Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

Love,

Modi

P.S. (I remembered something important.) What’s happening with Hapoel? The last time you filled me in, we were in fifth place. How far down have we gone since then?

*

I have an exam, Amir said. But you promised, I reminded him in my most poor-me voice. Besides, this is the last time Hapoel is playing at Teddy this year! No it isn’t, he said, trying to argue with me, there’s still the state cup games. You’re wrong, I insisted, even if both teams get to the semi-finals, the game’ll be in Ramat Gan, not Jerusalem. You know what, he said, you’re right, but I still didn’t think he was convinced, so I thought the word ‘yes’ really hard like I used to do when I wanted Gidi to take me to a game. I’d repeat the word ‘yes’ in my mind four straight times. And Amir really did smile and say OK, but on one condition, and I thought he was going to say that I had to behave better in school because it was hard enough for my mother and father as it was. But instead, all he said was, I want you to swear that you won’t tell anyone in the stands that I’m a Hapoel fan, or else I’m a goner. I laughed, put my hand on my shirt pocket and said OK, I swear. On Saturday, wearing my black trousers and yellow shirt and the scarf he bought me, I knocked on the door and Noa opened it and said, we’ve been waiting for you, and asked me to come in. Today’s the big day, isn’t it, she said. Amir suddenly popped out from behind her and said, yes, today’s the big day for Shalom Tikvah, three-nil for Hapoel thirty minutes into the game. You wish, I said, three-nil for Beitar, three goals for Ohana. Noa said, you’re both losers, and Amir started jumping and singing, ‘He’s a loser, he’s a loser, he’s a loser’. I sang along with him, waving my scarf around my head like a cowboy, and Noa said, I have to get this on film. I thought that was a cool idea, and I started posing for the camera, holding my scarf stretched out between my hands like on TV, but Amir suddenly stopped jumping and said in a not very nice tone, you don’t have to photograph everything, you can just remember. Noa got insulted and said, OK, I won’t bother you, and went into the kitchen. All of a sudden, I remembered the note she wrote to him about how, lately, their words get tangled up, and I wanted to make peace between them. Right then and there, I wanted to make them link their fingers and make up, but I thought that if I couldn’t do it with my parents, why should I be able to do it with them. So I decided to forget the idea and said to Amir, are we going? Come on, he said, and opened the door. He didn’t say goodbye to Noa, so I said it for him, bye, and Noa yelled from the kitchen, have a good time! Then he said thanks, but a weak, fake kind of thanks, and hurried me out the door, saying so what are you waiting for? I was already thinking, is this how he’s going to act all day? What a downer. But the minute we got into the car, he went right back to being nice. He turned on the radio and said, I’m really in the mood for football now. You scored on this one, Yotam, it’s a great idea. You know the last time I went to a game? Five years ago, the derby between Hapoel and Maccabee. We lost four-nil. And I said, Beitar won in the last game I saw. They beat Maccabee Haifa two-nil. And Gidi was still alive then, I thought, I still had a brother then. As if he was reading my mind, Amir asked, who’d you go with, Gidi? I said yes and remembered how Gidi would always ignore me on the way to the game because he didn’t want his friends to think he was a nerd. But the minute we walked into the stadium, he’d forget that and say, listen up, Yoti, from now on, you don’t leave my side, and he’d give me his hand and make a path for me through the crowd and make sure I had a place to sit and no one pushed me. Once, when some tough guy stepped on me by accident, he grabbed him by the collar and said, hey moron, watch where you’re going. The tough guy poked him and they started shoving each other. Everyone in the stands stood up to see. But right then, Harazi scored a goal for Beitar and everyone was so happy that they jumped up and hugged each other, even Gidi and the tough guy, and Gidi said to him, the main thing is that we win the championship. And the tough guy said, and the state cup too.

*

He’s remembering Gidi now. I know what colour his eyes are when that happens. I don’t know whether to comfort him, to coax out the memory or change the subject. So I keep quiet. At times like this, I think that our relationship is a little risky. After all, I’ll leave the Castel in the end. And then what? Isn’t it enough that Gidi disappeared on him, do I have to disappear on him too? Enough, I flog myself and cross another traffic light, you can’t let fear of separation determine everything.

Park here, on the pavement, Yotam suggests.

Isn’t it a little too far? I wonder.

Everything closer is taken, he says with the confidence of someone who’s been here a lot.

Once, I remember, I took a girl to the beach at night and at a certain point she stopped and kissed me and pulled me under some thatched shelter. Something about her movements, something about how confidently she spread the blanket under us told me that she was recreating what had happened before, right there, with someone else.

This way is shorter, Yotam says, pulling me along a side path, and I obey. We are carried along towards the stadium on a huge wave of fans. We’re surrounded by big flags around us, hats and scarves. All of them yellow and black. But still, I start to feel the thrill of the excitement I used to feel when I was surrounded by Hapoel red flags, hats and scarves.

Wanna buy sunflower seeds? I suggest. But he feels more like an ice lolly. A yellow one, right? What else. I buy him a lemon ice lolly and a raspberry one for myself so I can have at least one red thing after I left all the others at home.

Someone practises playing his zambura , and the crowd shoving its way to the ticket booth answers with a weak ‘olé’. We already have tickets. I bought them on Thursday so we wouldn’t have to queue and get pushed and shoved. But there’s a huge crowd trying to push through the gate too, so I put Yotam in front of me and wrap my arms around him to protect him. How thin he is, I think. How fragile and full of bones. We move ahead slowly. Brakes. A step. Brakes. The policemen are stressed out after all the recent terrorist attacks and spend hours checking everyone who goes in. Yallah, odrob , come on, move it, the game’s starting soon, complains a father whose son is perched on his shoulders. What do you want from them, they’re only doing their job, a pair of identical twins standing behind him have a go at him. I wonder what Yotam and I look like to them, the thought flashes through my mind. Father and son? Brothers?

The guy taking tickets takes my two and tears them. The way they tear football tickets reminds me of the way a son whose father has died tears his shirt to symbolise a heart broken in anguish, and I shove the tickets right down into my pocket.

We go inside.

The fans’ songs resound strongly now, shaking the concrete walls and the heart. Confetti rain is falling on us from nowhere, washing away all thoughts. There’s no club. No Noa. No itch. Football is such pure fun.

Yotam breaks free of my grasp and runs up the steps. I skip after him and roar silently: Go reds go! Go reds go!

*

That’s the really cool thing — when you go up the steps and all of a sudden you see the whole field and the fans sitting in the stands on the other side and the players warming up. Like in Eilat, when you go into the water with your snorkel and — boom! you see all the fish and coral all at once.

There are no Hapoel fans here at all, Amir said, standing next to me. I put a finger on my lips to remind him he’s at Teddy. Right, he said, slapping himself on the forehead. Then he whispered in my ear, you have to teach me a few of your songs fast so they don’t figure out what I am. There’s the song, ‘O-hana’, I started to explain to him, and while I was talking, he led us to two empty seats in the middle of the stands. A tall guy was sitting in front of us and Amir asked him to change seats with his friend because ‘the kid’, which was me, couldn’t see. Moshe Sinai walked past under the VIP stand on his way to the HaPoel bench and all the fans got up and sang rude songs at him. Amir smiled at me, but I could see that he was a little pissed off about it. Then the fans unfurled a huge flag from the bottom of the stands to the top, each one grabbing the edge and passing it to the person behind him. It was dark under the flag, and hot and smelly. Amir bent over and whispered in my ear, I don’t believe that I’m under a Beitar flag. Next time, we go to Bloomfield. Fine, I said, happy that there was a ‘next time’ in our plans.