Tel Aviv Diary: Karen Alkalay-Gut

It was appropriate that Lucille Clifton died on Valentine’s Day, a woman full of complex and intelligent love. But the world is a little less at her death and I will miss anticipating new poems from her that will teach me how to cope with each new stage of life. I know that this has nothing to do with Tel Aviv, but everything to do with me.

As someone who was first overwhelmed by the pieces of film, “Hitler Builds a City for the Jews,” which was made by Thereisenstat inmate, the director Kurt Gerron, I read about Yael Herpolski’s “A Film Unfinished” with a kind of glee. For while Gerron was blamed for “collaborating” with his jailers to make an image of a terrible concentration camp into a paradise, I sympathized with the desire of a film-maker to make a heaven from hell in celluloid that would perhaps create it in reality. Once it was filmed, I thought, there would be no way in which the contrast between the film and the camp would be maintained. But the discrepancy was solved in an antithetical way – Gerron and all the many participants in faking reality were erased, making the film the only evidence.
Although i haven’t seen “A Film Unfinished” as yet, the concept here is antithetical. It is an attempt to return the staged documentary on the Warsaw ghetto to its reality by interviewing participants, cameramen, etc. returning that famous documentary film, excerpted all the time to prove the condition of the ghetto, to fiction.
It is not that I do not approve of documentaries – but that they are only as good as the research done elsewhere by the filmmakers, and the knowledge and judgement of the audience.

I wanted to link to Ha’aretz’s piece by Sayyed Kashua because when I read the print edition, it seemed as important as anything else in the paper. He wrote an apparently domestic piece about his taking off from work to write at home, and finding a block in the sink, but as it turns out, he’s frustrated about all the racial blocks to the production of his tv show. Why isn’t it online? Is that another block? Everything else in the magazine is there. Here’s a relatively recent piece on Kashua in the Times

Oren brought us Knafeh from Nazareth the other day, but I was in no condition to taste them, being restricted to toast and tea. As soon as my stomach could take it, tonight, I gobbled one down. Oh my goodness, I gobbled down three. This knafeh is the most amazing food I’ve ever eaten. Worth every sharp pain I am having now. You may say that the best knafeh is really from Nablus, knafeh nabulsia. But I don’t even remember the taste of knafe from Nablus – it was so long ago.

Dear Chiara,

Yesterday I received a notice from the central post office to come and pay customs for the package of books you sent me. Since you are the publisher, Kolibris, and I am the author of Danza del Ventra a Tel Aviv, I was irritated that the books weren’t just delivered, but expected only that an hour would be wasted.

I had forgotten the last time I was there years ago when I ordered 5 packages of vitamins from abroad. That was the first time I had been suspected to be an importer.

So this morning I trot across town to the central post office, an imposing structure filled with Russian men of all ages waiting in various lines. Now that I think of it, it must have been workers sent to get the companys’ delivery. But at the moment I was sure only Russians are in the import-export business.

In any case, I began in one fifteen minute line in order to have my summons examined. There I was told that the package would have to be opened to determine my payment and that I should go to another hall to request this. That led to a five minute line where I was told by a nice young man that my package would be opened and I would be called when my turn had come. About twenty minutes later a woman called out a version of my name, and I rushed to the window and laughingly corrected her. “It’s written wrong!” she defended herself, and I whispered, “It’s okay, I’m not insulted.” In any case, the package had been opened, and the five plastic-wrapped packages of five little books, the two free books had been leafed through, and everything had been piled up next to the package so that the shredded paper used for lining could be burrowed through. The woman, who was now my friend, chased away the people who had crowded around me, and sent me on my way, back to the first clerk, for an evaluation.

But the first clerk couldn’t figure out how much to charge me. Even though she really wanted to help, she had no precedent. So she sent me to the manager. I went down the long hall to the manager’s office, and saw two men standing outside. “Are you in line?” I asked, and when I received some incomprehensible answer and a guffaw from one of them, I stepped into the secretary’s office ahead of them. That was when one of them walked past me into the head office and invited me in. I explained, for the fifth time, what my package contained, and he shook his head. “I don’t care for belly dancing,” he said. “But this is POETRY about belly dancing, and especially about Tel Aviv!” “That president of Italy is a strange one,” he answered, “But he’s a friend of ours.” And so on and on went our discussion of my fine, until, at last, he wrote down, “VAT” on my form, and charged me 50-odd shekel. Apparently he could have charged 500 if he’d wanted.

That wasn’t the end. There was the line to pay the VAT and then the line to pick up the package. Finally I was allowed to take my resealed package and go home. So in the car I went through the beautiful little book carefully, both the Italian and the English, and enjoyed it thoroughly. Was it worth an entire morning and fifty shekel? Yes.

The late comic writer, Ephraim Kishon, once invented a board game that became very popular in the sixties called “A Package Has Arrived” in which you have to go through endless bureaucracy to get your parcel from the post office. It’s outdated now.