Gan Ha’Atsmaut

For the daily run, instead of going down Nordau towards the Tayelet, then south to Mike’s Place, he decided to cross Gan Ha’Atsmaut and run down the sea shore, to watch the sunset. While he ran down the steps that go down to the sand, he saw an older man, maybe waiting for a sexual opportunity. He thought how pathetic it is, and in the moment he passed him, he saw it was his father. He kept running and running while inside the world was collapsing… Or maybe he just imagined it?

Kikar Malchey Israel (now Rabin)

It was a torrid Saturday evening of June 1982, and I went to the book fair in the square, by the Town Hall. I saw T. there picking books about New Age subjects. She was always very attractive, but the tan and her new haircut made her look even better. In the months I didn´t see her, since March that year, when we both covered the withdrawal from Sinai, she broke with her lover, a top ranking officer in the Army, and became vegetarian. As we talked, it was clear that we will end that night in her apartment, two blocks from there. Then, in one stand we spotted a former MK and retired colonel, signing his book about slavery in colonial Haiti (!). He told us that the planned invasion to Lebanon was imminent. T´s passion for journalism was stronger than my best attempts to be romantic that night. I walked her to her flat, were she contacted her bureau in Europe and spent the next four hours on the phone arranging the coverage of the war about to start. I left around 3 a.m., quite disappointed. After that I met T. only once, a couple of weeks later. In September she left Israel to spend some days with her mother in England, and there she was killed in a stupid accident.

Rabin Square

We were going to have peace. We were going to show everybody that we are reasonable people, that we don’t have too much hatred in our hearts, that we are capable at sitting down to the negotiating table with our enemies (who else would you negotiate with?) and strike a peace accord. We got the noble peace prize! Then we shot our prime-minister, killed him, named the square where it happened after him, and now we are slowly forgetting him.

Mandarin Beach, Tel Aviv

Summer of 2002.
laying on the beach in a g-string bathing suit with my girlfriends, suddenly my dad passes jogging, and tells me to get dressed.