Copyright © 2010 by Ashley Rindsberg

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied or reproduced

in any form without the express written consent of the publisher, except

for reviewers, who may copy limited passages for the purposes of

review.

Author’s note:

persons is purely coincidental.

Cover Image:

Florent Fourniau

ISBN 978-0-615-42243-5

First Edition

Midnight Oil Publishing

www.midnightoilpublishing.com

Contents

Prologue ................................................................iSpinoza Street ......................................................1White Hair Woman ............................................17Mother, Father, Child .........................................36On Allenby .........................................................43Little Old Lady With The Flowers ......................64Night of Grief ....................................................69Rivkah & Rebecca ..............................................87

www.midnightoilpublishing.com

Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv!

Like a child that knows enough to mock you

But not to praise you.

S i S

Prologue

There are many people in Tel Aviv. Close to a million souls walk its streets, go to the theater, linger in cafes in the sun, make love in quiet rooms, argue on the street, and one day, one way or another, leave. They are too varied for description, these people, and there are too many of them to meaningfully consider. But they, no doubt, are real — each with lives, with histories, with hopes, and beyond the neutrality of this page, with qualities good and bad, beautiful and ugly, saintly, evil and, of course, just plain.

Sitting on a hill, however, as I am, the reality of these lives looks different. From here their figures are blurred beyond recognition: they make no decisions, don’t have preferences, and even lack intention. They look more like the shadows of the dead — damned not to live. They come, and they go.

S ii S

But there’s another group of people in Tel Aviv. They are the opposite of the first group, and their numbers are much smaller. Up close, you see them and you see nothing — just vacant stares, confused looks, crazy outfits, incomprehensible movements and gestures. They wander around the city seemingly without purpose. They are as likely to turn up in the dirty maze of Hamasger District as on the ivory boulevards around Rothschild. They sometimes peer out from hiding in the hair of ficus trees and sometimes they walk up to you and speak. But all of them are here permanently, forever, and they cannot cease to exist. From here on my lonely hill I can see each of them, and while my interpretation of their actions and words (I can even hear them if I sit still) might be wrong, and as far from the truth as they are from reality, I see them perfectly, clearly, and am assured of their lives.

It may be that they all come from and go to the same place, where they know each other, shake hands, and mingle. It’s possible, but I have no evidence to think so — unless, of course, that place is the city itself, Tel Aviv.

Even if it’s not their intention, it is the case. And for those who have not been able to see the city built

S iii S

on dunes, even after spending time there, it can be seen and almost completely understood through this human flora. I’ve given them names and places, and sometimes words, it’s true. But then it’s even more true that they’ve given me a name, have provided my place, and donate to me my words.

Here they are: they carry the city in on a tray, serving it to the rest of us who can’t understand what it really is, being only shadows ourselves. If you want existence and truth, keep your eyes open. Save your courage (don’t waste it in the bars or in making brave statements to professors) and speak to them. I have crawled up to this hill after years of crawling. I’m tired and frustrated but turning to look back down I realize I can finally see. I realize I can see, but as I watch these twisted figures of humanity go about their rituals I also realize that my life is down there, that I am among them but separate from them, like them but different, able to hear them but utterly unable to speak.

Tel Aviv is a place of contradiction, an urban dream of the Middle East where sleek European cafes sit beneath stone minarets; where Berlin-style hipsters sip coffee next to black hatted rabbis; where charity, sex, con ict and controversy over ow the streets.

In Tel Aviv Stories,Through a tale of city madness in Spinoza Street, and

On Allenby; telling the secret of White Hair Woman and showing

the still-life of a young immigrant family in Mother, Father, Child; in the tragedy of twinhood in the novella Rivkah & Rebecca and tracing the footsteps of a lost life in Little Old Lady With the Flowers; and in a personal story of exile in Night of Grief, author Ashley Rindsberg gives outsiders entrée into a strange world of Russian street virtuosos, ower selling whores, polyglot bums and the

urban heart.

www.midnightoilpublishing.com

TE

L A

VIV

storie

sA

SHLEY RIN

DSBERG