Homeward bound

So, if you are trying to buy three tickets (well, 2.5 tickets really--even if you carry an under-two child on your lap, they make you pay, though it isn't much) to Israel, and you're trying to keep things cheap, and your dates aren't flexible, you are going to find yourself having to bite some bullets. I bought these tickets back in August, figuring that if we paid for them at the same time we paid for the apartment, we wouldn't notice as much (what's another couple thousand dollars?)

I had hoped to fly El Al, but quickly realized that was beyond our budget. I nixed the really scary airlines--I do not fly Tarom, Lot, or Aeroflot, thank you very much. I would have been okay with Turkish, but I couldn't buy tickets with them more than 90 days in advance, for some strange reason. I wanted to keep it to one connection, to minimize risks of missing flights (ha) and losing luggage (double ha). Our doughty travel agent managed all of this. However, there was one catch: our return flight left at 6:20 am.

This was pretty seriously inconvenient. We stayed in Jerusalem, and Ben Gurion Airport is in Tel Aviv. Any time you are flying out of Ben Gurion, you are well advised to arrive at least three hours in advance. Allowing time for the airport van to pick up other travelers, and a little extra for just in case, that meant that we had to schedule our pickup for 2 am. Me, MHH, and Barak, the Baby Who Does Not Need to Sleep.

Since I didn't mind if he was tired--we were going to be airborne for 15 hours, and I wanted him sleepy--I decided on a course of action. We'd vacate the apartment we rented the day before our flight, take our stuff over to my SIL's, and let Barak play until he collapsed. Then we'd leave from there, and just let him have unfettered access to his pluggie (=pacifier in the Uberimma household) and blanket, and let him hang out in the stroller/carseat.

Barak was more than happy to demonstrate to me what he's been trying to tell me all along--that he really doesn't need to go to bed. He was up, happily playing, until about 11 pm. Then he more or less got in my lap and fell asleep. I thought I would move him into his cousin's crib, and he woke up, reached for a nearby banana, and went back to sleep.

Fast-forward to 2 am. We dragged all our stuff back down the four flights of stairs and caught the Nesher van, which was right on time, and took us safely to Ben Gurion. You're driving along the highway, with familiar green highway signs in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Then you get to security at the edge of the airport. These security barriers are not plywood painted red. They mean business, and after those, there are the kind of barriers embedded in the road that, when raised, will rip your tires to shreds. The van stopped, and someone got on the van, walked through the van, checked us all out, and got off. We drove up to security, got a luggage cart, got our stuff, our stroller and our kid out of the van, and headed off to check in.

It's 3 am, but the place is as brightly lit and as crowded as if it were 3 in the afternoon. We got in line, and about halfway through an employee came up to us and asked for our tickets and passports. "Someone will be with you soon." With us? Okay.

Everyone in line, it turned out, got their personal tour guide through security. Ours came up to us, took our passports, and started asking questions. She started with the usual. Did you pack your own bags? Have they been with you the whole time since you packed them? Did anyone give you anything to carry? It could be a bomb. Where did you stay? Did anyone give you any gifts during your stay? Who? What were they? Where are they packed? What did you buy on this trip? Where? And why did you visit? Whom did you stay with? What was your address? How many nights did you stay there? It's your sister who lives here? What's her name? What's her address? Does she have children? How old are they? How long have they lived in Israel? Is she your sister or yours? And then I realized that she was asking some of the questions twice, in slightly different ways, to see if she got the same answers. It was friendly, and chatty, and deadly serious all at the same time.

She had us put our bags through the scanner, and they came out with bar codes on them. Then we went up to another security desk, where our bags were opened. But not just opened. Each security person had a screen in front of them, and when they scanned the barcodes on the bags, the screens showed the X-rays of our bags--so that they could see what looked suspicious and check it out more thoroughly. We got another personal security guy. He introduced himself. He asked us to put our bags on the counter. He opened our biggest bag, a purple rolling duffel.

And then they found Frum Chucky.

(Let's backtrack a little. In grad school, I got very friendly with a Torah mi Tzion family--the rabbi, his wife, and their kids. At the end of their two years, they went back to Israel, and one of the first things we did when we visited was get together with them at the Jerusalem Zoo. They had a present for Barak--a cheery-looking, extremely Ashkenazi doll with blond payos, a red satin suit, and a kippa, which, when pressed (doll, not kippa) says Modeh Ani in the frighteningly deep voice of an old Iraqi Jew with, it sounded like, a major cigarette habit. Barak loves it. He dances with it. MHH, after a day or two, started calling it Frum Chucky.)

Our friendly secular Israeli airline security guy saw some electronics on his screen. He plunged his gloved hand into the bag to investigate. And he heard, from the depths of the bag, in a distinctively gravelly electronic voice,

"Mode ani lifonecha, melech chai v'kayam..."

Oh dear.

We explained, he laughed, he showed the rest of the security people, and they laughed. Phew.

The search continued. He pulled out a big supermarket package of Elite dark chocolate. (I really love that stuff.) "Did you buy this?" Yes.

Next item: big supermarket package of strawberry Mentos. Elite chocolate, fine--that's Israeli. But Mentos? This is plastique, right? "Did you buy these?" Yes.

He kept looking at me. "They're not kosher in America." Oh-kay, I can see him thinking. We clearly have some nut cases on our hands...

His hand went into the other side of the bag, and then I remembered--the size 0 double-pointed sock needles! "Um, sir? Could you watch your hand, please? There are some very sharp knitting needles in there, and I don't want you to get stabbed..."

Needless to say, we were at security for a while. They also had to open MHH's (late lamented--we still don't have it) box of seforim, for which we had prudently brought along a roll of packing tape just in case. But eventually they decided we were okay, if slightly nutty, and sent us on our way. And might I point out that El Al security, unquestionably the most thorough airline security folks in the world, did not make me remove my child from his stroller, which every American airport has made me do, no matter how much he screamed before he finally fell asleep two minutes before the airline security line. (This time, he was awake.)

It's 4 am. We're all a little punchy. We're all a little tired. Nobody's slept at all except for Barak, and he has only had three hours of sleep. And he's wide awake now. We head through passport control. And we see... a kosher McDonald's. Now, I didn't grow up religious, and I know all about Big Macs. They're tasty. They're usually treif. I haven't had one in... fourteen years. I'm pregnant. I don't care that it's 4 am. I smell those greasy burgers with their special sauce. And I want one. NOW. And MHH WILL NOT LET ME HAVE ONE. Why? Some nonsense about an unreliable hashgacha. I do not take this well. I start to mutter. "You just do whatever Frum Chucky tells you to do. Frum Chucky wants you to oppress your wife. Frum Chucky probably wants me to wear an abaya. I think you need to, um..." and here I run out of steam, because I haven't actually seen any of the Chucky movies, and I don't know how to kill Chucky. Oh well. Barak would be sad if we did away with Frum Chucky anyway.

In the end, we got on the plane, with Barak still wide awake and happy after an hour or two of climbing on, under, and around the departure lounge seats. He was amazingly good the whole way home, thanks to being tired in the first place (he slept at least half of the way) and major parental bribery (a big bag full of carefully doled out wrapped presents, mostly from the dollar store). No hysterics, almost no crying, the entire fifteen hours. He only really melted down when we got off the second flight, and there was no stroller, and he was so, so tired, and our luggage wasn't there, and we had to wait in the lost luggage line, and Imma had to deal with the lost luggage man and Barak wanted Imma, NOT ABBA NO NO NO, and, well, let's just say that we resorted to chocolate. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

In the end, though, we made it. And we got home to a mazal tov--we acquired a new nephew while we were away. Welcome to the world, Ephraim!