I'm safely in Israel now, in the northern city of Haifa working on a video project here for the Baha'i International Community. And it's strange to be here, or rather, it's strange to be back here. I've been here so often in the past few years it's a second home for me now. Which of course is a little strange since I don't speak a word of Hebrew...
But as you all watch the news of Suicide bombings and helicopter-gunship missile strikes, you should think of me, sitting in a traffic jam in the heat of a beautiful October afternoon on the Mediterranean coast trading stories with my South African co-worker. She's been here since July and shared the following little traffic story from a couple of months ago: She was sitting in the back of a taxi in a giant jam on a blistering summer day and everyone was edgy and hot and wanting to be anywhere but where they were. And a truckdriver who had, no doubt, reached the end of his tether started honking his giant truck horn. Brrrrraaaaa Brrraaaaa Brrraaaaaa. Of course, nothing happened when he honked his horn except that everyone around him got even more edgier and annoyed, but it obviously made him feel better because he kept doing it: Brrrrraaaaa Brrraaaaa Brrraaaaaa.
Suddenly, a young Israeli guy with no shoes and some scruffy cut-off shorts jumped out of his dumpy little compact car that was parked right next to this monster dump truck in this sea of glistening, blistering cars. And he started to jump up and down in front of the monster truck, trying to get the attention of the grouchy truck driver. And this went on for a bit: Brrrrraaaaa jump-jump-wave Brrraaaaa jump-wave-jump Brrraaaaaa jump-jump Brraa Braaa wave-jump Brrrraaaaaaa
Finally the truck driver glances down and notices this little man jumping and waving and gesturing madly far below him. And he stops honking and rolls down his window and the little Israeli guy yells up to him and continues to make strange gestures and dances around a bit and the whole time keeps glancing back to his own little dumpy car.
The truck driver leans out his window and stares. Then he smiles. Then he starts to laugh. And the two of them sit in the middle of this enormous, endless tangle of cars and laugh at the jam and the heat and the Brrraaa Brrraaa Brrraaa and the jump-jump-jump and the little joke that they've just shared.
And the little Israeli man dashes back to his little car and the truck driver rolls his window back up and sits quietly watching the cars grumbling around him. Pretty soon the cars begin to crawl, then they begin to disperse and the truck driver opens his window again and waves after his friend and another hand stretches out of the dumpy little car as it pulls away.
At this point my friend, who watched this whole exchange from the back seat of a taxi, leaned forward and asked the taxi driver what the two men had said to each other.
"Well, the horn was so loud you know. And that guy that jumped out of his car didn't want the Brrraaa Brrraaaa Brrraaaaa to wake up his baby daughter who was asleep in the back seat."