Afternoon in Florentin, night for the books
Blog: Adventures, trials and wanderings of American-Israeli in New York City of Middle East
Florentin, the artsy bohemian neighborhood of Tel Aviv, has a slumish facade that endears its residential clientele. Once you delve into the heart of the neighborhood, you find some hip restaurants, nice original designer clothing stores and a few clubs/music venues scattered around.
Wandering the rambling dirty streets, I finally found the "charm" of Florentin that I had been told about. In a crevice near the center of the area you will find Florentin and Vital St. There are restaurants/bars on each corner of this street intersection and a little clothing boutique called "Old News" down the street.
"Florentin 10," a restaurant on the aforementioned street corner seemed bustling with customers. Always a good sign of a successful eatery. I entered. A 24/7 café/restaurant/bar, I sat outside and did some people watching. I wasn't really sure what to order and the waitress seemed to sense it. As I opened my mouth to ask her for a salad suggestion, she smiled and said I should check out the business menu - common at restaurants in Israel.
The business menu offers a first course (usually soup or salad) and a main course and drink for a reduced price (between $10-$15). Equivalent to a lunch menu in certain restaurants in the US, yet with healthier options and fresh ingredients here (also includes a drink). I ordered a warm and hearty bowl of vegetable soup - that came recommended - and a Greek salad. Both delicious. A refreshing glass of apple juice was a perfect topper to my meal
After roaming the area a little bit and not finding a lot more to do, beyond eat and drink I left Florentin for an event in Jerusalem. I get the sense that Florentin is more of a vibrant night scene than afternoon. For example, the clothing store -"Old News"- didn't open until 5 pm. The event in Jerusalem was a social entrepreneur launch of 16 non-profit organizations. The NGOs introduced their work to a room full of supporters. After spending a few hours there and getting my story I returned to Tel Aviv. This is where the real story begins...
Terrifying journey home
From Jerusalem to Tel Aviv I embarked on my journey home- taking the "sherut" (taxi service). I ask the driver if he can take me to another stop other than the Central Bus Station by Levinsky St. He says, "No, I don't stop anywhere else. Don't worry about it, you can take a bus or taxi from there." I ask him again, politely explaining that Levinsky's not the nicest area to go at night. He ignores this comment and starts driving.
Peeved and nursing a migraine, I sat in my seat and held my head. The "sherut" arrived at Levinsky at around 10:30 pm. As I walked to my bus stop (#5), the street was well lit and a bunch of people were loitering in the nearby park and street. Since there were so many people on the street I felt fairly comfortable. Now, I only dreamed of an Asprin and resting my head on my pillow. If only this is where the story ended.
I get to the bus stop to find two men waiting there. One is an Israeli man and the other is Ethiopian. The Ethiopian man asks me for the time in English, I respond in Hebrew - to his confusion - and then in English. He goes and sits on a bench. Also waiting beside me, sitting on another bench was a Filipino woman. The woman flags down the "sherut" service and gets in. As she enters, a woman wearing short shorts and a zip up shirt drunkenly waddles over to the "sherut" cab and jumps in after her.
The driver recognizes that there is something wrong with this woman as she maniacally laughs and shouts profanities among other things. He somehow manages to eject her from the vehicle. The Ethiopian guy and I are fully entranced watching this woman stroll/stumble down the street towards us. At this point I notice the severe gashes all over her legs, arms and on her face and realize that she is completely drugged up.
Unfortunately for me, I am fascinated by this and keep watching her. She notices. She locks eyes with me and walks over in my direction. I look down and firmly clasp my purse. When I look up again, she's standing in front of me yelling something about Satan and G-d and something about my future with one or the other. It's all very hazy what she was actually saying and can mostly be described as crazy dribble. Nonetheless, she decides to grab my hair and pull at it and then proceeded to grab my wrists and twist them (at least she tried - I resisted).
At this point I get up , which moves her off me for a bit. She continues following me and yelling something while laughing. I tell her I'm with the Israeli and Ethiopian men and to please leave me alone. I promptly go over and sit by the Ethiopian man on the adjacent bench. The woman detects the undercurrent of my American accent in Hebrew and begins harassing me in English. At least her limited grasp of the language, "Oh you're American," and then a countdown from the number six to zero in English.
At this point, I am sitting on the bench next to the Ethiopian man, who couldn't have been more than 25 years old, and the crazy woman sits beside me on the opposite side. She then puts her arm over my shoulder and grabs on to the strap of my purse and the bench. Pinning me down to the bench so that I can't get up and escape. The tears are streaming down my face and I am signaling at the standing Israeli man and asking for help. He walks away. The Ethiopian man beside me tells her to leave me alone. She lets go of my purse strap and moves down the bench a bit and proceeds to unzip her shirt and expose her breasts - to our disgust. She then fondles herself and I edge further away.
At some point before this happened, she took my sunglasses off of my head and started wearing them and prancing around. My glasses may say "Prada" on the side, but I assure you they are the biggest knock offs in the world. In fact on the lenses it used to say "Prada", but my friend and I scratched it out so that it now only says "ra" - to further emphasize their illegitimacy. Basically, I didn't care enough for the shades to fight her over them. I see a taxi peel around the corner leap up and flag him down. Distressed - mind you, my migraine is throbbing - profusely crying, angry and a bit frightened, I explain the whole story to the cab driver before entering the car.
He looks at me in utter shock and says, "Wait, she stole your glasses." I respond, "Don't worry about it they're not worth it, please drive me home." He doesn't stand for this behavior though, and exits the cab, goes up to the woman and tries to retrieve them for me. While he futilely attempts this, I look up at the Israeli man and ask him, "Why didn't you help me?" He responds, "I thought you were associated with the woman." I roll my tear filled eyes at him, scoff and enter the cab.
The driver now safely back in his cab - sans shades - says, "She's crazy, we need to find the police." Right there at the traffic light stands a police car, waiting for the light to turn. My altruistic driver or as I'd prefer to refer to him, my savior, gets out of the car again and the next thing I know the police are talking to me about the incident. The taxi driver volunteers to take me to the station to offer my accuser/witness statement. The police tell the driver that is not necessary and that they will take me to the station in their car.
Next thing I know, I'm in the front of a police car. The cops arrested the woman and asked me to identify her on the street. I affirmed that that was in fact the woman who attacked me. Evidently, she was actually Russian, as a policewoman began conversing with her (and detected her accent). The crazy woman began crying a bit and pleaded with me to not give a statement. I responded, "Well, you should have thought about that before attacking and stealing from me."
I chatted with the very friendly policeman about the situation and my background. He smiled and said jokingly something to the effect, "so are you considering making aliyah (immigrating to Israel) now." This back and forth rapport of joking and laughing continued for a bit, until we were joined by the two policeman who squished in the backseat with an Eritrean young woman (who sat there when I entered the car).
The Eritrean (as I found out later) woman sat there in silence. I was pondering the entire time whether she was the attacker or the victim. Sadly, I would come to find out it was the latter. The drive was fairly quiet - beyond the obnoxious police receiver calling for dispatches. My head was pounding now and to my dismay the police didn't have aspirin readily available. We arrived at the station and the policewoman led us into the hallway, where we sat on chairs awaiting the investigator.
While waiting for the investigator (for 30-40 minutes) in this cold stark white hallway with bright overly luminous lights beaming down on us, the young woman and I struck a non-verbal line of communication. Evidently, she moved with her husband of three years from Eritrea to Israel only 30 days ago. Neither she or her husband speak any Hebrew and little to no English. She explained with a lot of hand gestures and a few blurbs of English that her husband had tried to kill her. He put a knife to her neck and threatened her. A few days later I saw the story on the news. A neighbor had apparently called the police after hearing a lot of screaming.
Making a difference starts at home
This is just an incident but it is symptomatic of a larger issue that has taken precedence in Israel (and not only Israel, but everywhere in the world) - and that is apathy. And honestly, a plain disconnect for your fellow human. One would think that the Jewish people of all people would see random acts of violence and injustices and stand up against them. Unfortunately, rarely have I seen this be the case. A few days later, I watched a video on the news that confirmed these beliefs. When a man randomly attacked one of the peaceful homeless men that sits on Allenby St, right outside Tel Aviv's Carmel Market.
Perhaps I'm asking the wrong question, instead of asking why don't people stand up for each other? Maybe, I should be asking what is wrong with the health care system, after all, we have a drug addict and seemingly a maniac attacking civilians? They need treatment, right? I hope you're sensing my tongue and cheek sarcastic rhetoric here.
Then on Israeli TV Channel 10, I watched "Pay it Forward." One of the most idealistic movies of recent memory. The film starts out with a teacher (Kevin Spacey) posing the question, "What does the world mean to you?" and "What does the world expect of you?" Haley Joel Osmond's character, Trevor, responds "Nothing." After all, Spacey is addressing a room full of 7th grade students - 11 year olds.
Osmond's character takes Spacey's class assignment of taking action in the community to mean that he must make a big difference. Trevor comes up with the idea of "Pay it Forward." One person does something good for three people and they pass it on to three more people - creating a chain reaction. Sustaining the philosophy that by impacting each other and helping each other out, we are changing the world.
In the film, the characters are initially dominated by their fears. Kevin Spacey fears an intimate relationship with Trevor's mother and is content with his manageable routine life - fearing change. Trevor is unable to defend his friend Adam from the bullies who beat him up -fearing they will turn on him. In sum, everyone is to some extent ruled by a fear that prevents them from fully "paying it forward." But, they in turn face these fears. Sadly, Trevor pays the ultimate price when he finally finds the courage to defend Adam.
Sometimes making a difference starts at home. If we changed the mentality of letting things go "unnoticed" or passively ignoring what we see happen on the streets - maybe, just maybe we could change the society in which we live. The taxi driver. The neighbor. Those are the people we must emulate. They are the heroes of this story.
I never got the name of the cab driver so I never had the chance to thank him for all he did for me. If he's reading, I would like to say, "Thank you from the bottom of my heart." A big thank you also goes to the police and my relative who drove me home at 1 am (you know who you are).
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