Photo:Alma Machness Kass

My concrete environment tells me a lot about life in Israel

Two years ago I moved into an apartment building. After more than forty years of living in houses in Israel, I was returning to my dim and distant New York roots. It’s a new building so there’s a spacious underground garage. I was so excited by my ownership of a parking space that I parked my car in the allotted space even before my bed and sofa were in my apartment. Several hours later, I couldn’t resist taking the elevator to the minus level. Yes, there it was – my car –  with no parking ticket or any other sign of intervention. I was definitely going to enjoy an orderly and happy urban life.

As the weeks went by, I learned to recognize the cars in my immediate concrete zone and tried to understand their owners’ parking idiosyncrasies – bumpers jutting out, 45 degree angled parking, lights left on – which tested either my neighborliness or my navigational skills. I had been given a remote control to open the two gates of the parking garage and felt like a kid with a new toy. It was a totally automatic moment, unfettered by having to leave my car to unlock the gates. My mind was free to focus on where I was going and what I had to do when I got there.  As I waited to pull out, I was usually alone with no cars behind me. The only other living things waiting with me for the gates to slowly separate were the swifts. These birds, like their name, were a blur of movement; moving, vaulting, pirouetting, at incredible speed across the ceiling space of the garage. I thought of the sea gulls that welcome ships.

Almost imperceptibly I began to notice the number of car spaces, catalogue the other drivers, and personalize the look of the huge dimly lit space. I realized that this concrete environment, if I gave it more than a five second passing glance, was telling me a lot about life in Israel. I could, for instance, put together statistics on car brands, car colors and car sizes. And what about washed cars as opposed to unwashed cars? Going to the gym at 6:30 in the morning, I could hear the echo of my feet as I walked to my car. The other cars were dark impassive elements, still in a state of slumber. Coming back at 8:30, there were large gaping holes where cars had pulled out taking the apartment occupants of the second floor or the fifth floor or the first floor to work.         And the remaining cars?  Quite a few were being filled with small children, and the bits of conversation I could hear were mothers or fathers belting the kids into car seats and reassuring them everything today would be full of fun, games and their favorite food. Blissfully, there is no recorded music of the kind one is bombarded with in an elevator, a waiting room, or a supermarket. I am courteously left alone to hear my thoughts, the lock click of the door and the start of the engine. It is the most orderly environment I encounter in my daily life, almost Teutonic in its exact placement of man and his motor possession.

When I come down again at 10 or 11 am to drive to work in Tel Aviv, the space is vast and almost totally unparked. I can zigzag, crisscross, or roller blade; walk to my car in any undisciplined way that suits my mood. As I wait for the gates to inch backwards, allowing me to drive out and up the paved slope, again I wait alone. The swifts have also left. I suppose they flew out while I was upstairs in my apartment having coffee.