I have the Corona virus. At least I’m pretty sure I do. No need to worry. After 5 days of light symptoms, I’m 90% recovered.
Between the Rosh Hashana long weekend and the backlog of testing appointments, I could only get tested yesterday, 5 days after my wife received a positive result and 4 days after I started with symptoms.
This story chronicles my day out where I went to get tested, one that is suited more to a comedy series and less to a country with 6000 new cases a day.
After 5 days of strict quarantine I was excited to have a reason to get out of my pyjamas and head off down the hill to the coastal metropolis of Nahariya, where I was able to book in a Covid19 test at 13.53.
For those that perhaps missed it, Israel is in lockdown. A very unique lockdown, where you can go to the supermarket, pharmacy, clothes store or buy a new lounge setting. You can drive to work if you are employed in the private sector and lounge on the beach if you are unemployed. But you can’t go into the water. You aren’t permitted 500 metres from your home, unless you are. It’s a new Israeli reality series called “Lockdown Israeli Style”
So there I was, on the Akko-Zfat road, which doesn’t actually go up to Zfat anymore but has retained its original name anyway, heading towards Akko. Lockdown? What Lockdown? The traffic on the road was indistinguishable from any other Tuesday throughout the year. Corona definitely hasn’t made Israeli drivers any more polite.
Arriving to the clinic 15 minutes ahead of the 13.53 schedule, I entered the compound and asked the guard (who’s chin was heavily protected against catching Corona. His mouth and nose slightly less so) how I would know when it was my appointment time. He looked at me blankly and pointed to the little tickertape apparatus that gives numbers like at the supermarket meat counter. “what, the time that you made the appointment for is not relevant?” I asked in my Ashkenazy naiveté. “No motek”, he clicked, “by number”. So there you are. We live in a supposedly modern country where you can book an appointment for a test for a life threatening disease, online, with Swiss efficiency, but when push comes to shove, we are thrown back to kupat cholim of the 1980’s.
I was no. 117. And was indeed accepted directly after 116, who was accepted after a gentleman who simply waltzed up to the window and said hello by name to his friends in the testing station. This familiarity obviously afforded him instant numberless access. After me came 134, who must have had some difficulties in 3rd grade maths class, as he didn’t seem aware that 118 comes after 117. The guard with the well protected chin didn’t seem inclined to voice an opinion, so I left a heated discussion behind me regarding the merits and rights afforded by the numbering system. I think I saw 119 (or maybe 124, who knows?) sneak up to the window as 134 and 118 continued to argue about who goes next.
On my way home I decided to go exactly as Waze told me. Like many Israelis, obedience isn’t always my strong point, especially when it comes to listening to Waze, which at times, can be about as believable as the government spokesman. But no. Today I was going to go exactly as Waze demanded, if for no other reason to prove to myself that I knew better. I arrived at the first traffic light, not even out of Nahariya yet and Waze instructed me to turn left where Waze-less, I would have turned right. Ok. Maybe he knows of a traffic jam that I don’t. I was already feeling smug about me knowing better than the computer. He’ll take me through Shikun, the neighbourhood that you can sometimes drive through to circumvent some of the mess that is the entrance to Nahariya. Nope. No journey through 1980’s backstreets Nahariya, which would have been apt after my 1980’s Kupat Holim experience. 50 meters after that, a new traffic light where Mr Waze instructed me to turn right. And there, in front of me, a brand spanking new, 4 lane bypass road that whizzed me past all the mess that was the entrance (or exit) to Nahariya. So Israel, the famous Start-Up Nation, can invent Waze, lead the world in technology, can plan and build modern new bypass roads amongst many other impressive infrastructure programs that it has instituted over these past years, but struggles (and that’s putting it nicely) to organised an orderly virus testing system. We live in a third world country dressed in first world clothing.
Since it was 1-0 to Waze already, I decided to follow the leader religiously. He took me on a very pretty and quick back route, via the olive groves of Abu Snan and through the large Druze village of Yarka.
Ok. I get it. The term \”lockdown\” is empty and meaningless. So I shouldn’t be surprised that Yarka looked exactly as did before the 18th September. But had no-one told the 18,000 inhabitants that we have 6000 new case and 300 deaths daily, of a deadly global pandemic ravaging our country? Here and there I saw masks used as fashion accessories on the forehead, others that were protecting their chins in a manner that suggested the guard in Nahariya was from here and occasionally a few suckers wore the mask in the way that they are meant to be. But the majority simply didn’t even bother. Is it any wonder why Covid is out of control in Israel?
As I turned at the final junction, above Yarka, and 4 km from my home, I encountered a police road block. A solitary policeman and two border police guarding him waved me through. My ridiculousness quotient had reached full. Of all the tragi-comedy I had witnessed today, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. A road block on a country road that links Yarka to Dir el Assad and on to Tuval and Pelech. I rolled my window down and not very politely asked the policeman to explain the logic behind the Israeli Police Force manning a road block here when the main highway, not 5 km away, was teeming with vehicles, in absolute disregard of a government mandated lockdown and in Yarka village, not 2 km away, there were literally thousands of maskless citizens wandering the streets in utter contempt of public safety and civic duty. Wouldn’t his time and my taxpaying sheqels be better spent for the policeman to do policing? “These are our orders?” he stammered, having not expected my tirade. I drove on not in the slightest bit convinced or enlightened as to the working of our police force, as an accurate reflection of our government.
There is no doubt that I enjoyed my little trip out of quarantine. It was good to smell the diesel fumes of the open road and briefly get back to the real Israel, out of my precious little bubble. But I was happy to get back to my golden cage, where words such as ridiculous, farcical and hilarious are reserved for conversation with my cell mate and wife of 30 years and not firsthand experience.
And now for a post script that adds to the confusion. My test came back negative. Susan, who has the same symptoms, got a positive result. What am I to make of that? Life in Israel is never boring.