The Departure
The five of us were sitting around a coffee table as billows of smoke from our cigarettes held suspended above us. Stray tobacco drifted around rolling paper, ash lay hanging off clay trays, and cigarette butts were scattered across the ground. Smoking in Israel was nothing new, however I began just three months ago, when I arrived for my semester abroad at NYU Tel Aviv. The lights in the apartment were dimmed and it was dark outside. Clouds of smoke oozed from our cigarettes in dense pockets. The lighter was occasionally sparked to fire up another smoke and in that atmosphere it looked like a mid-air explosion over a small night sky. Silence held heavy in my group, as if we were waiting for a sign from outside. Someone spoke up, recalling a story from Clinton’s presidency.
“It was just over a decade ago when the leaders of these people met in the United States, hoping to hash out peace. Clinton was president back then. Everyone was up at Camp David. Those leaders were in the middle of an historic moment — out of it they could create peace for their people. Clinton remarked there was sometimes an almost casual, friendly connection between the leaders. He said this was most clearly exemplified in the humor that played out during negotiations. As Bill remembers it, once they were relaxing between deliberations when the Palestinians told a story to everyone.
They poked fun at their leader, Yassir Arafat, saying he once came into the presence of Allah. He was humbled by his holiness, and Allah promised to grant him one wish. Arafat, so grateful, pulled out a map from before the ’67 war. He then told Allah, if he could have one wish it would be that his home was returned to his people according to these borders. Allah frowned at Arafat and he remarked, ‘Some things are too great, even for me.’ Arafat was discouraged, but was quickly won over again by Allah’s forever holiness. So Arafat asked as a consolation to be recreated as ‘Tom Cruise.’ Allah again frowned, then with a slight twitch of the lips he replied, ‘Let me take a look of that map again.’”
Our subdued apartment, which to that point was as still as glass, slowly began to fill with bright laughs — like water in a pot, life came bubbling up. Within seconds our laughs had cut through our fear, leaving us coughing and grabbing our chests. These historic negotiations eventually resulted in failure and were a precursor to the second intifada, yet we found solace in the example of humor and equanimity from leaders past. In an instant, our laughs were broken by the sound of sirens. We quickly got out of our seats, extinguishing the cigarettes. We moved out of the apartment into a staircase. We were met by the other residents of the building. The staircase, which spiraled up through the heart of the building, was shelter for residents from the incoming rockets.
Protocol suggested that if a siren went off, one should be encapsulated in a space where there were no windows, so that glass couldn’t accidentally break and injure someone. The stairwell of this building fit that criteria. Following the end of the sirens, it was recommended that everyone stay put for at least ten minutes. We stayed for five minutes before moving back inside the apartment.
We continued to smoke once we settled down again. Tonight would be our last time together in this country. We were being sent off to London the next day, at which point we would each decide where to finish the semester. We were college students and New York University, after considering liability and the potential of something happening to us in a foreign war zone, elected to evacuate us.
We left with a sadness that mingled opportunities lost and new friends left behind. For me, and perhaps for others as well, the sadness went deeper than this loss of course. I felt a complex amalgamation of guilt from a privileged status unearned, frustration over my government’s complicity in the crisis, and empathy for the people suffering. I thought of Clinton’s farewell address, where he spoke of making more perfect the union between culture, ethnicity, and freedom, and I reckoned this society and these institutions were failing. In these waning moments with my peers, my thoughts confronted these issues in silence. I sought a resolution that could solve both my personal faults and the larger crises. With each new breath, I felt greater defeat.
