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Shani looked as if she had been designed by a manga artist. Pencil thin arms and legs, a shock of straight hair falling over one eye, she would sit all day curled up on the floor near the heater, clasping a cup of coffee to her chest for warmth, and talking to her best friend Natalia. Shani and Natalia were the only semi-permanent members of the hostel. They had lived there for months, surrounded by a fleeting and ever-changing population of Israeli tourists who were either on there way up to Peru or had just returned from there. Shani had somehow developed a love for Spanish, and she had taken a year between high school and national service in order to learn the language. Who Natalia was though, was always less clear. She was around sixteen years old and obviously a local girl – that much was clear from the fact that she spoke only Spanish and dressed in the sort of clothes that haven´t been seen in England since the nineties. Aside from Shani, she didn´t seem to have many friends, and spent most of her time watching bloody-awful Argentine TV shows.
“She has a story” Shani told me one day, as we were chatting on the tiles near the heater.
“She told me it. But I don´t think I can say...”.
“Of course”, I replied, “It´s none of my business. By the way, I´m thinking of going to Bariloche. Have you been?”
She laughed. Shani, in keeping with her general manga-cartoon appearance, had an ear to ear smile that made her look like she could eat a banana sideways. “I haven´t been outside of Buenos".
The fact that Shani had spent a year in South America without once setting foot outside the city did not surprise me as much as it might have done. She had told me earlier that she had lived her whole life in Haifa without once visiting Jerusalem.
“Well Sarai and Rina are going down for a week, so I might go with them” I told her. And that´s just what I did. Except that somehow the week ended up telescoping into two and a half months in Northern Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil, and I returned to the hostel long after everyone had given me up for dead and stowed away my luggage in the basement.
It was a bad time to arrive back in Buenos. Even in the taxi from the bus station to Mashehu Mashehu (the hostel´s name is taken from the Hebrew slang for “the best”) I was impatient with what was to come. Mashehu Mashehu is even a bigger balagan than your average Argentine hostel. It´s genuinely homely atmposphere is undermined by everything that makes homes – especially Jewish homes - so bloody difficult to deal with. I hadn´t had a proper shave in two months, showered in three days or eaten in two, but I knew that there was no chance of doing what I really wanted to do – i.e. nipping in just long enough to clean myself up before nipping out again for some prime kosher steak. Mashehu Mashehu just ain´t that sorta place. I would have to listen to how I had been missed, and reply likewise. I would have to wait for the prorprioters to remember where they had hidden my luggage. By the time that they did so, something else would have come up, and I would have to somehow remind them, in as polite a tone as possible, that I was still waiting for it. Sigh.
Still, there was nothing for it but to try and hurry things up as much as possible. With this resolution in mind, I rang on the bell.
Silence.
Oh, G-d, here we go.
I rang again.
Nada.
Finally, there was the rattle of a key in the lock, and Natalia opened the door.
She looked surprised to see me.
“Hola” I said, “Todo biene?”
“Si”. She led the way in.
But todo was not biene. The place was in dissaray. Coming into the lounge, I almost barged straight into a small crowd of Argentine pensioners – not exaclty a typical sight for a youth hostel. They were making a great fuss of a child of one or two, who was starting to look thoroughly bored of their attempts to entertain him. In the kitchen, a contingent of seven or eight Israeli girls was lounging about, waiting impatiently to sign in. The landlady, however, was much too busy to attend them, as she was trying simultaneously to set the table for what appeared to be a celebration of some sort, and to deal at the same time with a black-cloaked Rabbi who had taken a vow against looking at women, and was carefully studying the cieling. I only added to the general confusion. “Aaaz!” she cried, as I came into the room “Az, where you been? Where you been Az?” Before I could reply, she begged me in a whisper to take the Rabbi outside into the garden and talk to him.
“We are having Brit Milah*” she told me, scattering forks over the table.
“A Brit Milah? Here? Why here?”
“It´s mitzvah!¨she said, “Now take outside. Say “Shalom, How are you?”, talk...”
Christ. There was nothing for it.
“Um...what time is the Brit?” I asked, as she hussled me out of the French windows.
“Now!” she said excitedly. “Now, now! We wait only for the mohel.”
But, true to Argentine form, the Brit seemed to be happening any time but now. I sat outside with the Rabbi and some other men as he gave us quite an interesting dvar Torah on the upcoming chagim, and I was really happy to find that I understood just about every word that he used – he had taken for me an Israeli and was speaking Ivrit. My Ivrit had really improved in the last two months of being on the road with my future compatriots. But I could not help wandering when things were going to get started. I saw the moel arrive, but there didn´t seem any other guests. And where was the baby?
After the rabbi had finished speaking and all the rest of the men had gone inside, Devorah (the landlady), came out to me with a camera. “Is possible, you take pictures?”
“Sure, sure”. I have never understood why people feel the need to take pictures at a Brit Milah. Pretty grusome, as far as I am concerned. But I felt that now was no time for scruples, so I took the camera and followed her inside.
“Why you wait?” she asked.
“Um...” Eh?
“Why you wait. The Brit, it start!”
She pointed to a small room near the toilets, and I hurried towards them.
This was not normal. The room was full of the old pensioners, perhaps five or six in all, and on the table was the child, who was one year old at least. A Brit Milah, for the ignorant among you, is meant to be done at the age of just eight days, when the pain and health risk are at a minimum. After that age, the operation becomes increasinly painful and dangerous.
The rabbi and one of the old ladies were holding and comforting the child, and the moel was pulling on his surgical gloves.
And I was just confused.
So I concentrated on taking pictures.
Everything went B¨H k´ragil.
Snip, snip, etc.
And the child didn´t seem in too much pain.
By the end, however, he was weeping tearfully. “Awwww...” the old lady crooned. “Don`t cry, don`t cry, mummy is coming, mummy is coming” The child continued wailing. “Don`t cry, don’t cry” the woman repeated, as the door opened – “here is Mummy!¨
Natalia stepped into the room and bent over the child.
Later, we sat at the table, eating bloody awful falafel and pizza. I munched away happily. You get like that after two days without solid food. One of the old men sat opposite me and told me about his time in a bunker in the Golan during the six day war.
“It was cemo achim.” he said. “mamash cemo achim.”
“Really?” I eyed the piece of pizza between us.
“Ken, ken!” he said, “It was different then. No tachanat merkazit, nooo, um...¨ - his Ivrit failed him. ¨- rak shtachim!”
The last word left his mouth in a little burst of spray. I decided against the pizza.
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Natalia, sitting silent between two old women who were chatting gustily over her head. She had the child, now sleeping, on her knee, and was staring into space.
The old man, determined not to lose a rare chance at a captive audience, began to regale me with statistics on the quantities of halvah that they had consumed in his bunker. So I turned back, doing my best to banish the sadness from the air, and re-entered the convivial flow of conversation.
*see glossary page