Departures

The turning into Ben Gurion airport terminal 1 is deceptive.  On the one side is terminal 3, with its gleaming spires of lipsticks, foreign chocolate and Scottish whisky.  On the other side, down a ramshackle slipway is the terminal where the likes of Easyjet passengers like me leave from.  It is also what used to be Lod Airport’s main terminal.  There are about 10 checkin desks, and one story.  It lounges somewhere in the 1970s, where airhostesses with fair hair (before the influx of oriental immigrants into prestige jobs like this..) used to smile from the billboards, and signs shone from the walls with open arms and a background of oranges saying welcome to Israel, welcome to the land of milk and honey.  

As we leave from here the departure hall does seem familiar.   I remember all of us, grandparents, parents, sister and enough watermelon and white cheese to last us a month, packed into my grandfather’s tiny white car, zooming down the road like we were in a cartoon.  I remember the tears on departure that I never really understood.  The hands held too long in unsaid embraces and the crowds of relatives on the other side of the barrier gradually getting smaller and smaller as I was flung in front of them to wave. I remember too the grey silence on the other side, where the state of the art walkways and large house couldn’t compete with the hum of traffic under a balcony in the evening, or grand slaps of old friends echoing in the dark stairways to loved ones' flats.

 

So today I am here again.  We’ve eaten the most excessive (but delicious) Israeli breakfast of white cheese, omelette, salad in a café by a freeway.  Around us sat cool young Israeli wrapped in red blankets because it’s windy.  Despite the machismo here, it feels like under the surface there's still abit of the jewish mother in the Israeli psyche.    

At the check in I struggle with my greengrocer Hebrew, but there are still smiles.  Perhaps in spring everyone is nicer.   

In my mind, two film reels are playing in the sunshine simultaneously.    Two lives.  Here, the warmth, the metach (stress) and the unforgiving blue skies.  There, Luton airport, young boys and girls with bleached hair holding tins of beer walk through the train, ready for a night out to London.  Perhaps later in the journey, in some cross cultural exchange, I’ll sit on the train, and 5 strangers around me will want to know my business, recommend me the best way to get home from Kings Cross, and while we chat they’ll ask me why I left England on holiday and that I should have gone to the lake district instead because it’s really lovely too and it's good to stay in Britain.  Perhaps not?  

But there's a charm to the chaos, the freedom to be who you are.  The sheer familiarity, realising that what you thought was different behaviour may have been a cultural difference.