The Death of a Kitten

          I was sitting on the steps of the flat we had rented for our stay in Istanbul, enjoying a cigarette and the cold weather that is so far from frequent in Israel. I had been in Israel for only four months at this point, and the heat and humidity bickered with one another like a pair of small children, both serving the same purpose of making me miserable. I was rather fond of the cold.

           The small street the flat was situated on was busy, with small vegetable stands, a few fantastic restaurants, and directly across from us, a barber shop. A man sat, smoking out front. A small cat, a kitten really, tried to run into the shop. He shooed it out. As it was running across the street, a car approached. The man gestured to the kitten, attempting to sway its course away from the car. I, along with this man, and a few others, watched the kitten's lower half disappear under the wheels of the car.

          This kitten had no concept of gravity, shit, it wasn't old enough to have ever been stepped on. It had no concept of the force of heavy objects weighing down, being pulled towards the earth. It had no concept of death or destruction. It took a few moments before it realized what had happened to it, and then it started to spasm. It mewled so pitifully as it died, claws splayed out in protest of what had already become unavoidable.

          It cried, and cried for three seconds that lasted dozens of decades. The man who felt like he had caused the death of this creature walked over and picked it up. He was joined by two other men. They sat, all three of them, petting this broken little creature until it died. The man, whom I couldn't understand, seemed to feel responsible for the death of a kitten. I could see the shame in his eyes, but how could he have known? How could he have known that a car would come at that very moment and weigh down upon a kitten who just wanted to go inside a barbershop?

           The principle of human existence is to ease the suffering of creatures, not excluding humans. As one causes suffering to others, one fails at the main facet of existence. These men, three burly mustachioed men, who exist in a culture that I perceive as holding a fair amount of machismo, stopped their lives for just a few moments to comfort a creature in the throws of death. Watching a kitten die was horrifying and upsetting. More upsetting was watching these three men attempt to comfort the death of something that couldn't possibly understand one of the oldest and most constant concepts of existing, while it performed just that.

          It was a very poignant moment for me, watching these men trying to comfort this beast. The only participant in this display of human empathy would perish within moments, and I couldn't help but ask myself if it made a difference. Of course it made a difference, as this kitten died, it was loved. It was a stray cat for perhaps the short few months of its life. If I had to guess, without any affection or care. I didn't know the personal details of this kitten, but given my observations of stray cats in general, its life couldn't have been much different.

           Yet, in its most important death, it found love. Temporary love, harbored only out of pity, but love nonetheless. Three humans showed compassion for a living thing, one of which was ashamed of his lack of such in the first place, stood there, petting this little fucking cat until it died. Until it died. It died. I put my cigarette out, and walked back inside, unable to truly grasp the gravity of the situation which had transpired. I'll never forget watching those three men trying to comfort something which couldn't understand the principle of comfort in the first place. Were their actions for the kitten?

The beginnings of a short work of fiction - a dream that I had.

This has nothing to do with Israel, teaching, but a lot to do with misanthropy. I had a dream a number of months ago and I would like to put it to paper. Here's the beginning. Line breaks should be indentation, but copy/paste doesn't work so nicely here. If you like it, that's awesome. If you hate it, that's awesome too: tell me why.

The atmosphere was as if somebody of had died of untreated cancer. The stench was as if they were a heavy smoker, living here, sad and alone, decades ago. Their life amounted to nothing but an endless column of ash falling from their fingertips which would never find others to intertwine. The walls, too, were pallid with years of untended dust. In this room, and an unfathomable amount of rooms just like this one, sat dozens of people, typing. Typing so furiously on archaic machines that reached their peak in a distant era, much like the imagined smoker who used them. They typed, and they typed. With vigorous fervor, typing madly, attempting to appease the voices which floated through the air.

“Can you hear me?”

“We're looking for you.”
“Just answer if you can hear us, we've been waiting for so long.”
Thousands and thousands of voices floated through the air, creating an anxious cacophony of sound impervious to the attempt of thought to block them from reaching every malleus in the room. They hammered ever so gently on each eardrum, turning the voices into a manifestation of consciousness which fueled the desperation in every occupant of these rooms.

“Answer me, I know you can.”

Despite the attempts, despite the sweat beading on every brow in unprecedented determination, they would never be able to reach the voices. Forever, for the rest of time, they would hear the voices of families and loved ones, calling out to them, pleading with them for contact. They would try, and they would try, and they would fail. They had no choice, this is what they were here to do.

There were many people in here, whom varied in their degrees of filth. There were petty thieves, drug dealers, and various other small time criminals. There were murderers and those who abused their children. There were rapists and pedophiles, those who ignored consent and prayed on the ignorance of the young. They all shared a common fate: an eternal and futile struggle to please a notion as abstract as a hammer translating vibration into sound through an eardrum. Their common fate, they would never satisfy, but they had to try.

There were some that have been here for hundreds of years, feverishly working through countless hours, fidgeting uneasily in their seats, hearing an influx of new voices every second. Beckoning to them, pleading with them, each voice providing a new sense of familiarity. Yet the familiar was not comforting to them, it only surfaced memories, feelings, and an idea of a time which was not so riddled with distress.

There were also those who had arrived just days before, who did not realize the futility in contacting the sources of the sounds that filled the room. They did not know that their determination would refuse to falter, they were unaware of the decades to come. They did not realize that they would spend the rest of time, hoping for a connection with the unimaginable. In this place, however, determination and distress were the only steadfast concepts.

There were women, men, and even some children who had been claimed at the time they should have been. Those little boys who tortured cats, the little girls who spread such vicious rumors that others they knew took their own lives. Nobody was exempt from this place, nobody was forgiven for their actions. They were brought here to suffer, to live in anxiety, confusion, and frustration. They were brought here to die, every moment, as they had once lived. Even the filthy, dirty, little children.

A man sat typing. He had lost track of how long he had been typing two decades ago. Such frantic years, with every moment spanning inconceivable heartbeats. His days and nights refusing to offer relief, with voices that refused to abate. A rotting rag lay next to his hands, covered in the sweat of generations. His hands were covered in his own. He perspired, breathing the stale air, reminded of the scent of his own apartment when he was alive.

“Henry, I'm looking for you.”

On Saturdays I typically sit around at the park and drink whiskey and play my guitar. This week, I forgot to bring alcohol. Anyway - I was just standing and playing and this little boy approached me and starting dancing. I started playing enthusiastically, and another group of children came over and all started dancing. This turned into a few hours of playing and singing. Since none of them speak English, I sang them an assortment of Cranford Nix, some Rudimentary Peni, and some Pat the Bunny songs. Intermittently, they wanted to try to strum. I would shape random chords while they would strum, and they went apeshit.They absolutely loved it, and we hung out until the sun went down and I got cold and wanted to go home.

What a lovely Saturday.

A Bath.

Walking through Istanbul, listening to a half-dozen languages, and seeing dozens more, the call to prayer sounds. I am stuck to the sidewalk, hearing an eerie, sad, and distant melody commanding those applicable to stop their day and bow their heads down to their god.

The cries of the Muezzin stop thoughts from flowing. The realization that I am in an entirely different land creeps through my core, and I look at the end of the sleeve of my leather jacket. I am holding a coca-cola. I finish drinking it, and light a cigarette. I sit down beneath an unnamed phallus that rises out of a square, and smoke. A testament to conquer, a testament to a fuck of the land. A man tries to sell me a banana.

We find the bath house we were looking for and walk in. The men are separated from the women, and we are taken to a small room to disrobe. Protected by miniscule towers, we head downstairs to enter the bath. As the door opens, a blast of heat and sweat emanate from the heated marble, coating my face and the inside of my lungs with hundreds of years of purification.

The domed ceiling of the bath house let in light, and air. It allowed the temperature to moderate, the hot air rising through the holes and allowing our breath to escape along with it. Shallow breaths, obscured by the intensity of the heated marble. I lay with my back against the hottest wall I have ever touched, and waited.
Quite patiently, and quite contentedly, breathing in the steam that rose from the ground. Listening to the water trickling quietly, roaring through marble amplification in the diminished aqua-ducts surrounding the massive marble slab in the center of the room.

We have payed a man for his body, so he could use his to clean ours. His name was Adem.
He entered the room and asked us to lay down on the slab, facing the holes in the roof of the dome.

He took out a pad and slowly started to work the dead away from my skin, ripping off pieces of old flesh to reveal a shining, new exterior that hadn't been exposed to the steam for years. With each pull, he stripped away parts of the past. He then asked that I lay face down, massaging my back, stripping it of more dead flesh. Tearing away pieces of tension that I buried deep inside my muscles.

Then he covered me in soap. Allowed the froth to work as oil, working more tension out of every inch of my body. As I sat up, he filled a bucket with water. I could hardly breathe, the heat working its way into my lungs, and the soap obscuring my nostrils such that I couldn't inhale.

I thought I would collapse.

Adem took a bucket, and started splashing tepid water all over my body. Tepid water that felt chilled, such that in comparison with the viscous heat rising from the floor, that offered such reprieve to my lungs and to my soul. For a brief moment in time, I felt the hatred that I carry so deep within my body turn frail, and seep out of my pores. Just a little. Each splash lifted the dead from my exterior,

We paid Adem for his body, and he cleansed ours. What he doesn't know is he stripped bits of my soul away, allowing a newer, cleaner soul to take its place, one with less tension, physical and unreal.

I walked out of the bath house, lit a cigarette, and bought another cola, and waited for the Muezzin's sounds to float through the air again.

Being so far from home and everything that is familiar is rather strange, and I find myself regularly trying to find things here that I can relate to back home.

The first step is to look at the local population. I find that, generally, there is an every person for themselves sentiment here, which translates as rude to me. I understand that people back home are rude as fuck, but they're subtle assholes. Not like here.
This brings me to two people that I've met here. These people embody the American ideal of community.
We have a neighbor, Shoshana. She sits on the steps out front of our apartment building with us every day, smoking cigarettes. Yet, every day, she cooks us food. None of us ever ask, or expect it, but every day she brings us a shitload of food. More than we can ever eat. Another member of our little 'Merica on the third floor asked her about it, to which she replied: "it makes my family feel bigger."
Shoshana knows everybody in the neighborhood by name. She knows who lives in our apartment building, despite the fact she lives in a neighboring complex. She brings strange characters that enter or exit our building up to us. This isn't in a paranoid manner, however. She just displays serious concern for the well being of her neighbors and their appetites. She provides the sense of American community that I never see back home. At least not where I'm from.

Then there is Ben. Ben is responsible for maintenance of the building.
Ben and I have had quite a few conversations and have become friends. A few weeks ago, I went to Tel Aviv. I took the train. I left my knife in my back pocket (where it usually lives) before departing. It didn't make it through security, so I stashed it in a trash can outside of the building as to not miss my train. I called Ben, and asked if he would try to find it. I mentioned that he was in no way, at all, obligated to look for it. Fuck man, I wouldn't dig through a strange trashcan for most people I know.
All it took was some asshole he barely knows to ask him to go out of his way to dig through a trashcan, and he did it.
He did me a serious favor, and refuses to take anything in return. I barely know this guy, and he dug through a trashcan for me.
I realize there are good people, along with bad, everywhere. It's just remarkable how quickly one can find either in each category in such a foreign place.
These two represent, to me, what we consider an idealized American community, yet it is so far away from home.

We live in a poor neighborhood. It isn't something that I'm unfamiliar with. In fact, I lived in a neighborhood in Santa Cruz which had me more worried than this one.
However, there is something to be said about low income populations here as opposed to the United States.
I realize that this is a horrible, sweeping generalization, but bear with me. In the 'Merica, a rather large percentage of the poorer population has no idea as to what is happening around them. Politically, they are uninformed, unaware, and couldn't tell you (just about) anything about international politics. I don't claim to be more informed than them, I happen to be one of the least informed individuals I know.
The poor population here, on the other hand, is the opposite. Every person I speak with has strong opinions on politics, both national and international. This notion stems from, I believe, the last time Jews as a population didn't examine a situation for what it was. I understand that this falls into the category of 'sweeping generalization' as well, but here it is. When Hitler rose to power before the war, Jews didn't take it seriously. German Jews, from my understanding, thought it would all blow over.
As we can see, history did not pan out that way. The last time Jews didn't consider the worst, millions died.
Now, the lives of every inhabitant of this nation are constantly under strife. Right now is a rather peaceful time, and there isn't open conflict with the surrounding nations. Yet this could change in an instant - Syria's tensions with the United States - and everything could get fucked. Hard.

Understanding political climates, political relationships (particularly those pertaining to the Middle East), and strife within nations is crucial to the survival of every person living here. They can see, from the past, that without the knowledge of what is happening around them, they die.
This is the biggest difference between the poorer populations of Israel and the United States.
It's pretty nice back there. The only people that want to kill you is all of you, rather than all of them. You is predictable.

So I've been in Israel for 45 days now.

Every day, something makes me sad. Nothing drastic, but I notice new things about my surroundings that are, well, fucking depressing. For example, every single day I see soldiers walking around. I expected that. I did not expect to see children in those uniforms.

There are kids that serve in the military here that I would ask to fuck off if they asked me for a cigarette had they not been in uniform. I wouldn't believe that these children are over eighteen years old. It's astonishing. I realize that eighteen year olds join the military in the United States regularly, but there is something about compulsory military service that I cannot get behind.
Israel, in the position its in, certainly needs compulsory service, and I understand that. Yet seeing these children walking around in uniform, sweating profusely from the heat (and the fact that they're kids and aren't built for this kind of shit), trying to balance a machine gun in one hand and an Iphone in the other to text whomever, is terrifying.

This is what really fucks up my day. I am teaching children English. We play simple word games, writing exercises, and various other things that I would refuse to do too. One of the classes is currently learning about British teenagers, and comparing themselves to such.

"What don't Israeli teenagers like?"
"Arabs."
"Why?"
"Because they try to 'boom-boom' all of us."

Maxim is ten years old.

We share three languages in common. Russian, Hebrew, and English. Between those three, we don't have a solid enough background in any of them to communicate fluidly. I cannot explain to him the importance in separating extremists from the population they are commonly associated with, and the implications on either side of a conflict with lumping populations into a single category. I hesitate to believe that anybody will correct him in this society, rather, they will fuel this fire. Maxim will join the army when he turns eighteen like many other children. He might die.

I look around at my classroom and my heart breaks. With the exception of those that enter social service rather than the military, the majority of these children will serve. Some of them will die, and I cannot believe that they don't already know that. In a society whose thoughts gravitate constantly towards war and conflict, these children know people who have died. They hear about it every day. A murder in the United States is nothing. This is a small country, that would fit quite nicely in between San Francisco and Los Angeles, in which people die constantly.

If there is one thing that I can do with my year here, it won't be to teaching English. My emphasis on language has passed. I now wish to communicate with my students in a manner in which I can explain to them the problems that are fueled by statements of "Because they try to 'boom-boom' all of us."