Back at Home

 After twenty hours in the air, in a huge airbus drawing an enormous arc across a significant swath of the planet, I finally reached the shores of the U.S. .
 However, I was fated to spend a couple more torturous hours in a Limbo of airport bureaucracy. Even the Israelis, who are understandably thorough in their efforts to x-ray luggage and search passengers, stand a distant second to us, for we are x-rayed now even after getting off the plane and also closely questioned about  what little toxic treasures we might be bringing back in our luggage.
LAX takes the prize for their queue just in front of the exit door, winding as slowly as dinner through the enormous length of an anaconda.
I feared I would never find Richard, but some kind soul lent me his cellphone, and I learned he was waiting for me just on the other side of the door, amid a crowd of excited loved ones. He missed me as I rolled by, trying mightily to keep the luggage cart from taking off without me. No wonder, given how many on both sides crowded the ramp.
Finally though, I spotted him by the information booth, clutching a red rose.
On the way home, we chatted about the trip, the people I saw there and the places I never got around to writing about.
In fact, some of my favorite moments went unrecorded: for example, the evening I spent with cousins Daphna and Miri in Old Jaffa, an ancient city surrounded by a modern one.
We rode to the end of the line, down to the shoreline, after passing through the city of Tel Aviv, dubbed "the Bubble" because its residents imagine themselves insulated from the rest of the country.
This is of course not so different from New York City, which inspires the same sort of feeling in many of its residents--witness Steinberg's New Yorker cover, featuring a a New Yorker's mental map of the US: A proportionally enormous east coast, with New York City by far the largest thing on the map, rivaled only by the west coast, where LA is the only visible sign of inhabitation. The middle of the country is completely absent..
At first, the neighborhood seemed dubious to me, native to a different sort of city altogether, where evening in a dark deserted place is not a comforting sight. But as the full moon rose over the cobbled streets and the marketplace beckoned, I began to see that there was nothing to fear, except my own impulse to purchase the tempting goods in the stalls, which ranged from classic junk to clothing, souvenirs, and food.
We stopped to nosh a bagel at Abulafia's, a venerable establishment selling all sorts of street food and run by several successive generations of the same family.
I should note that a bagel in Israel, while it might sometimes resemble the doughy spheres we are familiar with, can just as often take other shapes and textures, more resembling the soft pretzels of my youth in Philadelphia or an elongated plank of dough dipped in zataar, a tasty spice resembling oregano.
Borekas are turnovers made of flaky filo and filled with various savory fillings, such as potato and onion, cheese, or mushrooms (my favorite!), even a spicy mixture of eggplant and tomato.
In general, I didn't find Israel to be a diners' delight. Probably I could not afford to frequent the gustatory palaces of that country. I have no doubt that they exist somewhere.
But then I was too busy to care.