Continuing on with my tale of woe and joy of how I ended up in Israel…tales of a non-Jewish potential Kibbutz volunteer who falls in love with Tel Aviv, dodges Scud missiles, lives and works illegally for years on end, gets besotted by one Israeli girl despite the best attempts of a legendary Jewish mother, but ends up marrying and divorcing another… and then marrying yet another to join suburbia and the hi-tech revolution, while becoming the seemingly respectable owner of an English school.
In case you missed them, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.
Part 4: Setting foot in the Holy Land!
Once I’d sent that letter to my boss in England, informing him that I’d not be coming back, I knew that I’d be heading for Israel, and for some time. I really don’t know why, because thinking about it, with the threat of a certain Saddam Hussein looming large in the region, it didn’t make much sense: it seemed that the Israel I had been expecting to visit via tales from travellers I’d met along the way and from books I’d read, would be very different as a result. The flood of tourists coming in the opposite direction were also perhaps telling me something similar, but I just wasn’t listening.
And there I was, on the boat to Israel. Alone again but excited, looking forward to seeing another new country. The boat ride itself was a quick overnighter, and it was another starry night for me as I slept on the deck with a few other hardy souls. Included among those were a group of Israelis, the girls among them attracting my immediate attention, especially their long, wavy locks, their olive skin and their pure vivaciousness. I should have jumped overboard right then, it would have saved me a lot of future strife…
As dawn broke on the boat, it wasn’t long before I could spot the shore of Israel (and the port city of Haifa) in the distance. The Israeli crew were very excited about seeing their homeland loom on the horizon and they even broke into song. I couldn’t understand a word of course, as far as I knew it was all in Arabic, but their happiness was pretty infectious.
As I passed through immigration I got talking to a couple of Israeli girls who’d been on the boat, and who suggested I catch the train with them down to Tel Aviv. Who was I to turn down to such an irresistible offer? But in another of those life-changing moments, a fellow Brit then came up to me and started asking me where I was headed. When I replied that I was going to Tel Aviv, he whipped out a small photo book and started pitching me the hostel featured in the album – the then legendary Purple House. And I quickly agreed to join up with him and his hostel owner, who had a beaten up old minibus in the car park ready to take me and a few other travellers they nabbed down to Tel Aviv. I never knew what happened to those two Israeli girls, but I’m sure they survived without me.
The drive down to Tel Aviv was pretty uneventful, just taking in the sights as we sped down the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway. It wasn’t until we reached Tel Aviv that it got interesting – it was just so different from what I expected. Tall, modern buildings were almost everywhere, while the main shopping streets (we drove down Dizengoff and Ben Yehuda streets) seemed to shout “America!” to me. And where were the camels and keffiyehs? This just wasn’t like anything the BBC had painted…
After signing in with Mark, the Londoner on reception with whom I was destined to drink many a beer with over the coming months, settling into the Purple House hostel was, well, a doddle. Its location was probably the best in Tel Aviv at 4 Trumpeldor Street, just metres away from the Mediterranean, and despite the looming crisis with Saddam, there was a stable core of travellers who didn’t seem too bothered about Scuds, gas marks and general impending doom – that soon changed of course, but that particular September morning everything was fine and dandy in touristville Tel Aviv.
Anyway, within half an hour of arriving in Tel Aviv I was already on the beach. Thankfully it was September, so the beach was devoid of schoolkids and families, there were a few tourists and Israelis about but the beach was almost all mine! The guy who had nabbed me at Haifa Port, Greg, had joined me on the beach and was busy pointing out some of the various sights and landmarks, including a couple of Israeli girls that he’d recently befriended. They were both cute, and after being introduced, Greg seemed to have one of them eating out of his hands, although her friend seemed indifferent and just wanted to dive under the waves. Little did I know it then, but this girl was destined to be the reason I stayed so long in the Holy Land…
So, with somewhere to stay for a while, the sun still shining on me (my hair at this point was almost bleached blond – people thought I was from Sweden!) and a future girlfriend unknowingly in the works, life was looking good. Plans to go to the kibbutz offices just 100 metres down the road, where they would hopefully find me a kibbutz to volunteer on, were postponed for a bit as I settled into Tel Aviv much quicker and much easier than I had expected.
I think part of the reason I postponed the kibbutz idea – I ultimately didn’t head for a kibbutz, something to this day I’m still a little sad about – was that I was a perfect fit for the tourist life in Tel Aviv. As I quickly realised, perhaps for the first time on my travels, part of any travelling experience is meeting new people and befriending those that cross your path for anything from a few hours to a few weeks. I think I fell in love big-time with Tel Aviv because of the amount of friends I quickly made, mainly tourists from the Purple House hostel.
I could list a whole number of people here that flitted in and out of my hostel days, but will just squeeze a few greats into a paragraph…like my first roommates, Vanessa the Australian and gay American Dave, who was a great laugh and almost convinced me to join him at the Jaffa hostel he soon moved to. And then came new roommates Mandy (UK) and Billy (South Africa), and Mandy’s Israeli boyfriend Haim (who she later took to England and got married to) who ended up staying in the hostel most nights, who became “My Brother” (Israeli guys love using this term!). We’d often sip a late-night beer on the balcony, the moon shimmering on the Mediterranean Sea just across the road as he’d tell me dramatic Israeli army stories of saving comrades under fire from terrorists. There was also the gorgeous Lisa, also from the UK, who I shared many a beery moment with, including my first visit to the Old City of Jerusalem. And then there was Helen, Andy, Peter, Michael, Tread, and Sarah (all from the UK), and….I think you get the picture.
And while I was working hard (washing dishes, making toasted sandwiches etc, all for top, top money – I think the going rate was 5 shekels an hour) and befriending a whole bunch of international bums tourists, my heart was falling hard for that girl I’d met on the beach within my first hour or so of arriving in Israel. Her name was Ofira, and winning her over was a mission in itself, as the clock seemed to be ticking what with Saddam getting ever closer to delivering on his threats and Ofira, who’d just turned 18, about to get called up to the Israeli army.
But fall in love we did, those early days spent sat on the beach just across the road from the hostel from dawn til dusk, her teaching me the very finest Hebrew swear words, me playing her the finer moments of The Clash on my Walkman. Ofira soon became a big part of my life in Israel very quickly and we were nearly always together, oblivious to the world news and the very real threats aimed at the Holy Land. For the first time on my travels I had absolutely no idea where I was headed – plans I’d made to return to Europe vanished into thin air as together we dived under wild, thunderous waves, and headed for another sunset on the breakers that protect Tel Aviv’s beaches…
But as love was blooming in Tel Aviv, a certain Mr Hussein from down Baghdad way was about to do his best to give us a very bumpy ride…
Next up – Ofira vanquishes Saddam!