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October 2006

19 Hours and 20 minutes… in Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station

Carl Hoffman
Photography by Abba Richman

5:35 a.m.
It’s Sunday, August 13th. I’m sitting in a big green, oppressively over-air conditioned Egged commuter bus rolling through the empty streets of Tel Aviv, headed toward the Tachanat Mercazit Chadasha, the New Central Bus Station. Covering nearly 11 acres, it’s reputed to be the world’s largest bus depot. When it opened its doors in 1993, it was called “a white elephant,” “an urban planning disaster,” “a gigantic concrete bunker” and “the epicenter of urban blight,” among other compliments. It’s a cavernous, multilevel colossus festooned with escalators, ramps and stairways as far as the eye can see. Seven floors hold more than 1,000 shops, restaurants, stands and kiosks; God knows how many small offices, a number of them empty and unrentable; two synagogues that I know of; almost 30 escalators (of which maybe 10 actually work); 13 passenger and freight elevators—not to mention four levels of local and intercity bus platforms. Originally designed in the mid-1960s, its construction was delayed for more than two decades by money shortages, neighborhood opposition, political battles and an endless cascade of lawsuits. The station represents a bygone era of urban renewal at its worst.
Love is blind, however, and I happen to think that the New Central Bus Station is beautiful. Perhaps no place else in Israel offers as much to see, hear, smell, taste and touch—and so many moods and sensations. Here you have the whole of Israel under one vast roof.

5:59 a.m.
My bus from Raanana, a northern suburb of Tel Aviv, claws its way up a long, winding ramp and drops off its sleepy passengers at an entrance to the intercity bus terminal on the sixth floor. I walk stiffly toward the end of a short but slow-moving security line. Queuing with me are two early-bird commuters; one mumbling old lady schlepping a battered two-wheeled shopping cart; three young soldiers—two boys, one girl—toting backpacks and M-16s; an attractive young woman in very short shorts and a tank-top that exposes two colorful tattoos on a suntanned midriff; and an ultra-Orthodox Chabadnik whose eyes are riveted on a small black prayer book in his right hand as he resolutely denies himself a glance at the stunning girl. Instead, he rocks back and forth in prayer, his left hand clenched in a tight fist.

The security guard waves the three young soldiers through; the rest of us wait patiently for our turn to be searched. My two teenaged kids, Daniel in the army and Rachel still in high school, are part of the “Age of Terrorism” generation and cannot believe that it was once possible to stroll casually up to a public place, open the door and just go in. They cannot comprehend that one could do this at airports, shopping malls, banks, schools, hospitals, libraries, post offices, cafés, theaters—even government buildings. When we moved to Israel in 1997, people simply walked into this bus station without being frisked.

6:05 a.m.
My musing ends abruptly as I reach the security guard. About 20 years old, no doubt fresh out of the army, she is reed-thin and stands around five feet tall. Her long hair is in dreadlocks, numerous hoops and studs adorn both ears, a gold nose-ring glints and sparkles above her left nostril and a small tattooed cross shows faintly in the very dark brown skin of her forehead. Like most of the station’s security guards these days, she is Ethiopian. A few years back, these guards were mostly Russian immigrants, but the Russians “moved up,” leaving many of their old jobs to be filled by the more recent arrivals from Ethiopia. The guard opens my backpack, pokes and prods, runs a scanner up and down my body, motions me into the building with a sullen jerk of her thumb. I smile at her and say in my best, albeit American-accented Hebrew, “Yom tov lach, achot sheli” (“A good day to you, my sister”). She stares at me wide-eyed for a moment, breaks into a dazzling smile and replies, “V’gam lecha, motek!” (“And to you, too, sweetheart”).

6:30 a.m.
Usually I race through here later in the morning on my way to the office, so rarely do I see the sixth floor intercity bus terminal so eerily empty. Today, however, I am going nowhere but here and have all day. I get myself a nice hot, fresh-out-of-the-oven bagel, a schmear of cream cheese and a cup of black coffee and look for a hard iron bench to hunker down on. As I consume my breakfast, young soldiers are pouring out of buses, taxis and parents’ cars in a hurry. Within minutes, the terminal has been enveloped by a wave of olive green.

Israel, as every guidebook solemnly relates, is a small country. It is, in fact, small enough for the young men and women who fight wars in Gaza and Lebanon to come home on the weekend, usually with enormous duffel bags stuffed with dirty clothes for the warriors’ moms to tend to. On Sunday, the start of Israel’s work week, they’re all due back—back to base, back to active duty. On this particular Sunday, some are due back to war.

7:30 a.m.
The soldiers are still arriving with no apparent end, their usual numbers swollen by thousands of reservists called up for a possible tour of Lebanon and an exchange of greetings with Hezbollah, our neighbors to the north. Unlike the regular soldiers, who are in their late teens and early 20s, the reservists are all men, some as old as 45, torn from families and jobs. As always in this tense nation, everyone is either smoking cigarettes, chewing gum or talking loudly on cell phones. The sentence I make out most often is, “Ech? ECH? Ani lo shamati!” (“What? WHAT? I didn’t hear you!”). I take out my own phone and call my son, who was inducted into the army last March and is now in a tank corps on extended wartime duty “somewhere up north.” The recorded voice at the other end of the line bids me to leave a message. At the sound of the beep, I tell him that I love and miss him.

8:30 a.m.
The wave of soldiers ebbs and merges with the rising tide of morning commuters who rush in every direction. With the exception of a few teenagers and all the tourists—who sport expensive-looking packs and hiking boots—virtually everyone passing through the station is “working class” or lower. Better-off Israelis long ago deserted the country’s vast bus network. I vow to someday spend a day observing Israel’s high end by staking out the departure lounge at Ben-Gurion International Airport.

A boisterous group of elderly Ethiopians approaches. I hear them before they come into view. Such clusters have become a particularly colorful fixture of the station over the past 10 years. The old women wear long dresses, cotton shawls and head turbans; the old men, fedoras and sport jackets over their white cotton robes. They wander from one bus platform to the next, shouting at one another in shrill voices. I think they are trying to decipher the signboards.

The station resonates with the babble of Israeli Hebrew, the accented Hebrew of the country’s numerous immigrants and visitors, and foreign languages—Russian, French, Spanish, English, Romanian, several Philippine dialects, Nepalese, Sinhalese, Thai and Tamil. Arabic too. Words like ahlan (hi), yalla (bye), achla (excellent), and sababa (cool or, as we used to say, groovy) float through the air. The people speaking these words are young Israelis under the age of 30, in and out of uniform. Their already slang-ridden speech has been further enriched by these Arabic infiltrations, to the dismay of linguistic purists.

The plethora of languages is exceeded only by the variety of smells: hot dogs turning on a nearby kiosk’s rotating grill; floor disinfectant, heavily laden with ammonia; an old lady’s cheap perfume, a young man’s hair gel; pizza, coffee and freshly baked bread; scents of soap; the sudden, overpowering blast of underarm odor from a couple of backpackers. And overlying it all—like a moldy old bedspread that never gets washed—is the unabated haze of cigarette smoke. I consider stepping outside onto a bus platform for a breath of fresh air, then remember the heat and exhaust fumes and decide to stay inside. At least it’s somewhat air conditioned in here.

10:30 a.m.
The various morning rushes have ended, revealing a sector of Israeli society heretofore obscured by the crowds. The sixth floor intercity bus terminal is now a quiet haven for an assortment of panhandlers. Some are what might be called “working beggars,” who come to the station every morning as though they were going to a job, and move through the surging crowds to ask for charity. Others—alcoholic, drug-addicted or mentally ill—appear too far gone to ask anyone for anything. They simply shuffle from trash can to trash can, scavenging for food to eat, cigarette butts to smoke and half-empty bottles of soft drinks to finish off on the spot.

Of the “workers,” I am especially fond of two old men. One, in a threadbare tweed cap and suit, “sells” small packets of women’s cosmetics; the other, in a black velvet yarmulke and a faded striped shirt, offers blessings (“Refuah shlema, siata tova”). The blessing-seller walks around with a tzedaka box like those usually found on the bima of an Orthodox synagogue during weekday prayers. I drop a shekel (about 25 cents) in his tzedaka box, wishing the old man “mazal u’baruch” (“luck and blessing”). He wishes me “harbeh bruit” (“much health”) in return.

The ranks of beggars grew during the last four years of recession, when massive unemployment and government cutbacks to social programs plunged many people at the bottom rungs from the lower-middle class into outright poverty. The stronger economy of this past year has reabsorbed most of the newcomers, once again leaving the station to its “regulars.”

Noon
The men’s rooms here are remarkably clean. They could hardly be otherwise, as each is under the stern, watchful command of a uniformed bathroom “maintenance engineer”—always female, always Russian—armed with rubber gloves, bucket and mop. I insert a shekel into a coin box by the entrance and mutter a silent prayer of thanks as it successfully causes the turnstile to move and admit me. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn’t. As always, the Russian matron stands in the middle of “her” men’s room, lurking amid the stalls and urinals. Invariably large and intimidating, these women clutch their mops like weapons and rarely shy from critiquing the fine points of patrons’ bathroom etiquette. The unfortunate objects of such attention wither under the unforgiving glares. I leave without incident, thinking that men’s room maintenance at the New Central Bus Station appears to be one job that the Russians have not yet handed down to others. At Ben-Gurion Airport, the men’s bathrooms are now watched over by Ethiopian women.

12:10 p.m.
A food court on the sixth floor is home to a bunch of stands selling the classic Israeli lunch of pita bread stuffed with either falafel or shawarma (strips of roast meat that are traditionally lamb but are turkey here). Today, however, I am in search of something American. That means finding a working escalator and descending into the very bowels of the bus station.

I get off on the third floor, make a wrong turn and immediately get lost. I follow a dark corridor lined with Asian grocery stores, travel agencies, dating services and employment companies—all packed with mostly female Filipino workers. After walking awkwardly down a steep ramp, I find myself in a crowded, claustrophobic casbah of stands selling cheap clothes, factory-second shoes and slightly damaged housewares. A group of teenage boys ogling a display of deadly-looking “camping knives” makes me slightly nervous. There are music stands blaring different American hip-hop songs, all barking the word “fuck” over and over. The boys are entranced, but I escape into a corridor lined with beauty salons and tattoo parlors. The salons are filled with Filipino women, the parlors with young Israelis. Finally, I emerge at a familiar line of bakeries selling stale pastry and take an escalator up one floor to Sbarro’s, where I feast on anchovy pizza and Diet Coke.

12:55 p.m.
Back on the sixth floor, I return to my strategically situated iron bench, resume my stakeout and quickly fall asleep.

2:05 p.m.
My eyes open just as three large religious families climb off a bus from Haifa. The young mothers are trying to control some 16 kids—none older than five. The young fathers bend and reach into the bus’s luggage compartment to unload suitcases, boxes, baby carriages, strollers, foldable cribs, large stuffed animals and a tricycle.

Thousands of families like these have been fleeing the north of Israel this past month to escape Hezbollah’s Katyusha rockets. All of them can look forward to being received and cared for by an Israel I have never seen before. It is a unified Israel, mobilized for war and determined to keep up a proper “home front” while our soldiers battle Hezbollah. Northerners are being taken into families’ homes throughout the center and south—luggage, pets and all. Community bulletin boards and email lists are full of doctors, dentists, psychiatrists and lawyers offering northerners their services for free. There are also free camps and day care, free spa visits, free food, free clothes and free anything else that people have to offer.

3:35 p.m.
Young Filipino women and men begin to cluster at every bus departure platform on the sixth floor. Caregivers for elderly, sick and handicapped Israelis, these mostly Catholic guest workers have filled the jobs held by Arabs before the intifada. Most are allowed one day off a week, from Saturday evening to Sunday. Here, at the intercity departure area, they are savoring the last hours of free time, gossiping with friends in their native tongues—Tagalog, Cebuano, Ilocano and Kapampangan—before boarding buses for another week of hard work. Two diminutive women perch themselves on a bench near mine and begin to converse. They would never suspect that I speak Tagalog, which I learned while living in the Philippines and from my wife, a Filipina who has converted to Judaism and is now devoutly Orthodox. “Magkano ang sweldo mo dyan sa trabaho mo?” (“How much is your salary there at your job?”) asks one woman. The other shrugs her shoulders and replies, “Ay naku! Mababa lang! Bago lang ako dito kasi.” (“Agh! It’s low! I’m still new here”).

On Saturday nights, the Filipinos own this place. One can wander through the lower floors and see nothing but young Filipinos, moving joyfully around a “Little Manila” of Filipino shops, grocery stores, travel agencies, Internet cafes, restaurants, nightclubs and discos. Many of these enterprises are owned by resident Filipinos—mostly women married to Israelis. Generally, the Israelis who walk by smile indulgently; I doubt most of them know that the Philippines took in more than 1,000 Jews during the Holocaust and has been a good friend to Israel.

5:15 p.m.
Logically one might expect the afternoon rush hour to look like the morning rush in reverse, but the mass exodus from Tel Aviv bears several striking differences. For one, there are hardly any soldiers. For another, the commuters who charged through here this morning looking clean and crisp are shuffling back exhausted. Few seem to be in any rush. Some stop at kiosks to buy ice cream or iced drinks. Others glance at the screaming war headlines of Israel’s major daily newspapers—Maariv, Yediot Ahronot and Haaretz—and grimace before walking away without buying one. Some stand while waiting for their buses; others plunk themselves down onto benches. Absolutely no one talks. Israelis, thunderously gregarious among friends, rarely strike up conversations with people they don’t know. I’ve spent much of the last nine years wondering why.

6:45 p.m.
I’m hungry again, but am too lazy to go downstairs. Instead, I lummox over to the food court and watch in mute admiration as a burly young worker, wearing a knitted kippah on his shaved head, proceeds to stuff a piece of pita bread with three plump falafel balls, two huge ladles of chopped salad vegetables, a dipper of tehina and another of red pepper hot sauce, plus chopped onions, four pieces of sliced pickle, a handful of French fries and a flaming hot green chili pepper he slips in while I am busy counting out money.

“Mah matsav l’ ach sheli?” (“What’s up with my brother?”), I ask, in my best attempt at Hebrew hipness. “Baruch Hashem, ani noshem” (“Thank God, I’m still breathing”), he replies good-naturedly, and asks, “V’atah”(“And you?”). “Sababa!” (“Cool”) I reply in Arabic, like an Israeli teenager. The young man eyes the burgeoning streaks of gray in my hair and beard and smirks as if to say, “Act your age, brother!”

I take my Levantine monster and a large Diet Coke to a nearby table and begin to eat. I wonder how many more years I need to live in this country before I figure out how to keep the bottom of the pita from splitting open and disgorging its tasty contents all over my tray, paper napkins and the table—not to mention my shirt and lap.

8:30 p.m.
Two words describe the station’s night shift: “young” and “frisky.” Tough-looking dark-complected teenage boys strut by, their wiry arms wrapped around even tougher-looking dark-complected girls. Both genders are tattooed, hair-gelled and body-pierced—their ears, eyebrows, noses and navels glitter with gold rings and shimmering small chains. Children and grandchildren of immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East, they swarm out of buses from Jaffa, Bat Yam, Holon, Lod and Ramle for a hot night of fun in Tel Aviv. Ethiopian teenage boys—children of shepherds from Gondar and Kuwara who either were airlifted here or walked through Sudan to get to Israel—congregate loudly in the food court, all dressed identically in baggy “gangsta” Hip-Hop clothes as seen on MTV. Boisterous groups of well-fed, fair-skinned teenagers arrive from upscale Raanana, Herzliya, Ramat Hasharon and North Tel Aviv with JanSport backpacks, North Face camping gear and Nike hiking shoes. They are bound for every point of the compass, including the north. Katyusha rockets continue to fall, but buses continue to leave for Haifa, Nahariya, Kiryat Shemona and Safed.

10:05 p.m.
The appearance of two young men walking arm in arm—one with a Mohawk, the other with some of his hair dyed into two blond stripes—reminds me that I have a small digital camera with me. I dig it out of my pocket and shoot two pictures before a young security guard materializes from nowhere and tells me to stop. Looking me up and down, he permits himself a smile and tells me that I’m probably not a terrorist scoping out the place for a future attack, but one can’t be too careful. I put the camera back in my pocket, feeling foolish that a burly guy with a walkie-talkie should have to remind me of this.

11:10 p.m.
Infected by the frenetic atmosphere, I get up off my bench and make one last circuit. The whole wonderful, dazzling tableau reminds me of something, but I cannot remember what. Then it hits me. The bus station and its teeming night shift remind me of the surreal, apocalyptic street scenes of “Western-society-gone-mad” in the sci-fi ’80s movie, Blade Runner. I return to my bench to find it occupied by a young Orthodox couple on a date.

11:55 p.m.
Like a fireworks display that grows more colorful and raucously intense as it approaches its grand finale, the crowd swells to enormous proportions as the last outward-bound buses prepare to depart. Almost every specimen of humanity is now in evidence—young and old; rich and poor; white, black and brown; piously religious and garishly secular, soldiers and civilians, citizens and tourists, native sabras and recent immigrants from London, Paris and Teaneck, New Jersey.

Only one group is missing. Throughout the day I have not seen any Arabs. This is not surprising. In 2002, a female suicide bomber was apprehended in a doorway here before she could detonate herself. Since the intifada, security guards have been placed at every entrance specifically to spot them, stop them, hassle them and keep them from entering. It’s no surprise that Arabs avoid this place, either by getting on and off buses in the streets outside or by taking shared taxis and private cars.

12:55 a.m., Monday, August 14
With the departure of a 12:35 bus to the Red Sea resort town of Eilat, lights dim, loudspeakers bid farewell. The security guards are polite but firm as they usher people out of the building. Unlike most of the world’s bus stations, this one closes down for the night. Sort of. Some—beggars, street people and even an occasional backpacking tourist—manage to find dark corners in seldom-trod places to spread out for the night.

My own tired body instinctively staggers out onto Levinsky Street and toward a taxi. Sitting in front next to the driver—an Israeli custom to which I am still adjusting—I crane my neck for an elusive glimpse of the exterior of the New Central Bus Station.

Despite its almost biblical proportions, there is virtually no angle from which you can see it from a distance. Ringed closely on all sides by the crowded, poor neighborhood it imposed itself on, the station is invisible until you are right up against it. Even then, only a small sliver appears. Realizing that I have no idea what the entire building looks like from the outside I sleepily make a mental note: Get rich, buy a helicopter and fly over the bus station.