home world

It was Thursday and it was his father's birthday, and we went with his family to a restaurant. It was right by the motorcycle shop, an area I know a little bit, after visiting it twice before. I've never been there during the night though, and it was interesting to see how the quite neighborhood changes during the night, a lot of bars and restaurants and fashionable spots in the midth of homeless sleeping in street corners and that park that closes at night so that the junkies wouldn't be able to come inside.

We meet his parents right by the restaurant, they are parking the car as we walk from the train station, the sun's setting and it was raining a while ago so the streets feels clean and fresh. We walk around the corner, his mother tels me that she wants to show me something, we walk passed a big iron fence, and she points inside, I look in the dim light for what she's pointing out and see a huge wooden tower made of long wooden pieces, that have a massive amount of stuffed dolls, plastic toys, wooden marry-go-round horses and other random object dangling from it.
As we pass it, the gate to the small park where the tower is, is opened, we go inside, his mom said that she has never been inside, that most time this gate is locked. The inside is a beautiful garden with thick layer of different type of flowers, vegetables and trees, it's so thick it's darker on the inside then it is on the outside of the small park, there's a wooden gazebo that's illuminated with colorful Christmas lights, and two women sit under it, waiting with a tray of cakes and bottles of wine and Soda.

They tell us about a movie some woman made about her husband recovering from a stroke and how it's going to be shown tonight on the screen behind them. The small park is so calm and beautiful it looks like some crazy scenery from a Grimm fairy tale, I don't really feel like leaving it behind, but we need to go back into the restaurant.

We sit at the table, we talk, about their dog and movies and the situation in the middle east, they tell me about Friends of theirs, we tell them about the trip to Conney Island, about an exhibition we went to, his sister talks about her new diet and debate between different dishes and what will mess up that diet the least. We drink wine. I'm having a really nice time, just talking just being in this family situation when everybody are trying not to step on each other's toes and just spent a pleasant evening without creating a scene.

I go to the bathroom, and I breath and I realise how I was working so hard to be liked and to be friendly and communicative and to make a good impression, how hard it was to understand the English speakers in a crowded restaurant. I wash my face and hand slowly, suddenly, not wanting to go back there. I'm suddenly thinking "I wish I was in Tel Aviv now" and I don't quite know why that thought came to my mind, I assume that it's cause the family situation was too straining and I wanted to run away.

We go out and it's fully dark outside now, and we walk past that little park and we go in cause his sister hasn't seen it yet, the screening of the movie has just ended. Him and me sit on a little wooden bench at the entry to the park and waiting for his sister and parents to complete their walk inside. I'm feeling drained, tired and sad. The first couple that goes out of the park talk to one another, and of course, it's Hebrew "Maybe I would like it" she say "If we saw it from the beginning, but like that..." her voice drifts away leaving me in a crowed of English speakers.

We walk his parents to the car and start our own walk toward the train station, The streets are packed with young people going in and out of bars, some punks, some trendy looking teenagers, just this river of people going out on a Thursday, the way they walked in a neighborhood that's all industrial and quite during daytime reminds me of Florentine. At the end of the street, after we walk for a wile in silence, I suddenly say "I really miss my family" I say it just to fill in a space in the conversation but as the words leave my mouth I feel the longing  in such intensity I'm almost blown away by it.

It's not the wanting to go home cause it's familiar that I've felt so far, it's the deep knowledge of knowing that I'm so far away from home, so far away from my family that it might take a year before I see them again, that knowledge that even if I really want to see them right now, I can't cause they are so far away. And I think of all the family dinners I was sitting in back in Israel and how I used to try and not create a scene and just enjoy time together and how behind all the pleasantry there was a lot of anger and hostility, but underneath that - there was that choice that each of us made to still be in each other's life, and how now, both my parents chose to change that choice, to prefer not talking to me anymore, cause I was not the person they wanted me to be or cause I'm too far away to bother talking to, or cause I chose to leave.

And we are walking, and I'm starting to cry in the middle of the street, and he's talking to me and he's saying wonderful loving things, but I just get angry in my mind, I'm getting angry with him for not speaking Hebrew and I'm getting angry with each person waiting for the train for not speaking Hebrew and I just feel this pain in my heart, in the pit of my belly, like a hole that all my energy and strength are floating out of, the absence of a certain substantial ground to stand on.

When we reach home I lay on the bed and cry and cry and cry and it feels to me like I would never stop crying, but after a few minutes I get so tired I just fall a sleep. At night I dream about my mother being sick and dying while I'm away running a million errands and missing on her last moments of living cause I'm on my way to another place.