Author: didistein450

Sitting on the bench, I look at my superb Decathlon sandals with their burgundy trim (they also come in yellow). Decathlon… my thoughts fly back to France. What would we have become in our home country? We’d surely have bought a little place somewhere in the provinces… But I digress. Quick, my bus, I mustn’t miss it.

I try to get on as fast as possible so the driver doesn’t yell at me, while tapping my card and keeping my balance: the bus has already pulled away, doors half closed. What? You, the Parisian reading this, I know you can keep your balance perfectly in a metro carriage, in a tight suit and high heels, without moving an eyelash, without touching a thing. A queen of inner-city transport. I know, don’t worry, I was just like you, my dear. But come, let me take you on an Egged or Dan bus, made in Israel!

After climbing the steps of the intercity bus and tapping my card, I crawl and leap to a seat, collapse into it and breathe out. I check my route on the app again, because nothing here is logical except the sun rising and setting… and even then. I’ll spare you the “with children” option, where you count your brood while paying and checking the bags (thank Hashem, my people love children, even when the youngest jumps on every seat, occupied ones included).

Back to my bus: I’m going to enjoy the calm… except I forgot my jumper. The driver thinks we’re frozen food, AC on full blast in midsummer. I try to read, but the bus takes tight bends even though, out the window, the road is straight. Being sociable, I strike up a conversation with the driver. In Israel, bus drivers love telling you what to think, say and do. Got a problem in life? No need for therapy: buy a Haifa–Jerusalem ticket and he’ll sort out your troubles in one ride. They have an opinion on everything: politics, sport, geography.

I decide to take a nap, but I’m woken by sudden braking. Goats! In the suburbs of Haifa, high-tech has the local Bedouin’s goats as neighbours. We wait… and my connection, of course, won’t wait for me: 40 minutes of patience.

And city buses? It’s like go-karting in a bus. Sit down immediately, never play around! Your town’s bus must have a timer: it ejects passengers, the elderly and toddlers all at once, swallows its next load of travellers and shoots off faster than Buzz Lightyear. Press the stop button hard, or you’ll do a tour of the town. Take your travel-sickness pills and learn the way back by heart: no, it’s not the stop across the road, it’s on a parallel street. Maybe a parallel universe. Bus maps? Non-existent. Even new drivers are guided by the residents (true and verifiable story).

But since this is Israel, there are beautiful stories too. One spring day, between two waves of corona, I was very ill and had to go to Haifa. I took the wrong bus, the wrong time, a disaster. Already on the way, the secretary calls: my specialist can’t see me. I get off in the middle of the countryside, lost, and burst into tears of exhaustion.

The bus home arrives quickly. I get on, still in tears. The driver panics and bombards me with questions, which makes me cry even more. I sit behind him and feel he’s protecting me. I explain my problem. He tells me everything passes, to go and rest, that tomorrow is another day. At the end of the route he tells me he was worried about me.

Thank you, big brother. Thank you for being so unbearable, yet always there for the big and small bumps. Thank you to these completely crazy drivers who help you anyway. Thank you for being home. Then I get off… well, I’ll try.

Maayan, from Go-Galil

Let’s start again. I live in Karmiel, in the Galilee, north of Haifa and south of Safed. Let me tell you about the end-of-year strike.

Like everyone, I took the teachers’ strike as a personal attack — vicious, twisted, completely unfair! Me, the olah who spent four years running everywhere to get everyone settled. Juggling not-so-well-paid jobs, doing ulpan, finding schools for the kids according to their age and personality. The loneliness of having to pick up three children at the same time, but not in the same place, while being at work yourself!

“Ask your mother to come!” said the very wise ganenet. Yes, granny will jump into her private jet in the middle of a health crisis to collect her little darling from gan. Ah, the joy of making Aliyah as a family: loneliness, never heard of it! But the feeling of carrying the future of the world on your shoulders — yes! (Bravo to all the super-parents making Aliyah: we deserve to be committed straight away, but that’s another story.)

So, after getting through the ordeal of Aliyah, along comes the pandemic. Well yes, otherwise it wouldn’t be any fun. We had managed to get our family back on its feet, everyone on track, we were getting ready for our one and only hotel trip… and along comes corona, which wrecked our health and our nerves. Somehow, with the strength Hashem gives us, we get back up.

We had got too used to the calm. No noise from Gaza, no corona: too quiet… We had set up our routine. Oh dear, routine doesn’t exist here! Look, a strike, a lovely, stressful strike. Four days of strike after two years of lockdowns and illness is too much: no nerves left, no imagination left, no money left either!

We held on with ice cream and the 10-shekel swimming pool (thank you, Karmiel town hall). And just as well, because I was this close to dropping my kids off at Liberman’s!

Here, summer in Karmiel — with the dance festival, free children’s shows, the parks, the pool and the sea 20 minutes away — is lovely, in the Galilee. Our holidays went well, we visited everything. Hooray for back to school? Given September’s news, I thought I absolutely had to find Liberman’s phone number so he could come and babysit. Luckily, there was no strike… just new elections.

“We carry our town on the heels of our shoes.” — Enrico Macias

Where we meet

Hello, I’m Maayan Zerbib… or Audrey Zenouda: it depends on the date, the place, the why and the how of our meeting. A grey, grumpy day in Paris, or a sunny, blazing day in Israel? A Shabbat in one of Karmiel’s beautiful parks, or a weekday in the Paris of the faubourgs?

That’s where our meeting matters. Either you’re one of my guests at my Shabbat table of a thousand salads and dishes no dietitian would approve. Or your day in Lutetia started badly and looks set to continue that way. It all depends on where we meet: that’s where I’ll come up to you, wearing my heels… or my sandals. Have you made your choice?

But how did a Parisian Mistinguett, who knew the metro lines by heart down to her freshly polished nails, become a Zionist who keeps the mitzvot, a mother of a big family, sandals on her feet summer and winter? The why and the how is a beautiful love story.

The aim of this column is to tell how the transformation happened. An integration into our beautiful country with no trouble at all… no, I’m joking. Lots of highs, quite a few lows. In the end, sandals are more comfortable than heels.