Minding My Ps and Qs

I arrived in Jerusalem for a year of study abroad with no knowledge of the language, not even a pronoun. I resisted a course of formal study (Ulpan) because the Land of Israel is, in and of itself, a lesson in Hebrew. Everywhere I went, people were willing to help, to correct, to teach.

I quickly learned that “he” means she and “who” means he. When I asked for frozen water in my coke at the local cafe, the waiter supplied the word for ice, “kerach.” I embarrassed myself at the grocery one morning by requesting black bread with seeds, using the biblical term for sperm. The cute Israeli guy behind the counter winked at me, smiled and corrected me. “Kimmer,” he said, using the appropriate word for “seeds” in this context. I felt myself blush. But this is not the subject of my story.

My story begins one day when after my usual kos cafe (cup of coffee) I went to the bathroom for my morning cocky. (Yes! That's how you say it in Hebrew!) It was a cocky gadol (a big bowel movement) and to my dismay, it wouldn't go down on first flush. I tried everything in my bag of tricks, vigorous plunging, chopping it into smaller pieces with the handle of the plunger, to no avail. The next time I flushed the water rose dangerously high and the pieces circled each other slowly, in a kind of a halfhearted hora.

I tried looking in the local phone directory for a plumber, but here I was met with two problems: 1) I did not know the word for plumber in Hebrew and 2) Even if I had known the Hebrew word for plumber, the telephone directory is all in Hebrew. My spelling and alphabetization skills were substandard, to say the least. What to do?

For a while I did nothing. Well, I did do something. Every morning. Like clockwork. After my morning kos cafe. The situation in my toilet grew to mountainous proportions.

On the morning of the day on which I was having people, new acquaintances, coming over for dinner, I reached my limit. How had I let it go on for so long? It was disgusting. I was disgusting. I berated myself in Hebrew with the worst word I knew - “Chazer.” Pig. I repeated it over and over.

Now, I should mention, in my defense, that although I had been using the toilet to poop, in an effort to conserve precious space, I was not actually urinating in the toilet. I was urinating in an empty bottle of “Ritzpaz,” which literally translates to “Floors” but is actually a Pine Sol-type product. By this time, I had replenished almost the entire bottle.

In desperation, I went down to the corner grocery and tried to explain the situation to Yussi, the cute Israeli guy who told me how to say black bread with seeds. Unfortunately, he did not know what I meant by “plumber.” He offered to come over.

“Lo! Lo! Lo!” I cried. (No! No! No!) “Har Cocky b'embatia sheli,” which roughly translates to there's a mountain of shit in my bathroom.

“Ah. You need installator.”

The mazalos were shining on me that day (the stars were aligned in my favor) because Yussi had a friend who was an installator. You guessed it, a plumber. He was in my apartment within the hour.

I hid in my bedroom as he worked. It took about five minutes and he was done.

“Ah, Geveret?” Miss?

I ran to the bathroom where I was greeted by a welcome and beautiful sight, an empty, clean toilet bowl.

“Toda! Toda Rabbah!” I gave him my heartfelt thanks.

“I wash you floor and you sink,” he informed me. Then he looked me directly in the eye and said “I use this,” holding up the bottle of Ritzpaz. He clicked his tongue against his teeth, as only an Israeli can, and shook his head knowingly.

I wanted to die.