While Trying to Read on a Train

On the train sometime back,
brought my journal. Forgot my pen. Shit. Oh well, here goes from memory:

Danny apologizes to Etty via phone, "Sor-ry, Etty, lousy connection on this train, see..."

A buxom woman, Michal, sits directly in front of me, juggling phone calls from lover(s) on one cell and workmates on the other. Her voice alternates from cooing to bitchy by the minute.

Nissim sits across the isle horizontally, taking up three of four seats in his compartment--two seats on his side, see, with one foot perched diagonally onto the third. Says to his Pops so loud that the whole car can hear him, "Pops, what d'you want from me? Next time you bring the goods to us!" All the while the Hareidi fellow sits cornered by the diagonal foot in the fourth seat of the compartment, none too pleased, just judging by the look on his face.

Michal and Nissim, when not on the phone, seem to be in a never ending duel of who can twiddle their fancy device faster than the other, though odds are they don't know it, as they never make eye contact with each other. A pity, as they probably would have hit it off. Or maybe not--everybody knows both parties in a relationship can't have too big a head, it leads to too much fight for space and podium, see.

All the while Sari's three children, God knows what their names are, have not stopped running down the isles, screaming, ducking, jumping, and crying. But mostly just screaming. It is, after all, Purim, and they are excited.

And the Thai foreign worker continues to shout what seem to be obscenities at someone on the other line, overshadowing the teenage soldier speaking quietly in Spanish to who knows who (a lover? a mother?), in an accent I try for 15 minutes to identify but in the end can only determine is not Colombian.

And although I am initially frustrated by the raucous chatter on this late afternoon Direct from Be'er Sheva to Haifa, I don't hold it against any of my co-passengers. After all, it is Purim, and I am going to Haifa to see my old stomping grounds, to be with old friends, and to be right ole merry.