Jerusalem Syndrome - Marc Maron [41]
The eight-year-old daughter of the man who owned the hostel walked us around the town. The streets were teeming with activity of day-to-day business. It felt festive, unlike the settlement. Everyone was out doing things. There were animals being butchered in the street. It was very homey. People were coming up to us, inviting us into their homes, giving us coffee, and trying to communicate with us. They were so nice. They don’t see many Americans.
We left Sachnin the following morning and headed back to Tel Aviv. In the car I had a new mantra: “Gotta get the camcorder fixed, gotta get the camcorder fixed, gotta get the camcorder fixed.” That was all I could think about. The camcorder had to be functional when we went to Jerusalem. I thought that whatever was to happen between God and me would certainly happen in Jerusalem.
When we got back to Jim’s apartment, I looked in the Tel Aviv yellow pages under “Sony.” I found a Sony repair center. I went alone to the Sony repair center. I walked in. I don’t know what was going on that day, or if every day was like that, but there were literally hundreds of people mobbed in front of the counter. It almost seemed like some sort of revolt against Sony. People were waving boom boxes, Walkmans, televisions, and camcorders above their heads. There was shouting. There was chaos. It almost seemed that all Sony products broke on the same day for everyone, and don’t think I didn’t think that.
Behind the counter there were these four panicked, sweating Israeli geeks trying to accommodate the uprising. Behind the geeks, going back farther than the eye could see, were shelves upon shelves of unrepaired Sony products. It looked like a grand cathedral of broken electronic equipment. I tried to make my way through the crowd but couldn’t, so I mosh-pitted myself atop the crowd and was carried to the counter, where I delivered the camcorder into the sweaty hands of one of the geeks. He looked at the camcorder, he looked at the shelves behind him, and then he looked at me and shook his head and said, “Oh, no, eight weeks.”
“No,” I said. “Today.”
“No, no, I cannot,” he said.
“I’m an American,” I said. “I’m here on vacation.”
Somehow that translated to “Please don’t help me, ever,” as I was swallowed up by the crowd and spat back out onto the street, holding my crippled camcorder.
We had to leave for Jerusalem the following day. I thought about buying another camcorder, but it would’ve cost a fortune and the machines there operate by different format. They take pictures right to left. It would’ve been useless in the States.
I was really beginning to give up the struggle. I was trying to let go of the idea of the camera working again. I was trying to just adjust to being without it. I was trying to engage with and enjoy my wife and friends. It wasn’t sticking.
When we got to Jerusalem I immediately looked up electronic repair in the yellow pages. I found Avram’s. I gave the phone book to Oriella to translate. “Does it say ’Sony’?”
She said, “Yes, Marc, it says ’Sony.’ ”
“Yes!” I yelped.
We all went immediately to Avram’s. It was a small electronic repair shop. I walked in. My first thought was, Am I going to get fucked? On a smaller scale?
Avram was a big, happy, gregarious Israeli. I showed him the camcorder. I was in a panic. “I don’t know what happened. I was just holding it. It’s very important to everyone that this works here.”
“This is no problem,” he said. “I fix today. Come back, two hours.”
“Thank you. You really don’t realize how important this is.”
While we were waiting, we went to a market to get some fruit. It amazed me how people in Israel have their blinders up to just how scary it is to be there. As we stood there looking at fruit, my friend Jim told me that some people were killed in that market by a bomb a few weeks before. I said,