Stranger than fiction

There is absolutely no logic in buying a new car in Israel. Most roads are ridiculously narrow -- at least by North American standards (which is where I learned to drive). Bumping into other people's car is a daily experience and not worthy of a second glance. Squeezing through impossibly small spaces is a challenge to be attacked with enthusiasm. A Mazda 6 costs as much as a 5-series Beemer in the US. Israeli driving mentality does not scream: "Hey you should get a new car" but rather, "Go ahead, get a new car. I dare you."

So, to make a long story short, last week we bought a newer car. In fact, it is just a newer model of the car we sold the week before. My husband wanted a bigger, nicer car but I had to nix that plan immediately because .... well, I know me and nothing good could have happened to the car he was dreaming of.

Maybe if we left it in the driveway all day and I took a cab to the grocery store, the health club, the corner market, and to do my weekly errands. Now that I am typing this out, it dawns on me that that might have been his plan. Of course, that would have only worked for a week at most until the car needed gas -- my husband doesn't do gas. In some unspoken perception of our life, he believes that the gas station is one of my responsibilities.

Back to the point. He found a car on Yad Shtayim (a second hand everything web-site). Sounds straightforward. But it wasn't because this is Israel, and straightforward is not a tenable concept here. Israelis are circuitous, which is how we ended up in Tel Aviv transferring the ownership of the car from it's previous owner, back to the leasing company from which he got it, to us. I've barely scratched the surface of this story and it is already complicated.

We naively arrived at the leasing company parking lot thinking that we would wrap this transaction up within an hour (that included 30 minutes for Israeli craziness). You would think that after living here for 12 years we wouldn't be such idiots -- wrong.

We entered the leasing company depot at 10:00 am on a bright and sunny day and the first thing we noticed is that it was dark .... because there was what is kindly -- but incorrectly -- known here as a Hafsakat Hashmal. An electricity break. Sounds voluntary and pleasant doesn't it? Yeah, sure, that's what everyone in this wired world wants in the middle of the work day -- a break from electricity. In fact it was a brown-out and the employees at the depot had no real idea when it would end.

Yes, a depot employee did call the Electric Company but it is also a known fact that Israelis just toss out arbitrary information for the hell of it so you can't base decisions on anything they say. It could be an hour, or it could be four. Read between the lines: Customer service is not a concept that has reached the shores of the Mediterranean yet. It probably never will.

Oh, did I mention that my husband had scheduled his business day to include a noon meeting in Jerusalem which required him to take the rental car we were driving and leave me potentially carless in TA? His thinking made perfect sense -- if he lived in maybe Switzerland or Germany where being timely is the 11th Commandment.

The minutes in the dark were ticking by, and everyone in the Sales-Purchase relationship was trying to think up ways around the problem that did not include someone having to trust a stranger for fear of being taken. There is no worse insult you can throw at an Israel than being a fryer (sucker).

My husband was pacing because he had to get on the road. And the depot employees were all ordering lunch take-out because they couldn't (read: wouldn't) get any work done in the dark. Our little dilemma wasn't even on their radar. (BTW, I did notice that not one of them was in desperate need of a meal.)

Finally my husband just had to leave and I knew he was thinking: "Oh Lord what can she possibly do to screw this up when I am not here." HA, he had no faith!

Minutes after he left my new partner in crime (the seller) and I decided that the only way anyone was going to get on with the day was if we made a conscious decision to be decent human beings and take a chance on each other. Trust is not a default instinct in this part of the world.

After spending almost two hours with him in the dark he didn't seem like such a stranger anymore so ... off we went by foot and then cab to the bank to complete the transaction. By the time we did so and then walked back to the leasing depot we pretty much knew all the pertinent details of each other's lives and were planning our next get together (okay, that last part was not true; I was making a point).

But most important, when we arrived back at the depot the bloody electricity was working and everything was back to Israeli normal. It took approximately 15 minutes to complete the paperwork, get the keys, wave good-bye and head home knowing that I had just had a very Israeli experience with a stranger.