And I have gone downstairs to meet her. The first thing I see as I leave the building and walk out to the parking lot is a balloon in a car.
Only it isn’t a balloon. It is a man with a bald head, reading by the light in his car.
Something else is round; it’s a helmet on top of yet another large American sedan.
Everyone is driving large American sedans instead of their usual classic cars, huge trucks, motorcycles, Mustangs, and Camaros.
Meanwhile, the bald man continues to read his map in his large American sedan, and the man with the helmet continues not to realize he’s left it on the roof of his car. And he does not really look like the editor of a motorcycle magazine.
And there are orange cones separating our parking lot from Wilshire Blvd.
And there is a large van that appears to belong to the L.A.P.D.
Then I hear the chanting, just as I reach Wilshire. There is a demonstration going on, and the Pro-Palestinians are chanting. They are on my side of the street, and the entire street is blocked off for blocks in each direction.
“How will my mother ever find me?” I think. And then, “what am I doing on the Palestinian side of the street?”
There are cops on horseback in the middle of the street, and cops on foot, spaced out every several feet as I approach the intersection where the two groups are facing off. I’m suddenly aware that I’m carrying too many bags.
So I take my camera out. Slowly.
I take a picture of the Palestinian flag one of the protesters is holding up. And I change my angle to get the banner of the Israeli flag up across the street; just as I snap the shutter, the young protester waves his flag in front of my camera to block the view.
Drunk with my American sense of fairness, lulled into a false sense of security by heavy police presence, I snap at him. “That wasn’t very nice!” I say.
Of course it wasn’t very nice. I am surrounded by people wearing black-and-white scarves, and waving Palestinian flags. Another fair-haired Anglo-Saxon woman sees me, and smiles. I smile back. She is thinking, “it’s nice to see another enlightened person here.” I am thinking, “I pity you for your utter vapidity.”
I stop taking pictures, and go back to the main intersection, to try to find my mother. Other people are walking up from Wilshire and San Vicente, where the police are blockading cars. They are going to join the fun.
“Let’s support people who murder civilians,” I think. “Sounds like fun to me.”
Just then, about 40 more cops show up on bicycles, to supplement those on foot. They are there to join the fun, too. Two minutes later, another 30 cops show up on motorcycles. They would also like to have fun.
Back in the parking lot where I work, I suddenly realize that all those American cars are Crown Vics, and everyone there is large, male, wearing baggy pants and a utility belt‐and carrying a helmet.
Except for my mother, who has worked her way into their midst in her Prius.
I get into the car and pet the dog, and help my mother negotiate back out of the parking lot, away from the demonstrators.
“I was there, ” she told me. “In 1955. There was a no man’s land that we had to cross by foot, carrying our suitcases. And I realized, in the miserable Palestinian area, that they were rasing another generation of terrorists.
“They never stopped,” I tell her.
* * *
“Let’s go eat.”
“Can we have Persian food?” she asks.
“I don’t know whether I could appreciate it tonight,” I tell her. “It’s just so wonderful. Maybe a hamburger. I’m tired.
Twenty minutes later, we are at the Persian restaurant. I’m eating a lamb shank. And, as always, it is wonderful. But she does not want Persian ice cream for dessert; she wants spumoni.
So we have spumoni.
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