to Brad, the youngest of the children, who has been bumped to a pallet on the floor in one of the other bedrooms. I have to share the room with kids toys, including an appallingly large Barney the Dinosaur, but I can live with that, because I don’t have to share the room with someone who snores, masturbates, or otherwise makes my life miserable.
The next morning it’s raining and cold. I didn’t think it got cold in the Middle East. But when I step on the back balcony to have a cigarette with a cup of coffee, I find myself shivering.
Amir follows me out onto the back porch.
“My parents won’t speak anything, but they don’t approve of smoke.”
“My mother doesn’t either,” I say.
He chuckles. “You like Jerusalem?”
I shrug. “I haven’t seen enough of it yet. Though I’m fascinated by the Old City. I’d love to go there.”
His face looks clouded. Then he says, “We don’t go there any more.”
“No?” I asked. Inside, I felt a hit of disappointment. Selfish, I suppose, but real.
He shakes his head. “My father was injured at the Western Wall two years ago while praying. A riot started—he was hit in the head with a thrown rock. We haven’t been back since.”
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “It’s the Arabs. They know nothing but violence. In their own countries, they cut off the hands of thieves and behead adulterers. Here they kill our people.”
I don’t answer, because I don’t have an answer. All I’ve heard here, over and over again, is how awful the Arabs are. But then I think about going to the Arab school in Haifa, where they get a separate and not-so-equal education. And my mind runs over the body count Wendy Li mentioned yesterday. 660 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks the same year 23 Israelis were killed by Palestinians. I don’t have any answers, and I don’t know who is right or wrong, and I don’t really know the history. But I can see the difference between a David and Goliath.
Still, almost everyone I’d met had been touched in one way or another by the conflict. Yossi’s father killed. Amir’s father injured in a riot. People here were terrified, and people who are scared will do crazy stuff.
I sigh. I’d lay money that more people were killed in just the city of New York last year. I need to check on that.
“What time do you head to school?” I ask.
“In about half an hour,” he says. “Do you know your schedule today?”
I shake my head. “I think we’re supposed to split up into groups and speak at a couple of different schools. But I’m not sure where.”
It turns out that we do, in fact, split up. The bad news? The girls all go to a girl’s school halfway across town, while we speak at a yeshiva in the German colony. Except for a few minutes early in the morning, I don’t see Alex all day.
I miss her. With our time so short—only eight days left—every minute without her is agony. So even though our visit to the Yeshiva is interesting, I’m anxious to get back to Alex the entire time. Normally I would find it fascinating. It has a mixed curriculum, primarily study of the Torah and other Jewish scriptures, but with some component of secular subjects including math, languages, and science. I’m surprised to learn that many yeshivas have no secular teaching at all—the students only study scripture. I suppose they wouldn’t have had a bunch of American high school students come speak at one of those, however. Here, the students sit in pairs at large tables in a huge classroom, books spread out before them. The boys all wear identical clothes: black pants and shoes, white button down shirts. Many of the boys have sidecurls instead of trimmed sideburns. John asks about it during the assembly—it turns out there is a Biblical injunction against cutting the hair in front of the ears, or sometimes beards, and it’s all very confusing.
We take a tour through the yeshiva itself after the assembly. Though the boys study weighty stuff during the day, the school seems to have a lot of normal (and not so normal) amenities: weight rooms, a gym, basketball courts and extremely crowded dormitories. After the tour, we eat lunch—no different than any other lunch we’ve eaten in Israel—then give presentations to another group of students. It’s early afternoon before we leave.
We meet back up with our host students at the high school a little before three in the afternoon. As soon as Alex and I see each other, she runs over and throws her arms around me.
She whispers, “I missed you.”
“I missed you,” I say.
“A bunch of the host students are gathering tonight somewhere. You joining?”
“Yeah, if I can.”
The touch of her body against mine is electrifying. I slide my fingertips down her back, brushing the muscles along her spine. She’s beautiful, and brilliant, but part of what I love about her is her inner strength. Holding her in my arms now, all of my attention is focused on her, shutting out the rest of the world.
So both of us are a little startled at the sound of someone clearing their throat next to us. We separate, and suddenly I feel awkward, a little embarrassed.
“I’m Rebekah,” says the girl who interrupted us, smiling at me. “Alex’s host.”
“Dylan,” I respond.
“Alex, I’m sorry, my parents are here already. We have to go.”
Alex nods. Then she looks back at me, her green eyes flashing. She takes one of my hands. “If I don’t see you later… maybe you can call?”
“I’ll try,” I say. I don’t want to let go.
“But try to come. We’re meeting at some cafe on Ben Yehuda.”
“I’ll try,” I repeat. Then I pull her to me, putting my hands on her waist and looking her in the eye. “If I don’t see you, I’ll dream about you.”
She blinks, as if startled by the words, then stands on her tiptoes and kisses me. A moment later, she’s gone.
Nickel Mines (Alex)
I’ve lived in several countries, and I know better than to make broad assumptions about any place I go to. People are people everywhere—they have different tastes, ideas, activities, beliefs. But all the same, I’m surprised when Rebekah and I arrive on the bus at Ben Yehuda street in the heart of West Jerusalem.
The streets are tan cobblestones, polished by decades of pedestrians walking on the stones, and the entire street is blocked to vehicles. On either side of the street are three-story buildings, with hundreds of people walking, standing, shopping and otherwise occupying themselves.
The next thing I notice is loud dance music pouring out of the open doors of a club. A queue winds around the block. Teenagers and college-age kids are in the line (mostly), all of them very carefully dressed to appear that they dressed casually. Lots of loosely-fit tank tops, and lots of bell bottoms, even though those vanished from the American scene a year or more ago. Across the street from the club, two restaurants, side by side, have tables spilling out into the street. A small band, including a drummer, are set up in the street with guitar cases open to collect cash as they play. Hundreds of people stand around, talking and laughing. Almost everywhere else in Jerusalem, you see people of varying ages, in a variety of costumes—casual clothing, business, military uniforms, the long black coats of Hasidic Jews and the kuffeeyah of Arab men. But here, the dress is almost universally young, casual, and secular.
Rebekah leads the way, clearly knowing exactly where she is headed. I follow closely, because if I lose her in this crowd, I’ll be lost forever. I haven’t heard from Dylan this afternoon, and I don’t have his host student’s phone number, so I have no idea if he’s coming tonight. I hope so. We barely saw each other today and that’s not fair.
I spot Dylan and his host student just
a moment later. Dylan has a stern expression on his face, his eyebrows drawn closely together. He’s following along behind his host student—Amir, I think his name is—and neither of them look happy. A peculiar tension ripples between them.
Dylan’s shoulders drop a full inch when he sees me and he lets out a long breath. I’ve never seen him look so relieved. He moves toward me quickly, abandoning Amir. I lift my face toward his and we’re in each other’s arms, his lips are on mine and everything is exactly the way it should be. His hands slip up almost to my shoulders and I rest my face against his chest.
I open my mouth, say “I—” and close it suddenly. I almost said I love you. My heart is racing, my pulse loud in my ears. I haven’t said those words—neither has he. We’ve only got a few days left. What happens if we never say it? What happens if we go home and I never tell him how I feel?
Does he even feel that way about me? We haven’t talked about it. We both said this was temporary, that we’re just having fun, that we’re just going to see what happens while we’re on this trip. But it’s not temporary, is it? Not the way I feel. Not if he goes home and we never say it. Not if we go back to the United States and never see each other again. Maybe our relationship on this trip is temporary. But there’s no way this cavern of pain in my chest at the thought of losing him could be temporary.
“Maybe you two should get a room.” The sarcastic words jerk me back to the present. It’s Elle, wearing a skirt which is shorter than is probably legal in Jerusalem. She’s standing next to an obviously uncomfortable girl with long chestnut hair. I slowly become aware that my host student, and Dylan’s, look equally uncomfortable.
Dylan just smiles at Elle and murmurs in his smooth southern accent, “Maybe we should.”
Heat flashes up my face. But I keep a grip on his hand.
We all set off as a group, going further down the street. A few moments later we run into John and Mike with their hosts, and Megan not long after. Dylan is curiously quiet as we walk, his eyes darting everywhere and taking in our surroundings. The rest of our group is loud, chatty, and excited, so Dylan and I find ourselves trailing a little bit behind, just walking and holding hands.