David and the Queue

A tale of immigration, transformation, and exasperation (with lines).

Lianne Rose
Sep 5, 2018 · 8 min read

So you’ve got yourself an underdog story — say, David and Goliath, to name a popular one. People can’t get enough of that stuff, right? There’s nothing more satisfying than the defeat of the seemingly-unbeatable. All you need is a good arm and a rock and you’ve leveled the odds.

Granted, we like to ignore the part where David turns into a bit of a bully and carries a decapitated head all the way to Jerusalem under Middle Eastern sun and heat (like, who does that?). We focus on the victory. What a rush, straight to the veins. And some would say it’s in our veins, in that Jewish blood, to be a successful underdog. To follow in David’s footsteps, amen.

Certainly, aspects to Israel feel like its motto should be “The Country That Could”. Having said all that, you know what it can’t do? Wait.

Drive on Israeli roads during a morning jam and treat yourself, roll down your window. Allow the bellowing honks to flow inside your car and ears, raising your blood pressure, waking you up better than espresso. Sit in a hotel lobby and listen to the vociferous guests’ complaints as they angle their heads every which way, upset, nay, outraged by the understaffed desk. You will find the same personalities, if not the same people, at the bank. At the hospital. At a movie theater.

I don’t think I’ve held onto much of my Israeli identity but I can’t seem to shed my inherited impatience, no matter how long I’ve lived in the states.

I often catch my significant other glancing at me as we wait to check out of a grocery store. Well, he waits. I seethe. He’ll shake his head good-naturedly, reassuring me that the ordeal will be over soon, but he doesn’t get it, this man born in the west coast of the United States, raised in upstate New York with midwest niceties. He doesn’t understand the stronghold of the Irate Israelite in me — or he does and simply hopes for a change.

Hope is righteous. Hope is a beautiful thing. It’s also completely futile when it comes to this.

If I could mind meld with my lovely, patient life partner, I’d show him my visions of my background, my early life. It would be a brochure of my childhood. On page one, the frequent family dinners in Lebanese restaurants, featuring warm and pillowy pita bread the likes of which cannot be found even in the most Hasidic parts of Brooklyn, and an overwhelming spread of small plates. Hummus, tabouleh, tahini, salted pickles and other chamutzim, babaganoush, falafel, you name it. On page two, the rare visits to the beach and being slathered in sunscreen, listening to the lifeguard yell at unruly swimmers and watching old, red, potbellied men walk by with their noses covered in white. Page three would be elementary school, refusing to put a cherem, or boycott, on one of the girls in class because it seemed stupid. Or maybe trying to befriend Anna, the new Russian immigrant, while the boys hit each other prior to the entrance of our homeroom teacher. Or maybe playing Chinese jump rope, or putting together a dance group, or my elementary school boyfriend telling me to lie on top of him (fully clothed, for the record) while our lips pressed together because, as he explained, that was French kissing.

That last one I’d throw in so the boyfriend could get a little jealous, though most likely he’d laugh at the idiocy.

Later pages in my childhood brochure would show me learning how to roller-skate, and riding a bike on the carless streets of Yom Kippur surrounded by classmates. I’d be getting tutored in English long before my parents knew how useful that would be, and proudly reading “The Hound of the Baskervilles” in class while everyone read about forming the past tense in their textbooks.

Nostalgic, sweet moments you can scoop up like ice cream. Moments that flow into each other and none that wait. None that stand on a line, fuming.

But as much as I’d like to skip over those seconds, minutes, and hours wasted on being caught between one action and another, such times were plentiful and inescapable. As compulsory as grains of sand in an hourglass, slowly, painfully, trickling down.

There’s the limbo memory of the two hour line to register for a green card. Two hours in a line full of foreigners — most of them Hispanic or South Asian — in the foreign city of Toronto, Canada. Just a long, grey corridor fully packed with droopy families and individuals, leading to a fluorescent-lit waiting room with not enough chairs. Then, packets of paperwork. Then, more waiting for our number to be called. By the time we were called to a booth I looked as worn down as my government photo would have you believe.

Had my better half been there, I’m sure he would’ve been perfectly courteous and smiling by the end of the ordeal. Unfortunately for my parents — though they should’ve known, having raised me — whining came more naturally to yours truly.

“Does this mean we’re American?” I asked.

My parents were then forced to explain the permanent residence song and dance in a manner simplistic enough for an 11-year-old.

“So we’re waiting on this line just so we can wait even longer?” I asked again, this time rhetorically because I’d turned into a bitter and jaded adolescent in the span of a couple of hours.

It took another seven years to receive the cards, before which we made multiple trips outside the States to stamp our visas. Most of the time my mother and father turned these legal necessities into schleps to Israel so we could visit family, and so every other year meant standing on multiple lines.

Lines at JFK, questioned by an El Al security officer as to the purpose of our visit. Were we returning to Israel? No, just visiting. What was our purpose in traveling to Israel? Leisure. Did we have family in Israel? Yes, everyone’s there except us. Who packed our suitcases? Us, just us, and no we didn’t pack any weapons or sharp objects.

Lines at the consulate in Israel where, at age 17, I had to present my army exemption form. I remember the young woman behind the desk giving me a stern look I couldn’t decipher. Was she disappointed in me? Angry I wouldn’t be serving my homeland? All I felt an odd mix of unnamed guilt and relief. I remember thinking, there. Now there’s a clear line in the sand.

Lines at Ben Gurion Airport, packed with tour groups and Birthright goers, chatting excitedly about their spiritual experiences and the sense that they’d found a home away from home. Strange. How was it that they could feel this way about a country that in four short years had become an oddity to me?

How was it that they could feel natural speaking English in Tel Aviv when I felt like an interloper with my increasingly accented Hebrew?

How was it that they could stand so pleasantly in the snaking line to check-in when I was wiping the sweat off my forehead, wishing the lady ahead of me would just move forward instead of leaving a gaping space in front of her because she was too busy chatting with her friend to notice? I followed their rapid, fluid Hebrew, aware I could no longer manage it myself.

It’s amusing how little I resemble an Israeli. A stranger once bumped into me in Herzeliya, looked me in the eye and apologized to me in English. It was both a surprising moment of politeness and a slap in my face. I did not only feel like a stranger, I apparently looked like one as well. Should it have been that surprising? Probably not. I have a complexion that belongs on a beach as much as sand belongs in your mouth. Not only is my hair dyed and cut in a bob, I also like to wear eyeliner and lipstick. A crime in a country full of long-haired, natural goddesses who towered over me more often than not. In a way I look like the David to their Goliath.

And it’s not just looks. I now cringe at the knowing, unapologetic kibitz of strangers that can come at any time. It’s everywhere. Sometimes it seems mean spirited, like a man I once passed, a pedestrian, who yelled at a woman who’d just gotten out of her car over her poor parking job. More often it’s out of kindness.

“Why are you so white?” a middle aged woman asked me a few years ago on a bus to Tel Aviv. She was sitting in a row ahead and to the left of mine.

“Well, I can’t tan. And I live in New York.”

She nodded. “Is there no sun in New York?” I just laughed. “Well you have beautiful skin, like a doll.”

“Thank you, I guess.”

“No ‘I guess’. When someone compliments you, you take it. You say, ‘thanks, I know’.”

There’s a warmth to these moments, ones that thin out boundaries to the point where they might as well break. They come with a message: that you’re part of a tribe, part of the gantze mishpacha whether you like it or not. The part that reminds me that I used to knock on neighbors’ doors uninvited to play, and walk unaccompanied to the city center with my best friend from elementary school, and call my teachers by their first names, and talk to taxi drivers about their family life.

When did those informalities begin to chafe? Sometimes I worry it means I have no more Sabra left in me. Israel may have been my first home, but New York shaped me, softened me. While my best friend from elementary school got a boyfriend in middle school, I was happy learning about relationships from books. When my Israeli counterparts went to serve in the army, I went to college. When I saw the names I used to know floating on my Facebook, announcing degrees and jobs in concrete fields like math and science, I was trying to figure out how to realize my writing dreams.

But then I remember my achilles heel. I remember my partner’s bemusement every time I lose my cool, or refuse to wait 45 minutes to eat in a popular restaurant. I remember finding the 5.5 hour ride to my upstate New York college insanely long, and my father echoing this sentiment — Israelis fly to Eilat, for goodness sake. I remember the fury rising to the top like steam in a kettle as a cashier at a Jerusalem pharmacy spoke to her coworker, utterly ignoring the line that had formed. Then, amongst the shouted complaints of those customers, some of whom had left the line to storm the counter and demand attention, I remember that fury dissolving. There was no need for more of it in that room of jostling, full on, impatient kindred.

I wouldn’t say I value my objection to waiting. People say that patience is a virtue, and I don’t disagree. Still, there’s a comfort in knowing that no matter how polite, or distant, or American I get, my boyfriend will have a reason to look at me funny. Lines are my Goliath, the one I’m stuck in an eternal battle with. And maybe I, alongside every short-tempered Israeli, will eventually make that sling shot, à la David. But that’s a battle for another day.