The Old Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv

It's my second-to-last day in Israel and since I have been so (happily) busy visiting with family, I haven't had time to buy gifts for my Chinese friends. This is part of Chinese culture and I am more than happy to give my friends here a taste of Israel. Funny, once I bought gifts for friends and family in the States and most of them told me lovingly, "You don't need to get us gifts!" Ah, cultural differences.

I've been hanging out with my mother, sister, and grandmother and we've just arrived in Tel Aviv. We have plans to visit with more family in the afternoon and I'm afraid that since the shops close on Friday afternoon until Saturday evening for the sabbath (in Hebrew, "Shabbat") that I won't be able to buy any gifts. At about six, after we say goodbye to our family who lives in Tel Aviv, I start my search for a place to buy some typical Israeli gifts.

Everything is closed. When I ask a shopkeeper of a convenience store if there are any places where I can buy these gifts, he smiles with a look that says "you are basically screwed" and says I'll have to wait until shabbat is over. He does suggest though, that I head to where the old bus station is, about a twenty-minute walk away.

I take a cab there and it is packed. There is a main pedestrian walkway filled with shops selling used cellphones, small restaurants, and vendors lining the streets. Unfortunately, I find that there are no places selling gifts. I realize that I might need to just buy my gifts at the airport tomorrow and I decide to just enjoy this promenade.

The area, I notice, is full of immigrants. Lots of Ethiopians, Russians, Filipinos, and Chinese. I stop a Chinese man in his thirties and start talking to him in Chinese. I ask him how life is for him in Israel. He says it's hard, that right now jobs are hard to find. He's from Fujian and works in construction. As we are talking several other Chinese guys start watching us, amazed that I am speaking Chinese. I start "interviewing" them, too.

They're from small villages from Fujian and Jiangsu and they're doing the same thing their friends are doing in Shanghai and Beijing--here for a few years saving up money for their families. To them, Israel is just Western culture--very different from what they know. They miss home.

I continue walking on the crowded street. Russians are sitting at plastic tables in front of small restaurants drinking and talking loudly.

There is a guy who has set up a small table with three cups and a foam ball. He is playing a cup game and people are crowded around, placing money on top of cups after he shuffles them around. He's got a strong Russian accent he's a born performer. You do what you gotta do to survive.

I know what he's doing. He gets people hooked and confident and then takes all their money. He's a pro.

I continue walking to the end of the street and notice that someone has called my cellphone, a missed call alert. It is my cousin Shlomi, who I am supposed to see tomorrow because he has to work late this evening. I call him back and he asks me where I am. I tell him I am near the old Tahana Mercazit, the old Central Bus Station. He starts laughing. "You're in the worst and most dangerous place in Tel Aviv, full of poor immigrants!"

As we talk I turn around and suddenly it hits me. I am standing in the old bus station! It has mostly been demolished, but you can see most of the concrete structures, the islands where people would wait for buses, perhaps ten lanes. I think it used to be covered, but that is gone and it is all exposed and deteriorated.

I am suddenly taken to the past. Twenty years ago. I was just a teenager. I never really knew Tel Aviv, except for the bus station. I was working in the south, in Kiryat Gat, and I would transfer here on my way to see my family in Haifa. Or, I was younger and was traveling around Israel to see the sights, perhaps to go to Masada or Eilat.

I can see the old bus station clearly, how alive it was with all the people, all the buses. And I remember the small shops facing the bus station where I could buy cassette tapes. I remember looking for a Shlomo Artzi double cassette (Hom Yuli August) and when I told the young shopkeeper it was too expensive and walked away, he called me back. He affectionately slapped me on my face, like a cousin, and said, "Okay, okay, hamud, it's yours!"

Standing here, I am in shock, like I am visiting an old holy place, and I mention this to Shlomi. We were both teenagers then, and the best part of visiting Haifa was seeing him and hanging out with his friends. Shlomi was like my older brother. I was a "good" kid, the smart kid in class. I won the big spelling bee. Shlomi was the daredevil. Surfer. Into fast cars and going to discos. Living life on the edge. I learned a lot from him.

Now, he's a trader and works for one of the largest banks in Tel Aviv. He tells me to look up and look for the tallest building. I look up and read the words on the tallest building I can find. He says that's it, that's where his office is. He wants me to come over and see his office and then join him for dinner.

So, I do. I walk about ten minutes and go to the 22nd floor, where my cousin Shlomi and I are reunited.

His office is full of computers showing stock quites and showing the business news in English. We take a walk to a nearby sushi restaurant and I admire how beautiful Tel Aviv is. It's a warm spring evening and people sit on benches and cafes chatting as their weekends begin. Shlomi tells me more about his new life in Tel Aviv and I tell him about my life in China.

The evening winds down and we go and get my things from the hotel and he takes me back where I'll get my things. I'll stay with him and his family during my last hours in Israel.

I haven't gotten my gifts yet for my Chinese friends (I'll have to wait for tomorrow, when we visit the namal, the port of Tel Aviv), but now I know why I was magically brought to the old bus station, where I found some other kinds of gifts...