The Best Place on Earth

by Ayelet Tsabari

  At the end of the street, on the edge of Petah Tikva, a narrow highway leads to Ben Gurion airport. Teardrop-shaped cypress trees line both sides of the road, their tips piercing the sky. All day long, Lily watches planes circle over the neighbourhood of Sha’ariya before landing and wonders if they carry newcomers like her, immigrants like her grandparents once were, having been airlifted from Yemen on a secret operation when Israel was founded. It was the first time they had ever seen an aircraft. Lily imagines them—her grandmother Saida, whom she remembers from previous visits, and her grandfather Salim, whom she’s only seen in pictures—holding hands and mouthing prayers as the plane descends toward the Holy Land.

  Back when her grandparents arrived, her mom told her, the whole neighbourhood was Yemeni, and even now, with all the new immigrants—Russians and Ethiopians—when Lily walks down certain streets, she still sees old Yemeni ladies just like her grandma sitting on their front porches in large dresses and flowery head scarves. These streets are fragrant with fenugreek and turmeric and coriander, and from the synagogue she can hear men singing prayers in an undulating Yemeni accent she doesn’t understand. This is where her mother was born, where she grew up and lived before she moved to Canada. Lily even looks the part. But she feels like a stranger, a tourist.

  The next day, Lily wakes up disoriented again, thinking she’s still in Vancouver, then is jolted into remembering as her eyes adjust to the white light that floods through the plastic shutters.

  She wriggles into a sports bra and steps into her swimming trunks. Ruthie is at work, Talia is back at the base. Lily prepares pita sandwiches with hummus and pickles, washes grapes and stuffs them into a Tupperware container, grabs a water bottle she placed in the freezer the night before. She waits in her room—a small converted balcony with sliding doors that lead to the living room, the glass covered with sheets for privacy. It’s small, but Lily likes having three walls of shutters. When she first arrived, she opened the shutters during the day until Ruthie pointed out that the heat is better left outside. Then in the evenings, cockroaches swarmed in and mosquitoes swirled around the lone bulb hanging from the ceiling. She couldn’t sleep, hearing them crashing into the walls, buzzing in her ears. Outside, late-night buses growled, crickets chirped, people huddled by the falafel stand, talking and laughing, and the light of the street lamp streamed in, drawing lines of orange on her sheets.

  She cried every night for the first week. Missing Vancouver. Missing her life. Missing her mom. It almost felt as if Ima was still alive, just back home in Vancouver. It reminded her of the only time she had been apart from her mother for an extended period, the one time she had visited her dad in Montreal. She only cries when she’s alone in bed because she has promised herself she won’t cry in front of people. If she’s going to make friends in a new school, then she can’t be known as the crybaby, the sad girl. In her first year of junior high in Vancouver, she’d been picked on for her boyish clothing and her hair, for hiding behind a camera. She doesn’t want to give bullies more reasons to torment her.

  By noon Lily thinks: Lana isn’t coming. Of course. It was too good to be true. She hooks her camera to her laptop and starts uploading images to her photography blog. She titles them as she goes along. “Splattered oil. Falafel stand.” “Friday night. Men on way to synagogue.” “Baby chicks behind chain-link fence.” “Lemons under tree.” “Old Yemeni women on park bench.” She scrolls down and looks at older photos. There is a four-month gap where she took no photos at all. After Ima died. And then from the two weeks before she left for Israel there is a flurry of photos, things she wanted to remember from her East Vancouver neighbourhood. “Mountain view from back deck.” “Dreadlocked drummers outside Co-op.” “My Vancouver aunties”—Ima’s four best friends, who took Lily in, rented out the house, arranged her trip to Israel. Lily scrolls back to seven, eight months ago. There’s Ima with a shaved head, smiling, hands around a cup of tea, covered in a colourful blanket on their back deck. And even farther back. Biking on Salt Spring Island. The peace rally on Granville Street, Ima holding a big sign that says “Jews for Peace!” The last Thanksgiving at their house. A few years back, Ima had wanted to cook a turkey but didn’t know how. “I didn’t grow up making it,” she cried, and in the end she drove to Hastings Street and donated the uncooked bird to an outreach place, and made enchiladas instead, which had since become tradition. The photo was titled “Thanking the Mexicans.”

  Lily thinks of the photos she didn’t post from that evening. The ones her mother took of her in an A-line, knee-length black skirt she had bought for Lily on a previous visit to Israel. They had gotten into a huge fight in the store. “Just this once,” Ima had pleaded with her. “When do I ever ask you for anything?” They had been invited to a Rosh Hashanah dinner with all their relatives; she wanted to make a good impression. When Lily emerged from the change room, her mother beamed. “You look so beautiful,” she said and asked Lily to twirl, ignoring her sulking. It was Lily’s idea to wear the skirt for Thanksgiving. She knew how happy it would make her mom. A small price to pay.

  At 3:00 p.m. Lily turns on the TV and flips channels, fighting tears of frustration. She ignores the honking in the street below, and when it persists, goes to the balcony-turned-bedroom and tilts the slats down to look out. On the parched asphalt Lana stands next to a dusty Fiat, wearing a sheer white dress and a wide-brimmed hat. She’s waving.

  Lily slides the shutters open along their tracks. “It’s late,” she yells.

  Lana cups her hand over her large sunglasses. “Oh, you haven’t been waiting, have you? It’s too hot in the day. We always go after four, stay for sunset.”

  Lily closes the shutters and jogs downstairs. Lana introduces her to Tzion and Igor. Tzion is dark-skinned, Yemeni, with a shaved head and a chunky gold necklace. Igor has longish blond hair and his gangly legs are stuffed into the small space behind the passenger seat. They both smile. Lily hesitates. They seem old, much older than her. “They don’t bite,” Lana says, pushing the front seat forward.

  Lily wiggles into the back seat next to Igor, who cocks his head and ogles her. Lily jerks her head so that her long bangs fall over her eyes. “So how do you like Israel?” Igor says, his Russian accent heavy.

  “It’s okay.” Lily wipes her clammy hands on her swimming trunks and pulls her camera out of her bag. She starts taking photos through the window even though the sun is in the middle of the sky. Rows of buildings with eyes shut, grey, brown and yellow, streaked with black lines like runny ink. The sky is white. Everything is faded by sunlight. Even the trees and the pink bougainvillea seem tired at this time of the day. In Vancouver, the colours were so much brighter, everything cleaner, freshly rained upon.

  The beach is crowded and speckled with blue and red umbrellas. Lana pulls her dress over her head, revealing a purple bikini, four triangles tied by strings on her hips and her back. Her hips and collarbones stick out, but her breasts and belly are softly curved. Her skin is white and freckled. She hands Tzion a tube of sunblock and he begins rubbing it on her back in long strokes.

  Lily takes off her T-shirt, flings it on the sand and heads toward the water. The white sand is burning her feet, so she starts to run. The beach has always been her favourite thing about Israel. She used to spend long afternoons here with her mother, eating watermelon slices out of a Tupperware container, building elaborate sandcastles with moats and tunnels, decorating them with shells and seaweed. “Wait, I’ll come with you,” Lana calls after her. They run into large waves that slap their bellies and spray their faces with salt, the white foam hissing as it settles. They turn around and walk backwards, against the waves, until they are past the break. Around them a few couples are kissing, their bodies shiny, their limbs entangled. The water rises with the waves, gently lifting Lily off her feet and setting her back down, the sea floor spiralling around her feet. Lily loves the waves; Vancouver beaches were always so calm. She loves feeling weightless, carried away, tossed around.
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  “So Igor likes you.” Lana rearranges her bikini top.

  “He doesn’t even know me,” Lily says. “Besides, he’s too old.”

  “He’s sixteen,” Lana says. “I invited him here for you.”

  “I just wanted to come to the beach,” Lily says.

  Lana looks at Lily intently, beads of water hanging on her eyelashes. “What, you don’t like boys?”

  “I didn’t say that.” Lily starts swimming toward the wave breakers. She feels a current pulling her south, toward Jaffa. She hears the lifeguard’s megaphone, instructing bathers to move north, and starts swimming diagonally to compensate for the pull. “Don’t go too far,” Lana says, trying to catch up.

  “I’m going to swim to the wave breakers,” Lily says. “You want to come?”

  Lana eyes the string of rocks. “Okay,” she says. “But if something happens, you’ll have to save me.”

  When they make it to the wave breakers, Lily climbs up first and gives Lana a hand. “Wow, cool,” Lana says. “I’ve never been here before.” They stand and watch the Tel Aviv shoreline: the scalloped bays, the row of palm trees along the seawall, the beach cafés with their clumps of blue and green umbrellas, hotels with mirrored windows winking sunlight, and skyscrapers dipped in haze. Then the city descends into the smaller, amber houses of old Jaffa—easily concealed by a thumb—with a spire marking the city’s southern edge. To the north, a line of boats clings to the marina. The sounds of the beach—paddle balls hitting rackets, children squealing, the ice cream men yelling—are muffled by the waves and the breeze. On the other side of the wave breakers, the sea is choppy and dark blue, and silhouettes of tiny boats are poised on the thin line between water and sky.

  “I can’t wait to be old enough to move here,” Lana says. “Petah Tikva is a shithole. Wait till you start school.”

  Lily looks at Lana. “You go to Brenner?”

  Lana nods. “The girls were so snobby when I first moved here.” She bends down, digging out a handful of seashells and wet sand from between the rocks. “Now I just don’t care anymore. Fuck them.”

  “Yeah,” Lily says. “Fuck them.” Their eyes meet and both girls smile.

  “It’s hard, starting in a new place.” Lana throws a shell far into the sea, then another. “In Belarus my mother used to be a pharmacist. My father was an engineer. Now he works in security and my mom cleans houses. It’s pretty bad here. It’s hard to find jobs.”

  Lily looks down at the glistening rocks, the salt stinging her eyes.

  Lana stretches her arm back, then she hurls the remaining shells toward the beach. “What about your parents?”

  Lily feels a wet stone sliding down her throat. “My mom is dead,” she says. She’ll never get used to saying that. “She died six months ago.”

  Lana puts her hand over her mouth. “Oh my God, I’m sorry. And your dad?”

  “He has a new family,” Lily says. “I live with my aunt.”

  Lana stares at Lily, then she leans over and hugs her. Wet skin on wet skin. Lily almost loses her balance.

  When they get back to shore, Igor and Tzion are playing paddle ball. “We thought you drowned,” Tzion chortles.

  “So you just went on playing?” Lana rolls her eyes at Lily. Tzion picks Lana up from behind and threatens to throw her back in the water. She squeals and laughs, kicking her legs in the air. When he puts her down they kiss. Lily notices Igor is watching them too.

  Lana wrings out her hair and sits on her towel. She pulls the sunscreen out of her bag, but this time hands it to Lily. Lily coats Lana’s warm back with it, mimicking Tzion’s motions. When she’s done, she grabs her camera and snaps a shot: Lana’s back, studded with golden sand, her eyes closed, her blonde hair wet and glued to her cheek. The sun hovers like a red Chinese lantern over the wave breakers. She titles it in her head: “My first Israeli friend.”

  Lily lets Lana cut her jeans at the knees, but not her hair. In return, she takes photos of Lana one evening before sunset; it’s the best time for portraits, she tells her, a time photographers call “sweet light.” They hike to the end of Sha’ariya, where the streets abruptly end and yellow fields unfurl until the highway. Lana is comfortable in front of the lens. And she’s beautiful. But Lily thinks her poses are too flat, not artsy enough. Lana always looks down at the camera, eyelids heavy, lips moist and slightly open. Still, Lily enjoys playing fashion photographer, enjoys watching Lana through the lens. Sometimes she pretends the flirty gaze is intended for her and she feels a quick, hot, confusing rush.

  They hang out at Lily’s place because it’s always empty. Most days they just watch TV. When they watch American shows, Lana asks Lily to repeat some of the lines in English and then laughs. “You sound just like them.”

  “Actually,” Lily says, “our accents are different.”

  But Lana just says, “Say it again, say something else.”

  One afternoon Lana asks to see Talia’s room, and Lily opens the door and lets her in. The room is painted lavender and smells vaguely of stale perfume. Posters of Israeli TV stars hang on the walls. Lily cracks the slats open, letting in air and light. Lana passes her hand over Talia’s clothes, pulls a green minidress off the rack, holds it to her body in front of the mirror. She picks lipsticks from a wicker basket, testing them on the back of her hand. “What does she do in the army?” she asks.

  “She’s an instructor in the armoured corps.”

  Lana looks at Lily through the mirror, eyes lit up. “Does she have a gun?”

  Lily nods.

  “Cool.” Lana applies pink lipstick to her lips, smacking them together.

  “Check this out.” Lily digs out a shoebox full of photos from the closet, hidden under some winter clothes. Lily found them in her first week while snooping in her cousin’s room. Most of the pictures were from childhood, class shots, family vacations, but in the bottom of the box she found a few photos in an unmarked envelope: Talia in lacy red lingerie, holding a rifle between her breasts, looking at the camera seductively. In one of them, she’s wearing her cap and saluting. In another, her eyes are closed and she’s sending a kiss to the camera, her lips blood-red.

  Lana sits on the double bed, which bounces under her weight. She snatches the photos from Lily’s hand and flips through them, eyes wide. “Wow, hot.”

  “You think so?” Lily reaches for the photos but Lana lifts her arm up and away from her.

  “You don’t think it’s sexy?” Lana says. “Not even a little bit?”

  “I hate guns,” Lily says.

  “So what are you going to do if they give you one in the army?”

  “I’m not going to go to the army. I’m going to go back to Canada before then.” She knows better than to tell Lana that she’s a pacifist, or that she doesn’t support the Israeli army, or that her mom promised her she’d never have to join. When she first arrived she had said these things to Talia and Talia had stared at her in shock. She’s been calling her “Little Arafat” ever since.

  “When I first moved here I wanted to go back so badly,” Lana says. “I cried every day. But you get used to it. Then you start to love it and you don’t want to leave.”

  But I don’t want to get used to it, Lily wants to say. “Whatever,” she says instead, stretching her arm to grab the photos, but Lana moves her hand again. She waves the photos over her head, while Lily watches her, waiting. Finally, Lily gets hold of Lana’s wrists and pins her down to the bed, kneeling, hovering over Lana’s body. “Gotcha,” she says.

  Lana laughs, letting her hand unclench, and the photos scatter on the bed. Lily releases Lana’s wrists, and Lana reaches over and moves Lily’s hair from her face. “You’re like a boy,” she says. “With this hair.”

  Lily laughs shortly. “No, I’m not.”

  Lana tucks a strand of Lily’s hair behind an ear. “A pretty boy,” she says.

  Lily doesn’t know where she’s supposed to look. In her search she meets Lana’s eyes briefly and sees in
them something like curiosity.

  “Have you ever even kissed someone?” Lana says.

  “No.”

  It all happens fast. Lana perches herself on her elbows and plants a kiss on Lily’s lips. Lily feels like a wave has just lifted her off her feet and dropped her back to the ground. Lana leans back on the mattress. “Well, now you have.”

  Lily collects the photos, jumps off the bed and puts them back in the box, hides the box back in the closet. Her fingers are shaking. Her lips taste like lipstick: cherry gum and wax.

  “Don’t look so shocked.” Lana laughs. “It’s no big deal.”

  Lily doesn’t see Lana for the next few days, and she wonders if something has changed. She tries calling Lana from downstairs but Lana doesn’t answer. Lana has never invited her in.

  The days are getting hotter, stickier. Lily didn’t think it was possible. She starts taking two or three short cold showers a day, grateful for the tile floors, which Ruthie washes with a bucket of ice water twice a week. Ruthie has bought her a standing fan that she sleeps with now; its whooshing sound reminds Lily of rain. Every evening when Lily sits with her aunt after dinner and watches the tail end of the evening news, the weather forecast is the same. The long country, shaped like a wonky ice cream cone—blue dots like beads on a string on its east side—is littered with smiley suns. Her favourite part of the weather forecast is when the newscaster lists the height of the waves.

  On the weekend, Lily sees Lana talking to Tzion on the sidewalk. Tzion has one flip-flopped foot against the barricade. Lily walks over and says hi, and Lana looks up tiredly. She’s smoking a cigarette.

  “I didn’t know you smoked,” Lily says.

  “So what?” Lana hands Tzion the cigarette.