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; Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7
Part 8: Making Israel my home!
So, like it or not, I was getting firmly entrenched in the Holy Land. Saddam had tried his best to convince me otherwise by throwing a few Scuds at my double love affair with Ofira and Israel, while my mum’s sickness a few months later had even brought me back to Blighty for a bit. But there was only one destination in my heart in those days and not a lot was going to stop me from getting back there: that little slice of land in the Middle East known as Israel. And a beautiful army girl waiting for me in a 2nd floor apartment somewhere in suburbia might just have swung it.
Back from England, things felt a bit strange. Ofira had welcomed me with perhaps the biggest hug ever recorded and she felt great to squeeze back, but the summer was over and I’d been out of the loop and people had come and gone. I was no longer a tourist, I wasn’t flying back into the Holy Land and needing a bed in a cheapo hostel – I had my own little sofa to kip on in Petah Tikva!
I did manage to locate some old pals from the Purple House, who were still in Tel Aviv; I met up with Mark, the old barman, and we caught up over a beer (though not a crate this time!), while Peter was also back in the center of the country, after leaving his moshav in the north. I’d been away a couple of months but in that time, he’d gotten married to an Israeli girl and was going to be a Dad, living in leafy Givatayim.
I distinctly remember one morning sat on Dizengoff street, drinking beer with these two guys (Peter and Mark), reliving the last few months, coming up with memories that seemed so long ago, yet were just a few months old…I think it was from this session that a weekly beer session was inaugurated. Peter and myself arranged to meet up every week in Tel Aviv and escape the routine of life in the ‘burbs, while we’d meet up with Mark occasionally (Mark went on to settle into hostel life for a good while longer).
Those weekly beer sessions proved to be a lifesaver on many occasions. Getting accustomed to life in Israel ain’t easy, and being stuck within a Hebrew/Israeli environment on your own for most of the time made the need for a few beers critical. But little did I realize that these sessions were being monitored closely by the Mossad, aka Ofira’s mother, who really was sticking her nose into both mine and Peter’s lives without our even knowing it, more of that to come in the next episode…
So, my 3 month tourist visa quickly ran out once more with no solution in sight other than to hope and pray on my next exit out of the country. Of course, I wasn’t supposed to work on a tourist visa but it’s never hard to find something if you’re young and prepared to put the graft in. I kipped on the sofa at Ofira’s place while a variety of odd-jobs ensued, including: painting apartments in Tel Aviv, washing dishes, furniture removal, and even cleaning houses.
But as 1991 moved into 1992 and the hot, steamy summer beckoned, there was an inevitable return to my more touristy roots. I started sleeping over at the Gordon Hostel (with a balcony overlooking the Med, of course) just to save me the hassle of catching buses back to Petah Tikva. Ofira’s army service also meant that she wasn’t home every night of the week, so I made the most of my freedom with some beery nights in Tel Aviv.
And it wasn’t long before I was actually working at the Hostel, just to pay my way. I mainly did a few night shifts on reception, keeping tabs on the comings and goings and making sure Adam the Barbarian didn’t go on the rampage with his baseball bat too often. Adam was a Brit who hated Israelis with a passion and didn’t need much of an excuse to go off on one, but would you believe it took a haircut of all things to convert him into a normal human being. With a dashing new look he fast became a connoisseur of fine Israeli women…and his baseball bat soon hit the trash can.
They were actually nice nights, despite the crazy hours (something like midnight – 7am). I read books, listened to the great Voice of Peace, and fended off a few advances from some crazy Israeli girls. I even had one girl follow me all the way from Petah Tikva to the hostel (on the bus), and she actually stayed and chatted with me all night. She seemed a bit “lost” but a few months later I met her in Dizengoff and she had metamorphosed into a vivacious suntanned beauty, and we had a laugh about “that night”.
But as the year wore on, and I stopped working and hence stopped over less at the Gordon Hostel, I needed something more. My Hebrew had improved a lot over the last few months, largely due to too much time on my hands and a great copy of the ulpan book Peter gave me (as a new citizen through his marriage to a local girl, he was entitled to free Hebrew lessons at a Hebrew school – known as ulpan – but had given up, hence my new reading material). And I used my new language skills to search for jobs in the local newspapers. With a little help from Ofira, I landed myself a new job as a Percy Thrower wannabee – that’s right, a gardener.
After meeting the two beautiful Israeli girls who ran the advertised gardening business a short bus ride from Petah Tikva, I was a happy camper. They were paying me peanuts, something like 1700 shekels a month for a full-time gig, but the work was fairy easy and they weren’t too bothered about the lack of a proper working visa.
This little gardening job opened my eyes to life in Israel, in many ways. I got to meet some great people, and some not so great people. I’m still in touch with a couple of my ex-work colleagues, some real top-class blokes. Others were less classy, but it was a real experience with some of them as they couldn’t speak a word of English – it did wonders for my Hebrew! Ah, strange old Eli, I wonder what you’re up to these days!
And as the weeks flew by and my hedge trimmer worked overtime, little did I know the greatest summer of my life was just around the corner…
Next up: The summer of ’93!