Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

I wandered lonely as a cloud…well, Ezi was with me and took the picture:

It’s black iris time in the fields by Wingate and the weather today finally let us out to go look for them. Heavenly weather, Heavenly flowers.

They’re building the new ecological center at the university overlooking the road. It’s where the people of Sheikh Munis used to shoot at Jews and today the road (my favorite road because it gives an incredible view of Tel Aviv Ramat Gan and points west) was closed after old munitions shells from the Mandate were uncovered in the ground. Lots of them. Let’s see what more they find there…

Oh, and I read a poem to the Russians:

A cousin search

It is an old desire
The hunger to meet
A face like mine
But somehow wiser

And if he is not wiser
And cannot provide
News from long ago
I will give him my stores
My memories, photographs,

And who knows
A smile
That reminds him
Of where
He came from

<

Here is the Kotel:

Years ago, when I saw people walking backwards away from the Wailing Wall, I realized that we had become idol worshippers and that stone was becoming too important to us. Today at the Wall, I was angry. I remembered how important that wall had been to me the first time I saw it, how it recalled the longings of generations of exile, and the new freedom to rebuild. And I was angry that the new fanaticism had cheapened the genuine feelings.

I actually had a great reason for being there. Wait For Me the Russian tv program that looks to unite relatives, did a shoot with me in front of the Wall, as I made a plea to find my cousin, Alexander Kaganovich, the only surviving relative of my mother’s family.At the end of my little speech, they asked me to connect my desire to meet my family with the place where we were standing, and I, always willing to please, talked about how “here, where the Jews place their wishes and prayers, I wish to be reunited ….” Oy. I mentioned my brother, my family, my husband and son in the frame, and they did not break down with laughter. Neither did I. Even though my little shtik was exaggerated, and on the border of comic, there was something deep inside that was serious to us.

Maybe the first time we laughed was in Abu Ghosh on the way home when we had a wonderful lunch at Nura, ordered from the menu.

Rain rain – how wonderful for us all! As I lie here with my aching back listening to the pitter patter I dream of all the wonderful vegetables I’ll be eating next month.

The Israel Association of Writers in English today completed all the corrections to the government application for funding. It has been a long and difficult process – costing hundreds of dollars and no small amount of time, and I am so proud of having been able – with a great deal of help – to complete the forms, that the actual awarding of the funding (if it actually happens it will be the first time English writers won anything in Israel) almost doesn’t matter.

Yes it does. The organization will go under without the funding and I still have hopes to getting some recognition some day for all those writers who have no connection with Hebrew lit but live here.

So as the Sea of Galilee fills up, I too am enjoying a sense of fulfillment.

I retract everything I said yesterday. When I understood that only one of the medications cost 90,000 shekel well over $25,000, i was suddenly embarrassed about the stink I’d made here.

Anyway I have a backache that won’t go away so I’m going to the orthopedist for some of the good stuff he gives for pain, so I am too dependent on the health clinic to complain about it…

Ezi’s father Bandi had a friend named Naf, who was a bachelor in the wild city of Tel Aviv, with women all over town. One morning he came over looking all scruffy and worn out, and Bandi looked at him and winked, suggesting the wild nights he must be having. “No, no!” He shouted, “It’s not the f—ing – It’s the running!” I keep this story at the front of my mind to keep my sense of humor when I follow Ezi trying to get the authorizations to get treatment for his lymphoma. All right, it’s been difficult diagnosing – almost a year and a quarter before it could be said with authority that his lymphoma is probably indolent and could be helped by a treatment of Zevalin and Maphtera. But once the protocol was clear we thought it would be simple – just do it. Okay, they wanted to get some stem cells first. So the authorizations took a while and the nurse wasn’t around, and all that. But now that the hematologist waved the papers at us and told us to get them set up with the insurance because the next shipment of radioactive material from France would be on the 23 and he had to have the biological material a week before, we thought it would be easy.

But No.

Our GP had to authorize the M and Z, and she is overworked, so it took her a few days to see the request, and a few more days to respond, and when Ezi picked it up today and took it to the health clinic offices they noted that she had only asked for Z and not for M. So we have to start all over with asking the GP who isn’t there today for the M paper, take it over to the clinic. Then, hopefully, there will still be time to get it approved through the hc board, take that approval back to the doctor, who will then issue the hc approval for hospitalization, take all that to the hospital and begin ordering the medicine and arranging the dates for treatment.

Having assumed it would work out, I canceled the book launch on the 28th because Ezi wouldn’t be well enough yet from the treatment, but now I see he will not be in treatment yet, even if we really use every connection we can find to get this in place.

Last night we protested the entire denigration of women in the customary way. We went to the “Beit Ha’am,” a building that was lent to the protesters (2nd and 3rd floor above the Infinity Franchise – a nice piece of irony) on Rothchild 69 (a bit more irony there). We read poems to each other and applauded a lot every time some one said something that suggested protest or revolution. I loved some of the poems, and the poets, like Rony Somek and Schulamit Hava HaLevi, but there were a lot of beginners who need encouragement, and some who need to be discouraged.

I think I’ve got the management of my shuk shopping down to a fun enterprise. I start out from the direction of Allenby and move toward the sea. Today, I bought some shirts for Ezi from Shai, and a necklace from some other guy I didn’t feel like talking to. There were a lot of other ‘items’ I was looking for that I didn’t buy – tights, scarves, night shirts – didn’t really like what I saw. Then to drop the stuff off in the car and on the I managed to have a little conversation with Yoram Kaniuk who was sitting in the restaurant across the street from Pappa’s, but that wasn’t part of the plan. Then a great lunch with Sharon, and then – the vegetable shopping. This takes place further west toward the sea, and since my criteria includes nice salespeople, there are a number of places I skip over. I don’t like to buy spices in the open market, even though they look tempting, because they’re OPEN. And it took me a while to find a cheese person I like. I haven’t even begun exploring the oriental markets – Thai, Philipine, Chinese, etc. But with the lunch break in the middle, I now feel I can start really learning about what’s going on there.

And for those of you who can’t get enough of hospitals, here’s an update. Once we get all the insurance approvals, the zevalin can be ordered from France. It takes 2 weeks to get here, and has to be used immediately, and there are two technicians who can do it, so it has to be carefully planned. The strange thing is that although we do most of the leg work, it is the doctor who does at least half of the secretarial work. He has no secretary, and apparently hates writing on the computer, so he writes these complex letters about recurrent follicular lymphoma with a fountain pen in elaborate calligraphy. His phone never stops ringing during this time and he has to answer at least half of the calls. As I sat there I figured that a part-time secretary would not only have saved him 50% of his time, but would have allowed him to see twice as many patients.

And that might have prevented the backache I have now from waiting in the hall for half an hour.

Because of the “Mehadrin” buses where women sit in the back, I’ve been getting a lot of questions about whether women are suppressed in Israel. So here are a few words. The responsibility for self-control in Judaism rests on the individual. Joseph didn’t give in to Potiphar’s wife, and when Samson gave in to Delilah it was his weakness not her temptation. When the foreign drunken conquering heroes give in to ladies, it’s just another aspect of their foolishness. So the whole business of the siren call of a women’s voice is just another aspect of the necessity of keeping the extreme religious away from a world that is much more attractive than theirs.

As for the freedom of women in Israel, I’m earning as much as my male colleagues are and I can walk anywhere in Tel Aviv – day or night – without fear (except the old central bus station where the illegal refugees are forced into crime by the situation).