WATER OUT OF A STONE BY DANA KEREN

I told you before, Ms. Kinengeser, that one of the "spatial privileges" phoned me yesterday and confirmed that I am entitled to health insurance doled out by the governmental Health Insurance Company for the Sick and the Desperate. They followed it up by sending me an e-mail detailing each step that I should undertake. And so, after choosing the paint for my apartment, I went home and phoned the misken (unfortunate) insurance company Maccabi in order to remove from their coffers all the enormous sums of money that I have paid them. To my chagrin they had already removed it from my account instead of waiting till the Dec. 1st date, as they were expected to do. Mrs. Olga was on vacation, but Mrs. Malka instructed me to bring a copy of the email from the lady of the "spatials" and a letter from me in which I should declare that I know that I will not be covered until I will be covered (no kidding!!!) My printer is still on its Atlantic Ocean cruise so Rysis had to be summoned. He printed my letter from the "spatials" and that suggested that I write my letter in English, expecting the Maccabi Company to be more favorably impressed.
 

The entrance 'gates' to the building of the Ministry for Internal Affairs, Haifa

After many adventures, I arrived for my meeting with Malka exactly at 9:00 feeling distraught over the letters. Malka takes one look at my beautiful letter in perfect English which cites with impeccable logic, on two pages in large font, all the events that contributed to the present tragic situation - trying at the same time not to offend anyone. At the very end I declared officially that I recognized that I will not be insured until I will be insured. After taking one look at my masterpiece, Malka says: what is this jabber? Write something in Hebrew and sign it. I say: “please dictate, seeing that neither my computer nor I can write in Hebrew”. I am in kita alef (grade one). She starts dictating and decides that I am definitely not in grade one! In point of fact, I only asked her about every seventh letter and not every 2nd. The letter mercifully consisted of three sentences. Signature,

Thus end of discussion. I will be in touch with you during the day, says Malka.





I am on my way to tick off the first thing on my list: going to the Ministry for Internal Affairs in order to update my Identity Document. By now I learned already to ask whether the bus will go where I want to get to, otherwise - disaster will strike me for sure. I get on the bus, the driver smiles and says: boker tov! (good morning!). I ask him whether he is going to the Ministry for Internal Affairs. He says: I sure hope so! I was just about to say that hope deludes the fools but instead I told him that hope is a wonderful thing. To the young man next to me I said how nice it was to have drivers with a sense of humor. And, of course, just as we were leaving the next stop, some old lady, just a bit late for the bus but intent on getting in, started waving her cane around and said cane actually hit the bus! The driver stopped the bus, let her on, smiled and said: it's a good thing you didn't hit me with that cane. My chum sitting next to me and we looked at each other and burst out laughing.

I don't know if you all noticed this but in each bus, on the plastic partition behind the bus driver there is a sign saying: "Ve-ahavta et-nahagkha ka-mokha" which means "love thy driver as would love yourself". Well, I am only asking you guys! 


The 'rocket' building of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Haifa

So my chum and I started talking and saying how terrific those bus drivers were and I told him that I collect such stories. So of course he got curious and started asking me questions. And he asked me where my accent is from. I told him. Then I asked him where his accent was from - Arabic. We discussed the differences in Arabic accents in Haifa and in Jerusalem, the matter of his cousin in Norway who doesn't like living there at all. He asked me why I was collecting those stories. I answered. It came out that I am writing two separate collections of memoirs. During the conversation the story about my Haifa grandmother came out, about my Haifa cousin who was killed in the War of Independence and what motivated me to start writing the story (the remark. I once overheard my Poor Boy make to his friend) and so the story about my being in Jerusalem during the Six-Day War also came out. My chum's name is Eham, he is 20 years old, born in Haifa. He said he had never in his life met such an interesting person as me. He must be leading some kind of a boring life, right?

I went to the Ministry for Internal Affairs, where the security people check my bags and packages and I tell them that I am here in order to update... Go to the first floor! - says the security guy. I stood there dumbfounded. How do you know? Well, you said you were going to update - so it's your identity card. Counter number 11 or 12. Behind counter no. 12 there was an old guy filling out his sudoku. So I went to counter no. 11 where within 15 seconds I acquired an updated identity document, complete with a postal code. That's when I found out that every citizen is supposed to go to the Ministry for Internal Affairs and update their identity documents every time they move. Go figure! And right after that Malka from the Insurance Company for the Sick, the Unhappy and the Desperate phoned and confirmed that Tel-Aviv promised that my hard spent monies would be returned to my account on Dec. 5th.
 


Tomorrow I will phone Rachel from the Absorption of Returning Citizens in order to give her a chance to meet me in person this time, as per instructions from Tel-Aviv. Did the capital of Israel move to Tel-Aviv while I was away?

Dana Keren

 



Born in Post-war Poland, made aliyah in 1964, studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, moved to Canada in 1974. Retired from the University of Toronto Library and returned to Israel in 2010. Lives in Haifa.