Day Fourteen: The Tragedy of the Forgotten Cap
And exit plans
Day fourteen was the kind of lazy Sunday that feels earned after two weeks of unplanned adventures and rocket-dodging tourism. I got up at a reasonable hour and did what any aspiring writer does when faced with unlimited time and no immediate obligations: I worked on one of my novels.
This particular masterpiece-in-progress involves a rabbi, a priest, and an imam, and before you ask—no, they don’t walk into a bar. Well, not yet anyway. It’s the latest addition to my collection of approximately 65 novel ideas currently sitting in my phone’s notes folder, each one representing a burst of creative enthusiasm followed by the inevitable realization that writing a book is significantly harder than having the idea for one.
I have zero doubt that within a week, this rabbi-priest-imam trio will be replaced by some new concept that I’ll convince myself is infinitely more interesting and Pulitzer Prize-worthy. It’s my eternal bind as a writer: always chasing the next shiny idea instead of finishing the current one.
But here’s the thing: this blog has been keeping me going because it’s the first time in my life that I’m writing consistently every single day. Sure, the published times may be quite late at night (sorry to those following along in real-time), but at least I’m producing content daily.
After my morning writing session, I had a lovely chat with my father. We debriefed about yesterday’s Shabbos meal where I spectacularly failed to eat anything at his first cousin’s house, then reminisced about his grandfather—my great-grandfather whose yahrzeit we commemorated on Thursday night.
The afternoon’s main event was my cousin’s son’s first birthday party.’
[A quick aside: Throughout these past fourteen days, I’ve mentioned “my cousins” approximately a million times, and it must be getting confusing for readers trying to keep track of which cousins are which. Thank you for bearing with my deliberately vague name-dropping—I’m trying to maintain some privacy while still telling these stories, even though cousins are being mentioned from all sides of the family tree.]
Actually, I should clarify something that my aunt specifically asked me to address: when I say I went to “my cousins” for meals, I’m actually going to my aunt and uncle’s house. My aunt pointed out that I keep crediting the cousins when she and my uncle are the ones doing the hosting. So thank you, dear aunt, for your hospitality and for gently correcting my attribution errors.
I spent a few hours at my aunt and uncle’s house, where the topic du jour was escape routes from Israel. Everyone’s talking about the various options: ferries to Egypt, cruises to Cyprus, private services charging anywhere from $1,200 to $2,000 per person. It dominated much of the conversation, as it naturally would when you have a group of people all trying to figure out how to get home to their regular lives.
Later, I took a walk around Jerusalem in what turned out to be quite hot weather. And here’s where tragedy struck: I had forgotten my backwards Chabad.org cap at home.
I almost turned back. I was already twenty minutes into my walk when I realized the devastating error. My signature accessory, my protection against the Mediterranean sun, my conversation starter with curious locals—abandoned on my apartment counter. For the first time in this entire adventure, I was walking around capless, my very white, very Ashkenazi neck exposed to the elements like some sort of unprepared tourist.
It was a sobering reminder of how quickly one’s entire aesthetic can fall apart with a single oversight.
The evening was spent doing gloriously nothing, which felt like exactly what I needed. I did venture out for dinner and managed to find what might be the first genuinely good schnitzel sandwich of this trip (a solid 8/10). If only Crown Heights could produce schnitzel sandwiches like this one, but I digress.
That said, I’m getting a little sick of takeout every night. After two weeks of disappointing shawarmas, mediocre falafels, and hit-or-miss hummus, I’m starting to think it might be time to throw in the towel and start cooking for myself. There’s only so much culinary disappointment one man can take, even in the Holy Land.
Tomorrow marks day fifteen of what was supposed to be a brief European adventure. At this point, I’m not even sure what continent I was originally planning to be on by now. But I may have a solution in sight… Until next time!
I come to read the pictures