Green eyes and all smiles – A love story in the Holy Land

I am used to people staring at me. But this time, it was me who did the staring. I had never seen anything like her. As soon as we met, I felt her vibrating energy. Her ancestors breathed through her body, and I was mesmerized, impressed, and curious at the same time. And something even stranger happened: I wanted to be with her. Don’t get me wrong, I noticed that she wasn’t flawless; in fact, she had visible scars. Her eyes reflected wisdom and pain, and she shared memories of victories and defeats. I gathered she had been misjudged quite often. And yet she had this laughter, loud and roaring unapologetically, that made me think she would be an excellent companion. Somehow I felt I could trust her, that she would be the sort to stand up for me and tell me to my face when I was avoiding hard conversations or wasn’t truthful to myself. She… was Tel Aviv.

The first day we spent together, my cheeks stayed glued to my eyes. We had our first meal at Shuk HaCarmel, where I ate the best cauliflower of my entire life. I had disliked cauliflower since I was a child, but this one was spicy, crunchy, and juicy at the same time, like a party in my mouth. How did she do it? “Middle Eastern cooking,” she laughed. The whole day, I was opening presents I didn’t even know existed, as she gazed at me through sparkling eyes, many of them green. This was the next surprise! I was used to being unique with my green eyes, but here, there were so many!

I had been called many things in my life, from Oreo cookie (black and white mix), half-caste, mulatta, métisse, alien, freak, to black ginger. I grew accustomed to being treated with curiosity because of my looks. But here, I suddenly felt like an alien amidst aliens. Tel Aviv embraced me with a “Shalom” and a cheeky wink. “Where are you from?” she asked. “Switzerland,” I replied, the land of cheese and chocolate. “Why did you come here?” she wanted to know. One of my students told me about you, I explained. I had supported her in auditions for dance schools. She visited London, Berlin, Amsterdam… but ultimately left for Tel Aviv after meeting an Israeli dancer who moved so “freely and smoothly.” My student and I stayed in contact, and one day she wrote to me: “You should visit Tel Aviv, Melanie, you would like it here.” As a teacher and choreographer, I was craving inspiration. But Israel? Wasn’t that the conservative, ultra-religious Jewish land? I trusted my student and the calling of the universe. Luckily!

The next thing Tel Aviv gifted me was a sunset at the beach, which left me speechless. I had never seen such light; the way the waves glittered was pure art. It brought tears to my eyes. “Drop the thoughts,” she said, and so I did. Then she did something I could not have imagined in my wildest dreams: she took me to the club and partied with me like it was my last night. The music was pumping. “There’s no warm-up!!!” I screamed over the bass into my friend’s face. Everyone was dancing furiously, and I wasn’t even the most unhinged. This was it! I fell in love with her on day one. “Tel Aviv,” I said to her, “I have presents too!” “Shut up and dance!” she said. So we did, until our feet could barely carry us anymore, and we walked down Allenby to Rothschild and all the way to Frishman to my friend’s apartment—we couldn’t stop smiling as we slipped into our dreams.

The next morning, I woke up and hopped around like a child. I was so thankful that a series of little gestures had brought me here. My heart was filled with so much gratitude, it felt like it wanted to jump out of my chest. I looked out the window, and there she was, waiting for me, like a dream I didn’t know I had. It was then that I remembered a song I discovered exactly 20 years before. It was from a movie called The Prince of Egypt. At the time, I had the CD and listened to it on repeat. The song was called Through Heaven’s Eyes.

“A single thread in a tapestry, though its color brightly shines, can never see its purpose in the pattern of the grand design.” In Switzerland, I had a fulfilling career, but a voice inside me said that I had a purpose elsewhere. Never would I have imagined it to be in Israel, a country I only knew through superficial cliché images and media narratives. Tel Aviv and I had our first encounter in the spring of 2019. With her green eyes and all smiles, I knew I wanted to see her again. After getting to know her for two weeks, I had to leave and promised that I would come back! “Sure!” she said, hugging me in a warm breeze, before she waved me goodbye. I wasn’t sure she believed me. She must have heard this before, but I was determined. With her, I could look at my life through heaven’s eyes, and I needed that. I had just buried both my parents, and a friend of mine was battling cancer. I was only 42 years old, and I didn’t believe in God, but I did believe in heaven. And somehow, in Tel Aviv, this belief was nourished by simply breathing, eating, and dancing.

Switzerland is my homeland; Tel Aviv became my home. I was warned: “Watch out, the paint will fall off, and you’ll see the cracks, the dirt, and you’ll smell the stench. It’s loud, humid, and the public transportation is a disaster.” Don’t be fooled by my enthusiasm—I saw all these things in the first two weeks. She was rough and tough at times, impatient and demanding at others. How being in love turned into love is a story for another time.

Today, I’ll just say: Tel Aviv, I love you. I wish more people could see you through my eyes, especially those who have never spent a single day with you but read news that paints a picture far from reality. Times have changed dramatically since I first set foot in the Holy Land. It’s hard to navigate with two wars raging, one on the ground and one online. Science says that people growing up in a multicultural, bilingual setting develop a greater capacity for “theory of mind.” They can see things from different perspectives. This seems to be my calling: to give voice to different perspectives. I will do my best.