The first trip back to Exile

We were forewarned before aliyah, and several times afterwards, that one of the most difficult times for an oleh is that first visit back 'home' to the UK, or wherever (s)he came from.

A few days after finishing our language course, and after what was ultimately two weeks of cleaning and tidying, we said goodbye to our first EVER real marital home, leaving it in the hands of a friend/lodger, and headed back to the UK. The intentions: 1. See new babies (Debs’ first nephew and my 2,416^th niece). 2. See rest of family. 3. See friends and go to a friend’s wedding. 4. Make some money by working a bit!

For months before we left, Deborah was so excited to see the new Baby Joshua, yet I was hardly brimming with the excitement of going back – primarily because I was scared that we would realise what we were missing.

As our Jet2 budget plane with its plastic seats and amputee-only legroom came in to land in Manchester, we looked out of the window to see our old haunts – my student days in Fallowfield, the Hilton Hotel from our earlier dates, country walks in the Peak District and Winter Hill. And we landed to be met by eerily pleasant weather. The sun was setting, people were out in T-shirts, and the ground was dry! Someone had stolen Manchester. Probably a Scouser.

As we moved around the country, from Manchester to Liverpool to Chester to London to Manchester to Liverpool to Lake District to Liverpool to Manchester, we both suffered somewhat from the grass-is-always-greener syndrome; although of course, it literally is when you come to the UK from the Middle East.

The first shock was when I went into a bakery in Manchester. I queued up in a line (queue and line are two words that don’t feature prominently in Israeli culture), and when I got to the front, the smiling woman said, ‘Hi, what can I get you?’ So shocked was I not to have been greeted with ‘What?’ that I commented to her how nice her manners were. And these little miracles continued for the duration of our stay; cars that indicate before they turn, drivers who give way at give way junctions and people who say ‘thank you’ when you hold a door for them. Using bins is the norm, not the extraordinary, and most smokers are considerate enough to obey the law and go outside while they kill themselves.

Of course, despite our rapidly improving Hebrew, street signs, newspapers and adverts in English are so much easier to understand, and the cars were on the correct side of the road!

As we saw more people and places, it really struck home what we were missing. My nieces and nephews had all grown, although thankfully did seem to remember who we were. Our old homes were as inviting as ever, and Deborah’s cat Rupert still moped about on the grass (he’s famous by the way – you can see him on Google Maps Street View. Moping about on the grass.). The countryside from the luxurious high speed train seemed greener than ever, and the food in the supermarket was cheap! On top of all this, it hardly rained the whole time we were there.

After a week of seeing friends and having fun, it was time to earn our keep, and so we each went off to the temporary jobs we have taken for a four day stint of ‘damage limitation’, that is, to try and balance the books in some small way after half a year of unemployment, and to make a meagre attempt at retaining some small element of medical/pharmaceutical training (respectively) before it all seeps away through lack of use. So, having only been back in the UK for a week, we each commenced a week of real life – commuting, working and earning. One would think that long days of high pressure work, with little time to ourselves, rushing to get there in time, stressing over sick patients in unstable conditions, eating out of a plastic pot in a hot staffroom while Wimbledon / World Cup / other mind-numbing activity plays on the TV, would not be considered a good life. But bizarrely, after a long period of feeling useless and at a loose end, this was exactly what we both needed; I never really realised how important it is to have a purpose, albeit temporary, and coming back from the end of a long day, feeling that you had worked hard and earned the money that will feed and house you, is something we take for granted.

After three weeks in the UK, it was time to head back to Israel, but no more information about our long or short-term future than when we left – still waiting for licenses to start work, still with no idea of when the army will call me, not knowing whether we were going to start our medical ulpan or not, not even completely sure if our apartment would still be in the same position we left it in, we headed back into the unknown.

Despite the loveliness of seeing our family and friends, our trip back still felt a little bit like a kick in the teeth. A reminder of what we had given up. While we try to avoid getting into debt by buying cheaper vegetables, our friends are buying houses and nice cars. While we concentrate to get the gist of the news, to find out when we can collect our gas masks in case Ahmadinejad decides to try and destroy the world, our friends stress about whether to buy the iPhone 3G or wait for the newer model. Only yesterday, a couple of our close friends announced that they had decided to move to the US; and although we hate to hear it, and hate to see them give up on Israel, we understand why. Life here is more difficult than other places. It takes a lot of effort and a lot of courage.

But, despite all this, we don’t have a regret in the world. It’s tough, and it’s sometimes daunting being here. We are living a dream that, even if it doesn’t work out and we decide to leave, would have haunted us both for the rest of our lives if we didn’t give it a go. And we both know that until we give ourselves a real chance here, feel what it’s like to live here as a true Israeli, to work, pay taxes, vote, serve in the army, own a home, and even bring up a child, we’ll never really be in a position to judge and decide to live anywhere else. Like it or not, this is home. Sooner or later, for the Albert family to grow up in their homeland, where they descended from, where their forefathers lived and thrived, someone will have to make these sacrifices. We recently met for the first time some elderly relatives here who knew my great grandfather; they told me that he always dreamed of coming to live in Israel, but it never happened for one reason or another; it’s an honour to be the ones to attempt to make the dream come true.

All change!

---I wrote this entry almost two months ago, but never got round to uploading it! So apologies for the details which are now obsolete.....---

Five and a half months into aliyah, things are falling into place. During the course of our ulpan, which finished today, we have achieved a lot; not just in terms of our ability to talk the language (we’re proud to say that we managed to complete our entire apartment-hunting process in Hebrew, from shopping around, to viewing, to negotiating... although we still got an Israeli lawyer to check over a few bits of the contact we were unsure about), but also in terms of direction. The applications for both of our professional licenses are complete – I’m just waiting to receive the damn thing, and Deborah is waiting for the next licence exams. We both have potential jobs, pending the licences, I’ve finally had word from the army and can expect some information on my call up dates soon, and next week, we will finally be able to live in our new – and first – real home since we married 9 months ago!

So, on the one hand, it feels like we’ve made progress. On the other hand, we have absolutely nothing to show for it – we are still waiting to work, still in the absorption centre, still living on savings and benefits, and still have no idea whether I’ll be commuting to a clinic from home in 2 months time, studying in a medical ulpan, or living in a bunker on the Syrian border. Long-term planning is simply not the vogue in Israel, no matter how hard immigrants try.

It has to be said though, we have been suspiciously lucky/blessed with our home hunting. Courtesy of some good friends who are estate agents here, we were able to get a list of properties available in the neighbourhood we wanted, and could then shop around, without having to pay the agents fees. We saw some tiny places, and some beautiful but overpriced places, through a different estate agent – another friend, but a very pushy one who was looking for a sale. Having politely dumped him, we came across what was to become our home. We viewed it while it was still occupied by three Russian immigrants, happily smoking away inside it, but friendly enough. It’s top-floor location means that Deborah and I are happy – we get to avoid noisy upstairs neighbours, get more light, a fabulous view from our shoe-box size balcony, and a cheaper price – since it’s considered desirable here to be on the ground or first floor. As a result, we are now the proud renters of a three-bedroom place, that is one of the best value places we’ve seen or heard of in Jerusalem. The catch? Only when the Russians moved out did we realised how much filth they had left the place in, and how much repair work was needed. Supposedly wooden kitchen window frames were in fact granite, covered in such a thick layer of grime that they had both the appearance and sound of wood. The kitchen sink drain was not connected, resulting in a nice pool in the cupboard below on the rare occasions that the sink was used. The subsequent rot and ants’ nest were hidden by the Russian grimy pots until we moved in. The window shutters were nearly all seized up – I’ve fixed all but one, which is home to a nest of starlings – I’ll wait a few months before they get their eviction notice. The electrics vary between the unusable and the downright dangerous in parts, and we even had a tomato plant ‘weed’ – complete with fruit – growing out of the drain on the balcony. The stove was not only covered in grime, but our soviet comrades did not feel the need to even remove dead flies from it, before they moved out. Finally, they didn't get round to moving out on time, and we found our living room full of their bags and furniture as we opened the door of our new home.

Add to all this the state of the second hand furniture we bought, and you’ll understand why Deborah and I have spent an entire week cleaning.

We decided to work out how much it would cost us to furnish a place from scratch, using only new stuff. For a first home, with no family hand-me-downs or wedding gift furniture to use, our most realistic option was to buy all the cheapest versions of the essentials from Ikea (yes, it’s here too). Suddenly, another option appeared, and one that appears to happen quite often here for those of you planning to follow us – a religious couple who had been studying in Jerusalem for a couple of years had left to go back to the USA, and were trying to make a quick sale of literally their entire lives, all in one go. The inventory they sent us was impressive – 4 beds, new fridge, oven, leather sofas, bookcases, washing machine, dryer, microwave, and so on. The price was reasonable, in fact not a great deal more than the new stuff would cost, but of course, much of this was much better quality than the Ikea stuff we would have ended up with. We travelled across the city to view it, and were happy, if not a little overwhelmed, by the quantity of items.

So, we made a deal to buy EVERYTHING, thinking that we would sell the excess stuff that we didn’t need. We booked a removal company, and I set about disassembling everything to make the move quicker.

Only at this point did we realise the two problems with the stuff – nothing major, but hugely annoying nonetheless.

The first was that Americans apparently don’t know how to assemble furniture. If it wobbles, for example, don’t tighten the screws – simply whack in a few extra nails in random places and ruin the veneer of the furniture! If you spill something in the oven, just pretend it isn’t there and let someone else deal with it when you sell the oven. And most importantly, if you move out of your apartment, make sure you leave the window open so that the pigeons can easily enter and crap on the top of every high place.

After much cleaning, and repairing, we have a beautiful set of furniture which we’re excited to use, with just a few scars of the battle of being carried down 4 storeys, and then up 4 storeys in a different neighbourhood.

The removal company is a story in itself. Three guys – two Jewish Israelis, one Arab from Hebron in the West Bank. I’m sure you don’t need to read a blog to know that intolerance and tension are somewhat prominent between these two groups – Hebron is the second holiest Jewish city in the world (Jerusalem being the first, of course), but is also a point of huge dispute – during the Jordanian rule of the West Bank from 1948 – 1967, all Jews there were massacred, and only after Israel gained control of the territory in 1967, were they allowed back there to live and pray. It is 40 min from Jerusalem, and the bullet-proof armoured buses leave every hour or so, winding their way past resentful eyes and concrete walls. When the intifada began in 2000, thousands of workers came each day to Jerusalem, along with dozens of terrorists, but since then, checkpoints and security allow only those people with a work permit to enter. His special skill? Weight lifting. At 51 years old, but with that wizened, cracked, and emaciated look of a 90-year-old who has smoked most of his life (be warned), he worked harder and faster than the other two men put together. While the other men smoked and looked at the mountain of furniture in the van, he carried up washing machines on his back or entire cabinets in one go. It was so frustrating to watch this man do so much work while his counterparts took their time, and all the more so in the knowledge that he would likely be receiving a lower split of the fee. The years of Jewish labour and independence, the same energy and ideology that built the state, have given way to a population dynamic the same as the UK and every other developed country – the jobs that no one wants to do are the ones that the outsiders do – the street cleaners, bin men, field workers, even the carers, are either Arab or East Asian. The Jewish people, who transformed the sterile wilderness of the land of Israel to a fertile country filled with potential, have been superseded by capitalist entrepreneurs and skilled professionals. I’ve no idea whether that makes me happy or sad.

Anyway, as Deborah and I prepare to move the last of our belongings to our new home, right on the edge of Jerusalem, looking over to Jordan and the Dead Sea, we look forward to accommodating those of you who want to visit.