The Americans on the Overseas Students program tended to stick together. They would arrive in the summer, when the smell of dry weeds was everywhere, and a harsh white light sprang from the Jerusalem stone. At this time of year, the campus and dormitories were eerily empty of Israeli students, but that didn’t trouble the Americans. They dozed through Hebrew classes in the morning, wrote letters home under ancient olive trees in the heat of the day, and later, when the sun finally set, congregated on the Ben Yehudah walkway, their flat American English bouncing off the cool night breezes.
Mark Needleman was the only NYU student on the program, but the anonymity felt liberating. He was put in a room with Rob Weintraub, a pre-med from Stanford, and the two soon discovered they had common goals regarding the program. “I don’t want to waste my time here,” Rob explained as he stuffed his stash of condoms into a drawer in the cupboard. I plan to use this year to screw as many girls as possible.”
“A worthy ambition,” Mark agreed. “No one knows me here,” he added gleefully. “I’m as free as a bird.”
The freedom of a bird, however, guaranteed nothing. The girls were far more discerning than Mark had hoped. If anything, they were into the Israelis who were older, more worldly, and best of all, foreign. Rob’s plans too, were modified, when he found himself falling for the first girl who agreed to go to bed with him. “We’ve rented a flat in the city,” Rob explained with the same enthusiasm with which he had several weeks earlier proclaimed his promiscuity. You’ll have the pad all to yourself now.”
But Mark, a realist, knew that the solitude would not last long. The days were growing shorter, their heat steadily loosing its menace, and Israeli students were trickling in. One hot afternoon, he returned to his room to find a slight but intense-looking guy with a ponytail sitting on the bare mattress in the bed across from Mark’s. A worn canvas bag lay open beside him; he picked out a pair of socks, sniffed them and asked in thickly accented English, “Were these washed”?
His name was Nadav Ya’ari, and he was disputing his way through a philosophy degree. Nadav was sharp, cynical, and arrogant, but he spoke decent English, and was happy to engage with Mark on anything that interested him. They talked politics, globalization, and Wim Wenders films, with Nadav reminding him that he was a dumb American, and then quoting various philosophers when he wanted to make a point. Mark, for his part, regarded Nadav as a unique cultural exhibit, and part of his Israel experience as a whole.
Every Friday, when most Israelis would go home for the weekend, the Americans would meet up in someone’s room, throw together a dinner, and compare notes; where could you get the best felalel? Who knew the cheapest place to buy Armenian pottery and Bedouin rugs? What was the best time of year to go to Egypt? Mark enjoyed these nights. It felt good to band together, an island of the familiar, marooned in the frenzied seas of the Middle East. On these nights, Mark would often make the one dish he knew, spaghetti with tomato sauce, and carry it off to the designated location.
On one of those enchanting Friday evenings in late spring, when the streets of the city grow tranquil and the scents of jasmine and pine saturate the air, Mark was waylaid by a headache. When two friends came to look for him, he pretended to be sleeping. The next time he opened his eyes, Nadav was in the room, clothed only in his yoga pants, vigorously drying his long hair in a towel.
“Hey Nadav,” he called over to his roommate. “What’s up for tonight?”
“I’m going to some friends for dinner. What about you? Why aren’t you with the rest of the Americans”?
“I had a headache.”
“But you feel better now?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess so.”
“So you can go and find them.”
“Yeah. I may do that. I forget where they’re meeting.”
“Or you could come into town with me.”
“Why? Are they short a guy?”
Nadav flipped his head back up and released his tresses from the towel. “Why do Americans always ask dumb logistical questions? Who cares? Just come. You’ll meet some new people. Yihye Beseder.” That, Mark had learned, was the Hebrew equivalent of Don’t Worry About It.
“Are you sure they won’t mind?” He glanced at Nadav skeptically, but the idea of meting a new group of people actually suited the carefree spontaneity that Mark was trying to cultivate.
“Only if you ask stupid questions.”
This, Mark knew, was Nadav’s way of being familiar and friendly, a verbal punch on the shoulder. And so he got out of bed, and tried to find clothes that echoed Nadav’s grabbed- the-first-thing-I-found look. The friend’s apartment was in Kiriat Shmuel, just outside the center of town. Not five minutes after setting out from Mt. Scopus, a car pulled over. The driver had been in Nadav’s unit in the army, and he insisted on giving them a lift. “So who’s gonna be there?” Mark asked as they turned onto Rav Berlin street.
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