The Search for Shade

The search for shade hade leads to southern sidewalks and to news about trees, to dark shops, the strange smells of air conditioning and a forgivingness required to get along in weather not fit for man nor beast. The streets seem wierdly lopsided, like an optical illusion.

On the sunny side of Ben Yehuda, a few elderly ladies who never figured out that they were living on the eastern edge of the Mediterranean just north of Africa, stagger along from the scant shade of one shop umbrella over the door to the next. On the other side of the street, the bustle is twice as much as normal.

Wpalking along Allenby, one starts counting trees, looking forward to each coming patch of shade. Seven to a block. Sometimes eight. On Ben Yehuda the number of trees per block declines, or maybe it seems so, for the trees are smaller since they're younger, and patches of shade become slivers.

The ree-shaded boulevards of the city become popular these days. On Rothschild, the children coming home from school stop to play in the shade of 75-year-old trees bigger around the trunk than elephant legs. They are mostly some kind of mulberry, and at night, when the traffic has gone home, the falling fruit sounds like a mysterious tropical rain dripping through the broad leaves of the trees.

In the new parks, places like Sheinkin, Wolfson, and Clore, the trees are young. There will be 40 poincianas in Sheinkin, and an arched bougenvilla over the path between the lawn and the playground. In Gan Meir, where in the end the city will put a parking lot beneath the southeastern corner, dogs wade into the small pond with its weak fountain and patches of lilies and refuse to come out when their owners call.

Air conditioned places became oases. So do dark shops with swirling ceiling fans, and darker movie theatres where it-doesn't-matter-what's-showing-are you-air-conditioned?

In some shops the air conditioning is so strong that the shopgirls wear sweaters and have horrible summer colds. In other stores the air conditioning makes more noise than cold. In hotel lobbies the air conditioning is antiseptic and powerful, so that the perfumes of deoderants worn by American tourists worried about body odour permeate the air. For them, a ride on the Number Five bus, the crowded horizontal elevator between the central bus station and northern Dizengoff Boulevard, is as exotic an experience as Massada.

The thick, hot smells of packed buses -- this bald man, his pate covered by tiny bubbles of sweat; that young woman, her dacron dress clinging dark to her body; those two men, clutching their briefcases to their chests as they sit in the front row of the bus, while spreading dark spots of sweat grow down the backs of their shirts -- is what the tourists remember from Tel Aviv. But darker, uncrowded and more exotic places exist. A small bookshop on a side street off Allenby, where on high metal shelves the cracked leatherbound volumes of Judaica and Palestinica, and cardboard bound Russian first editions seem to sop up the humidity, is not air conditioned. But treasure hunters often demand adversity as part of the adventure.

The owner keeps a small table fan on a pile of books on top of a stool. The air rushes through the narrow corridor lined with shelves. But by the time it reaches the table where the old man sits, the wind is only a feeble breeze. Just the difference in light between inside and outside makes his shop cool.

A few blocks away there's a pool hall -- pool halls are always dark and cool, with large slow turning fans above the table -- and the sound of the clicking balls on the green beieze floats down to the shady side of Allenby. Another block away is a run-down skin-flick theatre, but the airconditioning is not strong enough to entice any except the most sadly lonely or happily horny.

The real shade will come at dusk, of course, with hopes for a breeze from the sea. And at night, sleepless and sweaty, escapees from small apartments will roam the city streets, along the seaside boardwalk, filling the small neighbourhood parks with the sounds of children up past their bedtime. On days like these, the heat-woven days of summer, everything should be forgiven, for what else can one do?

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