The interior of the car was sweltering.
"September this year is hotter than usual, and you sit there
cooped up in a closed metal box, motorized, for... say...
about sixteen hours a day. Whew! Hmmm? What's that? What did
you say, Mister?"
The `mister' sprawled diagonally across the back seat of the
cab cleared his throat. Eli shot him a look through the
panoramic front mirror and quickly turned his gaze back to the
road. "Kushi shikkor..." he murmured to himself in
Hebrew.
He was in a silly mood that day. Yes, downright foolish.
Nostalgic! Suddenly longing for home. Home which was the
little neighborhood on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. For the hot
Israeli climate. For the sweaty, short- tempered faces,
scowling one moment, smiling the next. He didn't know why, but
he was feeling sentimental.
What nonsense! Didn't you run away from there? Eli says to the
reflection squinting at him in the mirror.
"Hey, boy! Stop right here!" the passenger's voice splits the
air of the September heat wave. He drops some coins into the
driver's hand and leaves. Eli heaves a sigh of relief. With
such passengers, you can never tell...
*
A line of yellow cabs crawls along the asphalt of a New York
avenue, any random one, like a row of beetles on a branch. He
had no patience for beeping today. But they were all honking
the horns away! He almost felt like rolling down his window
and sticking out a hand and tongue to protest in typical
Israeli fashion.
Someone on the sidewalk flagged him down. "Hey, there! Taxi!"
Another Negro. Eli sighed and stopped for him. He slipped into
the front seat.
"Where to?"
"Just go. I'll tell you where to stop."
Eli drove. The long avenue was shaded by the towering
skyscrapers. From where he was, on the road, he never had a
chance of glimpsing a wedge of sky.
Eli recalled the skies of Tzefat. Why Tzefat? he wondered. He
didn't know, but... The skies of Tzefat with the sharp, clean,
clear air, with the mountain ranges looming on the horizon.
That pure blue. The light.
The light turned red. Eli noticed the passenger next to him
squirming nervously. His leg muscles were jumping. He was
wringing his fingers. Eli stole a glance at his face. Their
eyes locked.
"September this year is hotter than usual, isn't it?" he
suggested.
"Sure."
"And here I sit in this rectangular metal box, sixteen hours a
day... you know what I mean?"
"Sure."
The light changed. The honking began. Oh, those horns!
"Nu, you understand what I'm saying?"
"Sure, baby. But what's `Nu'?"
Eli smiled. Go explain to a black man in New York what `Nu'
means. He didn't even know how to define it to himself. And
suddenly, he was swept up with Jewish pride. He could almost,
just about, smell the wonderful air of Tzefat, or the
fragrance of the Yemenite pitot Savta Tikva made.
"Oh, you see, I'm from Isra..."
"Okay, buddy. We're here," said the black man, fishing around
in his wallet.
*
Eli discovered afterwards that he'd been pickpocketed. His
wallet was gone and his glove compartment had also been
cleaned out of anything of value. His credit cards, Green
card, Israeli Identification Card.
His longings surfaced again. He pursed his lips to contain
them.
"With such guys, you can never know," he thought to himself,
and also thought about what his Savta Tikva would have said,
"It's a good thing he took your wallet, yaa abeni (my
son), and nothing worse." She was right, Savta. How many times
it had ended much, much worse!
Someone waved. Eli stopped.
A young boy in jeans stepped in, jeans from head to foot, from
cap to heel. Like a walking advertisement. Earphones plugged
into his ears, an Indian style thin pony tail of long,
straggly hair. Eli sighed. At least not a black.
"Hello."
He didn't answer. The blasting beat that escaped from the
earphones spoke volumes of the power of the walkman and the
type of music being played.
"This September is much hotter than usual..." said Eli to his
reflection in the mirror. The eyes that looked back at him
were somewhat sad, preoccupied; the brows were puckered, along
with his forehead. "And here you sit, for some sixteen hours
of the twenty-four, 365 days a year, in a traveling coffin,
transporting blacks, foreigners, mummies, and yearning for
home."
Suddenly there was a deafening honking from up front.
"Hey, you, are you normal?" roared the cabbie ahead of him.
"Look where you're going, man!"
The walking dungaree advertisement fished out a can of coke
frrom deep inside a pocket and gargled it down his throat. He
hadn't heard a thing. Eli looked at him hopelessly.
The music escaping from the passenger's hair pounded against
Eli's ears. Beat, beat, beat. Yowieeee. Boom, boom.
It was even worse than the honking.
Suddenly he had this burning urge to be there, to sit on Savta
Tikva's porch in the moshav, to dip hunks of thick fragrant
pita into the marvelous, golden soup cooked with meat bones,
to taste her excellent pungent peppery Yemenite schug.
To hear the Tehillim murmurings of Saba, in a voice that
curled like his grey simonim sidelocks. Just... to sit
there... on the porch shaded with a paragola dripping with
grape leaves and green clusters, like the wrought silver
ornaments cascading around the neck of a Yemenite
kalla.
*
Someone waved. Eli stopped and decided that this would be his
last passenger for the day. He was fed up with strange faces.
He turned his face away and looked out the window while his
passenger settled himself in.
The cab shook slightly, a sign that he was already seated. The
door slammed. Eli began driving. "Where to, Mister?" he asked
mechanically, his eyes drawn to the mirror by habit.
The face that looked back at him surprised Eli. He squinted
again.
"Ma? Aval..." the words escaped from his lips, in
Hebrew.
"Ah, baruch Hu uvaruch Shemo!" the passenger said
enthused, in a perfect Hebrew.
"I was hoping to get a Jewish cabby. There are lots of them,
I've heard. Israeli?"
"Yes! Israeli!" Eli was glad and smiled as if he had met an
old acquaintance.
They were honking again from behind.
"Where from?"
"From Ramat Hachayal, Tel Aviv. Familiar?" The passenger
exuded a breath of fresh Eretz Yisrael air into the stifling
cab. A whiff of home. Eli grinned from ear to ear and his
yearnings dampened his eyes.
"Sure thing! D'you know Tzaidi from Rechov Harel?"
"Tzaidi? Sure! Their son was together with me in school,
in..."
"And Amar?"
"Of course! Amar! How many years has it been since I saw him
last?"
"You're here a long time, yaa abeni?"
Eli felt a lump in his throat. He was ashamed. His eyes
searched the face of his passenger in the back seat, shaken
up. He looked so much like Saba! thought Eli. With his
corkscrew payot, with the pronounced Yemenite nasal
singsong. A faint smell of shiba sweetened the air in
the cab. Eli was suddenly ashamed of his bare head, of the
single earring he wore.
"Yes, I'm here a long time. Six years."
"Poor fellow," said the old man. He became silent, then
started again. "And what does one do here for six years?"
Eli took a deep breath and answered, even more embarrassed.
"...make money."
"Oh," said the old man, and again fell silent.
They honked from behind, they honked up ahead. In the shadow
of the towering buildings, armored with steel and glass, the
yellow cab crawled forward in the thicket of a bottleneck of
traffic. The light turned red and traffic stopped. Eli
swiveled his face and body towards the back seat.
Out of the blue, he blurted, "You remind me of my grandfather.
You have a kind, good face like my grandfather's. You're like
personal regards from him."
The elderly Yemenite of the curly sidelocks forced a smile.
This fellow, whose origin you could not mistake, was cast in
an alien costume. His eyes studied Eli's colorful attire,
rested upon the earring, the bracelet on his wrist, the face
bereft of simonim.
"Where are you headed, Saba?"
The old man held out a note with an address.
"Beit knesset..." murmured Eli, taken aback. "Oh, no!
What's today's date?" The passenger's face said it all in one
look -- his shock, his pain.
"My son! Yaa abeni! Tomorrow is Rosh Hashana! Is that
how far you've gone? Rosh Hashana?!"
"Here," said the old man, taking something out from his
satchel. "Look at this!"
Eli saw the spiraled segment of a yellowish shofar in
his front mirror and turned his head to see it fully. It cost
him a few honks, mostly from behind. With two hands firmly on
the wheel, he gulped some air. For a fraction of a second, he
lost the sense of direction which he had developed through
extensive effort during his six years of exile.
He was stuck in a traffic jam.
They were silent. The old man wrapped up his Yemenite
shofar lovingly in a wide towel and thrust it back into
his bag.
"You know, Saba.." Eli began, "you are my last passenger. I'm
finished for the day. Would you mind if I joined you? I'd like
to... go with you to the beit knesset, to hear the
shofar, the prayers..."
He glanced at the passenger in the back seat.
To his dismay, the old man shook a finger. He shook his head.
"No."
"Why not?" Eli dared. "I also know the Yemenite nusach.
I'm also..."
"A pity, yaa abeni. What for? Just because I remind you
of your grandfather? Because you are suddenly homesick?
Because you're sick of gentile faces? No..." He continued to
shake his head, his payot dancing around in small
silvery circles.
"A pity, yaa abeni. By you, the beit knesset has
become like a museum. You feel like making the rounds in a
museum, you and your earring. To feel good a bit, to reminisce
old times, to point a knowing finger, the one with the ring,
at the shofar...
"`Ah, here's a shofar, eh?' And then to open the
aron kodesh and to remove the bedecked `kalla,'
waiting, with her jeweled finery, for the chupa. To
shake the tinkling bells of her crown and say, `Ah, here's a
sefer Torah! How beautiful!' And then, probably to
plant a kiss. Yes, for sure.
"And after that, by the doorway, you'll remove your cardboard
kipa and go back to your cab. You'll turn on the radio
to hear the latest baseball or football scores..." The old man
stopped shaking his head and raised a pair of clear eyes to
the mirror, where they met the eyes of the driver, tearing.
"That's not true, Saba..." he heard himself say. "I've been
buried in this yellow coffin for six years, sixteen hours a
day, driving blacks, Indians, Puerto Ricans, Asians,
Americans. And I'm alone. All day amongst people and
alone."
"But the money... what about that?" the old man reminded
him.
"Ah, money, money..." Eli groaned, like from the grave. "I
have no money. I don't have a thing. The dead have no need for
it."
"So why didn't you go home, yaa abeni?"
"I was ashamed."
The old man nodded.
The honking subsided. In a New York traffic jam, there was no
sense in beeping. What you needed was lots of patience.
"Alright. May Hashem have mercy, yaa abeni..." the old
man sighed, and took out a book of Tehillim. Meanwhile. Until
the bottleneck eased and traffic began moving again.
Meanwhile, until they reached their destination. The old man
reflected upon the known impact of the days of selichos
v'rachamim, and of the attributes of Hashem, and he
couldn't help smiling to himself. Then he opened up the text
and began reading in the traditional singsong Yemenite
pronunciation, verse after verse. By the third one, the cab
driver had joined him in a clear, perfectly accentuated
niggun, verse after verse, after verse.
Familiar on his lips from childhood. Still from the days he
had sat on Savta Tikva's porch, under the dangling clusters of
green grapes.
