The Pillars of Hercules

I was then subjected to the most intense and prolonged interrogation and suitcase search it has been my experience to receive in thirty-four years of traveling. This time I was not rescued by a helpful bookworm who knew my name. Instead, I was made to wait. And then I was questioned. Why had I gone to Turkey? Whom did I know there? Whom did I visit there? Where had I stayed? These specifics were noted. The same questions were asked of my time in Syria and Jordan. Then I was taken to a side room. My suitcase was gone through a third time, by a new official. He pointed to a plastic chair.

“Sit down.”

“If you say please.”

“Sit down!”

“I find this very unpleasant,” I said after two hours in the chair, when the man returned with my passport.

Another man began trawling through my little bag. I stood up to stretch.

“Sit down!”

I was then summoned to receive my passport. I said, “What do you think?”

“I don’t sink nossing.”

“Know what I think?” I said. “I don’t like being treated like this.”

“No one likes,” he said sourly. He hated me for my impertinence. He hated his job. He hated the Palestinians. He hated his life in a country where everyone is a possible terrorist and where life in this state of siege is a turbulent and terrifying nuisance.

The disgust and pessimism is so palpable that after a dose of it, the Sea Harmony shipload of shouting boasting Greeks, swaggering on deck and plucking at their private parts and smoking and guzzling ouzo and snarling at each other, was peaceful by comparison.

The Mediterranean War Report: Fighting in Turkey—Turks against Kurds; fighting in Bosnia—Serbs against Bosnian Muslims; fighting in Algeria—most recent death toll, forty thousand in the past three years, ten thousand of them since I had started my trip. The Israelis were shelling south Lebanon and continuing a blockade of south Lebanese ports and fishing grounds; the terrorists of Hamas were continuing their suicide missions against Israelis in Hebron and Gaza—and Israelis were answering each attack with one of their own. And a standoff between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus.

The Sea Harmony was headed to Greek Cyprus, steaming out of Haifa and its hill of lights. I was sitting at the stern, with my feet jammed against the rail. A man approached and stood a bit too close to me.

“Excuse me,” the man inquired. “Are you Guy Lupowsky?”

He had a plump pink face and a potbelly, and he stood awkwardly, his short arms hanging. He wore a gray suit, but it was rumpled; and a shirt and tie, but they were soup-stained. He said “Lupowsky” in a slurping and delicious lisp, all spittle and slush.

I said no, I was not Guy Lupowsky.

“I am sorry. I see you and I fink you is him. Classical guitarist from Belgium. I am a musician. I play Jewish.” He said the words “musician” and “Jewish” as though he were masticating the wet pulpy segment of a juicy orange.

After every few words he swallowed. His English reflected the way he was dressed. It was well intentioned and almost formal in many respects, like his suit and tie, but also like his suit and tie it was mangled and at times comic.

He introduced himself as Sam—that is, Shmuel—Spillman. He said he divided his time equally between Belgium and Israel, going back and forth, nearly always on the Sea Harmony on this leg, and the rest by Italian ferries and trains. He did not have a home in either country, nor even an apartment. “I get a room, just a small one. A big one confuses me. I rent a room by the week in Tel Aviv, and another one in Brussels. I cannot own a place. That would confuse me.”

In a sense he was the ultimate voyager, shuttling across the Mediterranean from Brussels to Tel Aviv and back. He had no permanent home—he did not want one. He had few possessions, he said; they rattled him. What to do with them? He had his music and his mother. That was enough, said Spillman.

“I cannot stay with my mother, or there will be trouble. She is very rich but we quarrel. She makes problems. Is better that I get a room and visit her. I have some presents for her.” He thought a moment. And he slurped and lisped the spattering word, “Chocolates.”

“How do you decide when to stay and when to go?” I asked.

“It is the sunshine,” he said.

“You like sunny weather?”

“I need sunshine,” he said, and the word on his tongue was like a gum-drop. “For my depression.”

“I see.”

“I need to come here.”

But “here” was far astern to the east, for we had plunged seaward, and the lights of Haifa were just a little row of lighted dots that made a yellow horizontal line across the night. Israel was that perforation in the darkness.

“For my depression I need the sunshine, and I need the Jews,” Spillman said. “I am very Jewish.” He swallowed and went on, “I am very, very Jewish.”

“So you visit Israel when you get depressed in Brussels?” I said. “But when do you visit Brussels?”