There is this young Russian architect from Ashqelon called Natalia. She is intelligent and hardworking, and calls me when she needs help in some special water problem. We work through telephone and the internet (autocad mostly), and in dozens of projects, we never had the opportunity to meet. In our long phone consultations I tried to turn to personal issues: are you married? do you have children? and so on, but she politely stays focused on the professional matter. On Friday, I sent her a mail with some project drawing and added that I am attaching my pic (above) so she can recognize me if we happen to meet.
She was supposed to call me yesterday but she didnt, so today I called her. Her voice had changed, she sounded inhibited and stammering like a teenager, she was unable to focus her mind and answer me cooly and profesionally as she always does, she was - obviously - under heavy emotional stress. The girl was feeling something toward "me"!
Of course I told her that it had been a joke, the person in the pic is the actor Gregory Peck and not me, I am a fat old fart. I felt her confusion. She murmured something and closed the phone.
I thought I was making an innocent prank, but she was hurt. Why did I do it? I dont know. After an active life, I have left the scene to the young, and I am now retired. My eyes and imagination still may be hungry, but I realize that I wouldnt know what to do if given the chance. Yet, my inner J escapes and makes me do these things.
10 comments:
Fortunately or unfortunately, the inner man never dies. My father-in-law is pushing 90 and wears diapers. And yet, he is constantly making remarks about pretty girls that he sees, etc. - some of the things that he says are inappropriate and even shocking because his mind is no long 100% and he has lost some of the inhibitions on his tongue that most people have. I suppose I sometimes (usually) have the same thoughts but I keep them to myself and don't share them with everyone in the room.
I would not worry about Natalia - I assume that she was smart enough to know that the man in this old black & white photo was not you. Even now you are probably misreading what she is thinking (God knows what she is really thinking - knowing what other people (especially women) are thinking is as hard as guessing the stock market - better to have a gorilla tell you). I have learned, however, not to make jokes with people from different cultures. Every culture has its own ideas about what is funny vs. what is insulting and the humor rarely travels well. Also it is best to maintain professional relationships on a professional level, especially with someone like Natalia who was clearly not comfortable in mixing her personal life with the professional. But I suppose you already realize this yourself and don't need a lecture from me.
K
And one other thing - email is a particularly bad medium for making jokes. When we speak to each other in person there are all sorts of verbal and visual cues as to what your words are intended to mean but these are missing in email. The little "emoticons" such as the smiley :-) are intended to restore some of the missing cues but still fall far short.
Plus in person Natalia would have know right away that you don't look like Gregory Peck. I like the name you gave the jpeg file.
K
I know, I know, one should be very careful when relating to a person of a different culture, I know that from my experiences in the Army, when during a rain I urinated on Mother Earth and a Neanderthalish Dagestani fellow armed to his teeth felt insulted. Anyway, thank you for comparing me to your 90 year old alte pisser. My own inhibitions are certainly weaker than before, although they were never too strong. The problem is that I keep eyeing and provoking young women, while I am fully conscious of the sad fact that I am not up to their sparkling energy anymore. Several times I ran away when they did show interest and I can tell you that there is nothing more dangerous than a woman who has been trapped into asking for love and then is rejected. Being an only and pampered wunderkind, self inhibition was always my weak side. On the other hand, having less fear of the opinion of others had its positive side, like taking the lead when others were uncertain of themselves.
Hopefully you have a good long way until you join the ranks of the alte kakers (after your 100th birthday at least) and I did not mean to put you in their league just yet, but merely to show that even then the old urges do not abate. So there is no need to thank me. I think of you as being in my generation - the post-war generation (though I am a bit younger - born in 1956) so if you are an alte kaker then I am not too far behind myself.
One of the things that my mother told me when she was herself elderly is that all your life you feel just like yourself. The world may see you as a boy or a handsome young man or a fat and ugly old man (I don't think of myself as old or fat but my 15 yr. old daughter tells me all the time how old and fat I am) but you always conceive of yourself as the same "Ani" no matter how old you are.
I will remember never to piss on the ground in front of a Dagestani - one never knows when such information comes in handy. Where exactly does a Dagestani relieve himself when in the field?
K
Unfortunately I never met another another Dagestani since my tironut (basic training) in the old Jordanian camp of Kedumim. I have left that important issue to be studied by future anthropologists. It may be the subject of a Ph.D. dissertation.
Was the Dagestani from the Caucasus, and was he a Jew? I'm so confused.
J can answer for sure, but I assume yes, since this was basic training for the Israeli Army. Yes, there was a Jewish population in the Caucasus, the so-called Mountain Jews who had their own distinct culture. Many have emigrated to Israel.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Jews
There is a hardly a corner of the globe where Jews did not once live, but the 20th century saw more movement of Jews than any since the 1st. On the one hand, this meant the creation of Israel, OTOH, the end of many Jewish communities that had existed for hundreds or thousands of years. For the most part these communities were relatively small compared to the vast Jewish population of Eastern Europe - on the eve of the Holocaust, 90% of the world's Jews were Ashkenazim, so naturally we think of the E. European Jew as being "typical". But there were small (and not so small) Jewish communities scattered across the globe in unlikely places - China, India, Africa. After hundreds or thousands of years, they came to resemble the local population in customs and even race. In some cases they eventually dissolved into the local population and/or lost most of their Jewish customs. In others, they retained a distinctive culture and remained true to standard Jewish religious observance.
K
Thanks K. There are many different Jewish communities in the Caucasus, such as the Georgian Jews and the Tat Jews from Daghestan. The Tats are from a particularly savage part of the mountains, living in isolated autonomous villages as small ethnic islands. When the Soviet Union collapsed, and the peoples of the Caucasus started to fight among themselves, these small communities immigrated to Israel en masse. After the first years of cultural shock (which was mutual), they adapted very well to Israel and form part of the broad mass of Jewish proletariat and infantry soldiers we need. They are not Ashkenazi but speak some kind of Persian language. I want to add that we are having a small trickle of Jewish descendants coming from Kaifeng and Western China.
I'm not surprised that the Caucasian Jews adapted well to Israel. Although they were isolated somewhat from the modern world, their social structure as autonomous villagers meant that they did not have the goles mentality that infected many of the Ashkenazim whose livelihood and identity were based on being a minority among a larger (and less intelligent) population. Many of the old lefties that founded Israel were better at talking about the proletariat than they were at being real proletarians, better at writing essays extolling the virtues of the working class than at actually working.
But people from village cultures are unafraid of hard work and can do quite well in a society that rewards such work.
K
Also Caucasian Jews find nothing strange in that they are surrounded by ethnic conflict and their neighbors try to destroy them. They are good soldiers.
I think you are wrong about Ashkenazi Jews being afraid of hard work. I work in many factories and farms and there they are manning the tractors and the machines. What is more surprising is that I find everywhere Oriental Jews and even Ethiopians working very hard. Also the Arabs work non-stop. I have been in many countries and I have never seen people working so hard like the Israelis. No doubt the English and the Germans know how to work, but here you see third-world people working in the plants and I dont know how they (the founders of this country) made them (us) to work so hard. Maybe it is because most of us are first generation immigrants, or because of the ethnic rivalry.
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