7.12.1987

WINTER--OUR ANNUAL SURPRISE

One of the few utterly reliable and predictable things in this city is that winter takes it by surprise.

Until this weekend's storm, there was no indication-except in some shop windows-that Tel Aviv had ever experienced weather unsuitable for the beach.

Women may have begun dressing in what is called fall fashion everywhere else, but it seemed more of a statement on fashion than the weather. Men lately seen wearing cowboy boots were doing it for the same reason they wear aftershave or gold medallions.

Leaves had fallen off a few trees, a coupe of sidewalk restaurants had installed glass and aluminium walls, and there had been the usual annual reports in the papers expressing concern that this might turn into a drought year.

But there was no real urgency about the preparations for winter, so when it came, it took the city by storm.

Dust and oil on the roads turned into slippery, ice-like patches as soon as the first rains struck, making driving a car or riding a two-wheeled vehicle as dangerous in downtown Tel Aviv as it is any time in the West Bank.

People seemed determined to be caught in the rain, going out in shoes when they should have been wearing boots, shirtsleeves when sweaters were needed, sweaters when jackets were required.

A run on various cold treatments available at pharmacies and health shops, and on blankets at the Central Bus Station, could be as inevitable as fallen trees, flooded potholes, overflowing sewers, bad telephone connections (if there are any connection at all), blackouts and new price tags on new heaters.

In a temperature-controlled room at the city engineer's complex a block from City Hall, a computer keeps track of traffic lights which with predictable unreliability go on the blink whenever the heavens so much as sneeze.

Outdoor cafes turn sun shades into rain umbrellas and regulars insist on sitting outside as the water drips off the canvas into their coffee.

There are some people who impatiently await winter. Surfers, for example, don wetsuits and make their way to the beach for a few hours of the kind of surfing that they've only seen in movies.

Shlock-of-any-kind salesmen, who in summer sell plastic earrings or T-shirts, do a booming business in umbrellas and plastic raincoats.

Another predictable aspect of the rain is the kind of photograph that will appear in certain newspapers.

There's an intersection in Jaffa where someone will run a bicycle ferry, carrying people over a flooded intersection.

There are the soggily sentimental scenes of lonely fishermen at the end of the boulder breakers on the beach.

There are the cute kids in slickers, bums under plastic, and no doubt some viennese lady protecting her dachshund with a miniature umbrella.

And cars, window deep in raging wadis, about which the radio had been warning drivers all weekend.

Under these circumstances, it's easy to believe that instead of conspiracy, history is a random series of accidents, punctuated by human stupidity and the rare individual brilliance of a few good or evil people.

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