Page 36 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. V #7

The Woman at the Window (continued from preceding page)
ful of sugar and is embellished with foam. Since my ex-soldier neighbors are bona fide residents of the kibbutz they’re off on some communal enter- prise—tending the fishponds or cows, irrigating the eggplants or turning the fragrant dried grass into hay bales. Or maybe working at the kibbutz’s factory that makes plastic. They’re all part of the collective and ensconced in lifelong comraderie.
I get to Ife’s garden, composed of sensible cacti and a tumble of rocks. “Yalla!” she says, motion- ing me into her home, which has a couple more rooms than mine and is filled with Arabic music and kids. She makes us lavender tea. We sit. We sip. She seems happy to have gotten the soup. But she laughs when I conscientiously return her plastic containers. “Now I can sleep nights,” she says.
My loneliness like the sound of one hand clapping.
As I take the path back I try not to feel longing for my big American kitchen. All those apple, cherry, blueberry, strawberry rhubarb and pumpkin pies made from scratch. I roasted an organic chicken each week. There was so much food in the stores in America. Not like here. There were so many things. Now my clothes dryer is a piece of string. Now instead of a Stair- master I climb the stone stairs of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.
I go back inside and make a breakfast of hummus drizzled with tehina and served upon bread- sticks. I transfer yesterday’s soaked beans into
a pot with new water and then place the pot on my hot plate that serves as a stove. I peel garlic cloves. Crush them to bring out the resonant oils. Toss in the broken but still-plump and pungent curls. I add chopped yellow onions and tomatoes. The water boils. I reduce the heat to a simmer and the room is saturated in a warm veggie fog.
“How ya’ doin’?” I greet the ghost when I’m back. As usual, she doesn’t reply. Is she shy? Maybe she doesn’t speak English? I try Hebrew. “Ayn biya,” I say to her, which means no problem. Fortunately it’s the cocktail hour again. I open another bottle of Emerald Reisling. “Let me know if you want wine too,” I say to the ghost. I add “blee la-hetz,” which means no pressure.
I spend the next eight hours in search of le mot juste, the exact right word—a perfectionism I learned from one of my favorite writers, Gustave Flaubert. I rewrite one page. My legs are stiff when I stand. I flavor the now-softened beans with sage, thyme, zatar, and oregano from my garden, black pepper, smoked paprika, and salt.
I add Thai sriraja sauce. There’s still liquid in the pot, but now it tastes like spicy vegan minestrone soup so I decide that that’s what this is.
Later tonight, I’m supposed to go on a date with maybe the only single man left in North Israel.
I will shower. I will put on makeup and a dress. Fool that I am, I will continue to believe that a person can make a place or a situation holy with love. Whether it’s romantic, platonic, agape, or the ideal of loving intention that in Hebrew is called kavanah. Even though this didn’t work with my ex. And it didn’t work with Mohammed, the taxi driver who picked me up at Ben Gurion Airport on my first day and took the opportu- nity to steal my suitcase. And it didn’t work with Boaz, the refrigerator delivery guy who returned afterwards with a condom and the assumption that I was down to fuck.
Maybe Ife, my vegan neighbor a few buildings away, would like some soup. She’s always giving me food. Her name, in Syrian, is “woman of love.” Many Syrian Jews took refuge in Israel to escape being ethnically “cleansed” (weird word for death)—there’re also many here from Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and beyond. I pack up some soup. Carry this past the baby fig tree and then under a stand of tall date palms topped by umbrella leaf fronds. I go to and from Ife’s a lot. As always, the kibbutz dog that lives halfway tries to bark me into submission. After I tame him, if that ever happens, I will only have about three hundred more ferocious kibbutz dogs to go.
If history was any kind of guide, it wouldn’t work with my date. Maybe he’d cancel at the last
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