The Book of Trees (5 page)

Now, before yeshiva started for the day
,
I’d filled pitas with hummus, cucumber and tomato. As I walked up Ben Yehuda Street, I gave a sandwich to an old Russian man putting on a show with two shabby marionettes, and one to a young guy who played the flute badly. Midway up the street I gave a sandwich to a very old woman sitting on a carpet holding an empty margarine tub. When I put a sandwich in front of a kid doing magic tricks, he called after me, “Lady, I need money, not food.” I tucked my head between my shoulders and beetled up Ben Yehuda.

At first I was a little freaked out by the homeless people. How could there be beggars in Israel? Didn’t the state take care of its people? No, I decided, it was like home. People fell through the cracks, even if everyone was Jewish. Not only were the doctors, teachers and bus drivers Jewish, but so were the prostitutes and beggars.

On the way up to the bus stop I stopped to listen to a guy playing the guitar. He stood near King George Street, within earshot of the crowds gathered to wait for the number 4 bus to Mount Scopus, or the 9 to Givat Ram. He had a thin, muscular build, short tousled brown hair and a sharp jaw line. A large pair of aviator sunglasses obscured his eyes. I guessed he was American, in his twenties. I stood for a moment, listening to him play “California Dreamin’.” He had an okay voice, nothing spectacular.

I was about to leave when he started strumming Patsy Cline’s “Crazy.” I stood with my hands on my hips. My mom has a thing for old-time country singers like Patsy, and I’d grown up listening to a lot of that kind of music. Pedestrians shuffled by, some stopping to listen. I peeked through the crowd to get a better look. Despite the heat, the guitarist wore jeans slung low around narrow hips; his leather belt had a cowboy buckle. On his feet was a beat-up pair of Converse sneakers. His open guitar case held loose change
.

As his voice soared on the chorus, he let his sunglasses slide down his nose. He winked at a young girl and she dissolved in giggles. I couldn’t help smiling. Would he sing “Stand by Your Man” next? I found myself singing along as I checked out his lithe forearms. I’d always had a thing for sexy arms. Before I left, I weaved through the other listeners and dropped the last sandwich into his guitar case with the shekels he’d collected. He nodded at me, and I smiled back.

Before getting on my bus, I wandered down a side street to browse in a bookstore. When I came out, the guitar player was sitting on a bench, tuning his strings.

“Hey,” he said.

I kept walking.

“Hey, you, sandwich girl.” I whirled around. The guitar player held out the sandwich. “You didn’t have to.”

“Oh.” I took the pita from his outstretched hand.

“I mean, thanks and all. I’m sure it’s very good. I just don’t need it.” He squinted over the top of his sunglasses, one eyebrow rising toward his hairline. His eyes were an unusually clear turquoise, like the water in a swimming pool.

“You’re welcome.” I grasped the sandwich behind me, my cheeks burning. He wasn’t just looking at me; he was making the kind of eye contact guys make when they want you to feel you are the only girl in the world.

“I thought maybe you were hungry.” I rubbed one calf against the other. He looked amused, his head tilted to the side, as if waiting for me to say something else. I swallowed. “I should get going.”

“Wait, I have a song for you.” He had a mischievous smile.

“I…”

“It’ll just be a second.”

“I have to go.” I hurried to the bus stop and boarded my bus. I hung on to a seat and tried to calm my racing pulse.

The old Mia would have been thrilled if a guy wanted to sing her a song. I’d have flirted, grabbed the guitar and composed a little three-chord ditty about a busker who sang old country songs. And the new Mia? I wasn’t supposed to hang out with guys—that was part of being religious. When you were ready to get married, a go-between set you up with someone compatible and you went on a series of dates to determine if he was your
b’shert
—“the one.” You didn’t even shake hands or touch until after you got married.

The bus sharply rounded a corner, and I grabbed the seat to avoid falling. Why did the guitar guy have a song for me? I was wearing a long skirt and a dorky sunhat. My life was about good works and spirituality, not appearances. Shit. I was still finding cute guys, or they were finding me. I should lock myself up in the B’nos Sarah dormitory.

I decided not to give out any more sandwiches; it was embarrassing. The rest of Sheila’s money could go to B’nos Sarah or the craft center. Or I’d drop it into the old woman’s margarine tub.

Back at the dorm I put on my exercise pants and a baggy T-shirt, slid my Madonna
CD
into my Discman and fast-forwarded to “Holiday.” I’d been a Madonna fan ever since I heard the
Like a Virgin
album when I was ten.

Running in Israel was an obstacle course of steep hills and amazing views. On my route up to Mount Scopus I first waged the grueling uphill battle to Hebrew University. I could feel my glutes and hamstrings bunch and tighten. Blood pounded in my head as my labored breath filled me. I wasn’t Mia Quinn; I was a body winning a race, pushing itself up a hill. I was a conqueror of sand and Jerusalem stone, my pulse surging to new highs. My heart pumped, muscles flexed, bones strode on a swell of endorphins. The tightness from sitting on a hard wooden chair and squinting at Hebrew texts dissolved as I pumped my arms up the hill. Sweat trickled down my forehead, pooled in my bra, dampened my hair.

At the top of the hill the magnificent vista of Jerusalem came into view as I cruised the relatively flat road around the Mormon College campus. Then I endured the knee-jarring downhill plunge past the falafel stand that doubled as a dentist’s office. I ignored the old men who leered each time I passed. The road bottomed out by the Hyatt Hotel and then rose again up to French Hill, the steepest part of the whole run. A shortcut through the Hadassah Hospital parking lot and up a vacant hill made the final surge a little shorter, yet also steeper. I could only make it if I sprinted and timed it to correspond with Madonna’s “Rescue Me.”

I used the edge of my T-shirt to wipe the sweat out of my eyes as I turned in to the parking lot. Only a few more moments of torture. “Rescue Me” came on, the pulse of the drums, the clear vocals helping me pick up my pace.

I started working toward my sprint, my feet pounding the cracked pavement. The sun glared off the car windows. Heat seemed to be emanating from me, yet my arms kept pummeling the air. A car full of young guys honked at me and gave a cheer. I pretended not to see them.

Finally I passed through the metal gate to the field. Less than a minute now. My heart surged, firing my legs up the dry dusty path. The crest was only strides away.
Rescue me
. I went over the top and started leaping like a ballet dancer with my arms wide in a grand jeté.

Then I saw a boy on a donkey coming up the hill toward me. My euphoric high became a surge of panic. I jumped out of the way, into the field of dry grass. Staggering, I braked hard and stared at the boy as he passed. “Shalom,” I whispered. He stared back at me as he trotted by.

I struggled to catch my breath. What was an Arab kid on a donkey doing in the middle of French Hill? Then I saw the goats following him. I imagined him thinking, Why is some crazy girl running through the field?

I shook my head and continued running uphill through the curving streets of tidy French Hill apartments. At the lookout, I sucked ferociously on my water bottle, wiped the sweat dripping down my face and cursed my modest exercise pants. I took off my Discman and lifted one leg onto the park bench to stretch out my taut, pinging hamstrings. Sometimes I fantasized about the slinky purple one-piece exercise suit I used to wear when I jogged at home. No one had glanced twice at me. Well, almost no one, except for some pervy old men and drooling adolescent boys. Here there’d be traffic accidents.

When I got back to the dorm, Aviva was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a cheap Yamaha guitar.

“Hey, where did you get that?” I asked.

“Oh, one of the girls from my class lent it to me. You were running again?”

“Yeah.” I took a swig of water.

“Isn’t it crazy hot?”

“I’m starting to get used to it.” I sat down on the floor to stretch.

“You know, there’s a women’s gym some of the girls belong to.”

“I’m not much of a gym person. Besides, this way I get to see more of the city. Hey, I didn’t know you played guitar.”

Aviva looked like she might say something else about my running. Then she looked down at the guitar. “I’m trying to teach myself so I can play for
havdalah
.”

“What’s
havdalah
?”

“You know, the prayers you sing at the end of Shabbos.”

“Oh, right.” I wiped my hands on my baggy T-shirt and reached for the guitar. “Let me tune it for you.”

Aviva handed it over. “I didn’t know you could play.” She gawked as I adjusted the strings. “You can do that without one of those tuners?”

I nodded and started strumming “Stairway to Heaven.” “How does that
hava
-whatever song go?”

Aviva hummed and I started playing along.

Aviva’s mouth dropped open. “You can just play what I sing?”

“Sure. You put fingers like this and then—”

“Hey, could you play for choir?”

“Um, sure. That would be fun.” I hadn’t thought about playing Jewish music. Guitars and playing for other people were part of my old life.

“How about this? Can you play this?” She sang another tune, and I played along. Aviva gaped at me. “How do you do that?”

“I just hear it. My dad taught me. He’s a—I mean, he’s good at music.”

“Wow, wait till the other girls hear.” Aviva looked ready to run down the hall and call them into our room right then.

I handed back the guitar and then wished I hadn’t. “How long do you have the guitar for?”

“Oh, just a few hours.” She concentrated on playing a G chord.

I leaned over and adjusted her fingers.

“Like that?” She played the chord.

“Yeah, that’s right.” I sat back on my bed. “Hey, have you ever been to the Dome of the Rock?”

Aviva looked up from the guitar. “No.”

“Do you wanna come with me? We could go Friday.”

Aviva looked mortified. “Don’t you know? Jews shouldn’t go there.”

“Let me guess.” I flopped back on my bed. “It’s not safe.”

Aviva put down the guitar. “Mia, you could be walking right over the
Ir Hakodesh,
the holiest part of the temple, and not know it.” Her eyes stretched wide to show how serious she was.

“Huh, I never thought of that.” I guessed the
ir
ha-
whatever was the inner sanctum. I sat up and started stretching my calves. “So, to rebuild the temple, it would have to be where the Dome is?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Wooo-eeee. You’d have to destroy the dome, huh?”

“Yes. That’s one reason why Palestinians want control of Jerusalem.”

“You can’t blame them.”

“My father says they should have settled for what the UN offered in ,48.”

“What was that?”

“The UN wanted to make Israel into two states, one Jewish and one Palestinian. The Jews agreed, although reluctantly. The Palestinians refused and started the war.”

“I guess they were determined to keep their homeland.”

A flash of contempt glinted in Aviva’s eyes. “Too bad they couldn’t compromise just a little. They could have had half of Jerusalem. Lucky for us though.”

I looked at Aviva for a moment and thought about the boy and his goats. “Yep, lucky for us.” I got up to shower.

FOUR

I
decided to skip
halacha
class the next afternoon. I didn’t feel like going to the Old City or the craft center, so I wandered down Ben Yehuda again. I bought a stack of postcards and sat on a shady patio sipping coffee and trying to write to Sheila.
Dear Mom
,
Israel is really
hot. Dear Mom, School is everything I thought it would be.
I decided on
Dear Mom, Israel is a very interesting and
spiritual place.

I became religious because I’d decided I needed more spirituality in my life. The day last winter when I lay in the snow during the ice storm and looked up at the trees, I’d had a sense of how awesome the world was. I felt myself soar up with those trees, and I knew I wanted more moments like that. I just didn’t know how to get them. I had trekked back to the park a few days after the storm, but the ice had melted and cracked the branches into odd, truncated shapes. The winter felt old and shabby. It made me dizzy to stare up at the sky.

My life back then felt very gray. With Don, Flip and the band gone, depression settled on me like a weight on my chest. Everything I did felt pointless. My school friends were excited about going to university or traveling after grad, but I had no idea what I wanted to do or be. I’d always thought I’d be a musician, but now I wasn’t sure. I didn’t want to be like Don, always away on tour, always wandering.

One day I was in my favorite café when a small poster with a picture of a menorah on it caught my eye.

Spiritually Exhausted?
Come renew your Jewish soul through song.
Celebrate Shabbat in our community.

It was sponsored by a group called Jewish Outreach. I read the poster again. I liked to sing, and I felt spiritually exhausted, empty even. I knew a little bit about Judaism from my Bubbie Bess. We used to have Friday-night dinners at her house when I was younger. Bess always lit Shabbat candles and said a prayer over the wine. I stood in the café staring up at the bulletin board and thought about those dinners at Bess’s house, how peaceful they had felt. I wrote down the Jewish Outreach number and stuck it in my pocket.

I spent the week hemming and hawing about calling. Finally I dared myself to call. I figured I didn’t have to go if it sounded too weird. When I called, I spoke to a Mr. Zev Teitelbaum.

“Hi, I saw your poster about Shabbat, and I was thinking I might like to try it.”