Pen & Sword: April 2021

More rain. More bookshops. Early morning run along the Thames in Putney, across Fulham Railway Bridge and through Wandsworth Park and back. Showered and changed and then trekked through Chelsea and strolled down King's Road, quickly passing by Saatchi Gallery before the rain picked up again. Luckily, I found solace at John Sandoe, which was a personal highlight and especially worthwhile. Easily one of my favorite book shops already.

Later in the afternoon I took the tube back to Highbury and Islington station and arrived just when the heavy rainfall from earlier began to subside. The plaza outside the station was still rain soaked and wet, though, and there were only a few people milling about amidst interval waves of commuters -- mostly retail workers, students, and a mixture of twenty or thirty something professionals around my age.

Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a couple who looked to be about middle age, kissing and saying goodbye. They let go of their embrace, and the man, who seemed to be only slightly taller than a midget and significantly younger, pulled off a wool hat and briskly walked off into the station. The woman, who appeared close to sixty or so herself, was partially obscured and I could only see a glancing profile covered by a large winter jacket and thick brown hair bobbed up from the back. It was hard to tell if she noticed me, but as she walked away I saw her turn back and glance in my direction.

I didn't have a specific destination in mind but to escape the bustle of Highbury Corner, I walked eastward towards Canonbury along a stretch of faded mid-Victorian terraced blocks and grey, rain-washed estates that shadowed the overground. As I was walking I began to notice the subtle changes to the neighborhood and I sensed that I was slowly crossing the invisible boundary again where Islington begins to shade into Hackney. After finishing Miluim and leaving Tel Aviv I spent a few short weeks here in late autumn a few years back and came to know the area fairly well. In truth, I was already ready to escape the Levant, and from within my detached and nearly impenetrable Tel Aviv bubble, I found myself most evenings after work at the same cafe off Derekh Yafo -- usually messaging with Iza and searching Walla for last minute flights to the cheapest and closest destinations in Europe. Generally that meant places like Bucharest, Sofia, or Rome. I guess I was surprised that I ended up first in London.

Maybe it started when Scott first decamped to Bethnal Green, but I know it was compounded more so by the photos Iza used to send me each weekend when she would travel down to London to stay with friends just to to temporarily breakout from Birmingham and Aston. Usually they'd pop up on WhatsApp or in my inbox at late hours when I'd already be asleep. Monochromatic pictures from London Fields or Victoria Park or the small terraced flat nearby where she kicked up. Usually autumn colors. I guess that's what amplified it the most back then and reminded me of home. Even now, as I passed a mixture of red brick mansion blocks and heaps of wet and fallen leaves that were essentially the last remnants of fall, I started to have that same feeling again.

I wasn't far from Natalia's old flat, which by default almost felt like Iza's own temporary stand-in home. At least for the short period when I was there during that first chaotic week in mid-summer and immediately after. I remember it being a renovated, but still slightly shabby two floor Victorian terrace on Lavender Grove, somewhere between Kingsland Road and London Fields. Exactly the type of student flat you'd expect. The area had cleaned up and changed, though, and for a moment I was brought back to those few days in early August when cars burned and the streets of Hackney all felt like they were on fire. Instead of traversing that way, I decided to continue eastbound towards the canal since I was now getting close to Broadway Market and I wanted to try and make it to two other book shops there before they closed.

About an hour after dusk, I naturally found myself orienting back towards Canonbury. Not surprisingly, light rain began to fall again just as I circled back towards Essex Road. This had been the predictable pattern throughout my first few nights. I shifted off the commercial stretch and towards the quieter residential side streets in the direction of Canonbury Square. The rain became heavier as I walked through a section of dense shrubbery and hanging weeping willows on a narrow linear path of the New River parallel to Douglas Road. By the time I exited through an ivy covered gate over Willow Bridge that faced a stretch of detached red brick Victorian townhouses, I had already gotten fairly drenched. Just minutes earlier I passed the Marquess Estate and a series of other council buildings leading to New River Path. Now on the opposite side of the stream I was walking through leafy streets ringed by multi-million pound turn of the century mansions. Even in gentrified Hackney, the contrasts were never this stark.

I remembered there being a small French-style cafe relatively close by on Upper Street that I thought might still be open. Unlike Tel Aviv and Paris, most cafes in London close on the early side and keep standard business hours with the exception of a few that might stretch until nine or ten in the evening at the latest. Somehow I managed to avoid getting further drenched by strategically walking under a tree lined arc on Alwyne Place before turning back towards the commercial bustle of Upper Street.

The cafe was smaller than I remembered and despite it being fairly late most of the tables were still occupied. I managed to find an elevated counter side seat that looked out onto a rain lashed Upper Street, directly across from the darkened expanse of Compton Terrace Gardens.

In what felt like hours trekking back from Broadway Market, where I first started around dusk, and then sauntering through Canonbury, I was relieved to just have the chance to relax and take shelter from another nightly downpour that I managed to get caught up in. Since arriving, each evening so far has been wet and rain soaked. I returned to some of the fragmented notes and incomplete journal entries on my phone, but didn't get far and instead pulled out a copy of Sandor Marai's Embers that I picked up at John Sandoe.

For a while after finishing reserve duty and settling back in Tel Aviv, I spent a lot of time in similar spaces, including many nights after work at a few particular cafes close to my old flat in Florentin and a couple others further afield along Rothschild. But often after leaving the office and taking the number 5 bus back in the direction of home, I would stop at one of the second hand bookshops that lined the southern end of Allenby Street, and then walk back through a mixture of half-derelict city blocks and renovated Bauhaus developments to a small cafe on the corner of Gan HaHashmal. It was only around this time when I started to at least try and write, even mediocre and disjointed musings like this, just for the sake of getting some of my splintered thoughts out.

When you feel unmoored for so long, you become conditioned to feeling like home is everywhere and nowhere. I guess even now, despite so many other inevitable changes, I still haven't moved past this one notion, and it's probably what keeps pulling me back to the same places. Similarly to that period almost nine years ago when I finally hung up my uniform and decided to temporarily leave Israel for Europe, the same sense of restlessness hasn't gone away.

I went back to another partial journal entry but soon found myself drifting off and again going through older messages and notes of former addresses and other bookshops while pinpointing an open map of Islington and Hackney. I zoomed in on one or two streets further south in Finsbury on the northern edge of Spa Fields and Exmouth Market as well as an additional few streets just off London Fields and others just close by in Canonbury. I hadn't noticed that most of the tables began to slowly empty out and that it was already almost nine pm. The ambience began to feel quieter and cozier and even though I was immersed in my book, I overheard stirrings of conversations carry from across the room. On the opposite end, under a framed black and white poster of Highbury Corner in the 1930s, two twenty something couples, who had been seated together at the same table, paid their bills and chatted while gathering their coats and umbrellas and all their belongings to leave.

The rain didn't appear to be slowing down and from my window side vantage point, I caught myself again staring out onto the street as another downpour cascaded onto the nearly pedestrian free crosswalk. Most of the traffic that had been heavy earlier along Upper Street had receded and now only a few passing cars and buses drove by. I hadn't noticed it initially, but a message lit up on my phone and I recognized the +972 number on WhatsApp immediately. I listened to the message and sent back a short voice memo in reply. I spoke in a relatively hushed tone and instinctively tried as best as possible to minimize my American accented Hebrew, which despite all improvements, I still recognize will likely never go away entirely. Within my front pocket I pulled out my Israeli passport that I'd been carrying and flipped through the entry and exit stamps from some of my past trips. A few dates brought reminders and I zoomed in on a two week stretch in particular from August '11 and another from March '17 .

The past few nights have consisted of mostly fractured sleep and a recurring sense of restlessness that's kept me awake and in and out of various cafes each evening, trying to retrace forgotten steps and connect certain dots. But truthfully, I'm not even quite sure what I'm seeking to uncover.

I check the time and see that nearly an hour has elapsed and that the cafe is closing in about twenty five minutes. At least three tables are still full and deep in animated conversation, mostly couples and friends. The remaining few seats are occupied by only about three or four other solitary patrons, those either glued to their laptops or similarly to an open book or just lost in their own disparate thoughts.

On initial glance, I don't think much of the young woman seated alone at a small table adjacent to me. She seems close to my age, but on a closer look she actually appears to be at least six or seven years younger. Her hair was thick and shoulder length and slightly rustled and clearly looked like it had been dyed black. Her skin milk white, as if she hadn't seen the sun in years, although not in an unhealthy way. She was typing away on a Macbook Air and for the first time I noticed her look over somewhat inquisitively in my direction.

My portable charger drained hours earlier and now my phone's battery was nearly empty. After six hours of trekking through Islington and Hackney, I began to feel the inevitable first wave of fatigue kick in. The cafe was about to close in less than ten minutes and I flopped a few quid onto the table as a tip and paid my bill. The barista behind the register flashed a brief smile and I went back to gather my jacket and belongings to leave. The rain had barely slowed and abated and I waited under the cafe's extended awning outside as another torrent coursed down onto the pavement and the largely deserted intersection. I pulled up the night bus schedule on my phone and decided to wait just a few extra minutes for the downpour to subside.

The traffic light turned red and even though the junction was nearly deserted, the downpour was still steady and I wasn't ready to cross quite yet. I'd been staring out absently towards the southbound direction of Upper Street and hadn't noticed the small and shadowed figure emerge to my left, hovering under the canopy and waiting as well. Despite the pattering rainfall, I managed to hear a soft voice speaking in a rapid but semi-hushed tone. I was only able to recognize a few words of English thrown in and realized that the conversation being held on the phone was in Romanian. She was turned the other way and her face was mostly obscured by a heavily wrapped tartan scarf that covered her thick set and jet black shoulder length hair. I realized she was the girl from the corner table who had also been seated alone. She was now wearing a dark green beanie and when I saw her glance towards me I looked up momentarily and we managed to lock eyes for a brief moment before I turned back to the schedule on my phone. I overheard her switch to English -- in an accent that was barely detectable -- and mention something related to work and school. I wasn't paying enough attention to hear specific details, but I noticed she had simultaneously taken off her glasses and pulled out a pack of rolling papers and tobacco from her handbag.

As I was about to leave, I heard her tell whoever was on the other line in a relaxed voice that she will call them back soon. Maybe I looked somewhat helpless or perhaps just approachable for whatever reason. "Do you have a light?" she asked.

I was still looking down at my phone and hadn't paid attention to the fact that the heavy rainfall from only a few minutes earlier had eased up. "Sorry, I don't actually."

She half-smiled back and handed me a tightly rolled cigarette. "Ok, do you mind holding this quick? I'll be right back."

A minute later she popped out of the cafe with a lighter. I didn't have any specific reason to wait for her, but I had nowhere else to be anyway. When she returned, we started conversing. Friendly and cordially but distanced and reserved like strangers. She cleaned her glasses underneath her sweater and pushed away her fringe, which was half-covering her face. I noticed a languid look in her eyes, which I saw then were dark and brown, and I could sense that she was accustomed to also keeping late and unsocial hours. I jumped to the assumption that similar to myself, she likely didn't sleep a lot.