Former Jerusalem Post arts and entertainment editor David Isaacson’s My Other Half comical novel is chock-full of beautifully formed sentences, youthful late-20th-century adventures in sex, drugs, and rock & roll, deep philosophical musings, and healthy doses of British cynicism.
The author grew up in suburban Bexleyheath in Kent, England, attending a grammar school with only two other Jewish pupils. After graduation, he volunteered at Kibbutz Na’an, learning Hebrew at ulpan with the late Sam Orbaum, who went on to become a legendary columnist and editor at the Post.
Isaacson’s own career as a journalist brought him to the Post in the 1990s. It has also included stints at the UK’s Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times.
Back home in England, he studied philosophy at Sussex University, then traveled across the United States and Europe following the Grateful Dead.
An unexpected fate in Jerusalem
Isaacson told the Post that his “latent Zionism” became manifest in the wake of Israel’s First Lebanon War. Shocked by the media’s prejudicial, anti-Israel coverage, he said, he joined the PR department of the Joint Israel Appeal (JIA), with which he traveled to Israel in 1992.
By 1994, Isaacson had made aliyah, and within days, he met Debra, a new immigrant from New York and his wife-to-be, at Jerusalem’s Ulpan Etzion. They lived in Jerusalem’s Abu Tor neighborhood and Mevasseret Zion before relocating to London in 1999, where they attend St Johns Wood Liberal Synagogue. Now, he said, they look forward to returning to Israel for good.
In My Other Half, the hero, Jake, eventually meets an unexpected fate in Jerusalem. Until then, he embarks on a hilarious series of decadent misadventures, some of which appear below.
Excerpts from ‘My Other Half’
“Have you got a quarter, Jake?” Gordon looked like he had just woken up. “I’ve got to go to the bank tomorrow anyway.”
Evie laughed. Gordon always had to go to the bank tomorrow but never made it because the bank closed at 3:30, long before Gordon was out of bed.
“It’s in the top drawer,” I said.
Gordon took a quarter of Leb from my top drawer and squeezed in next to Skunk, half under the desk, to roll a joint.
“Have you been to Mexico?” Skunk asked Kitty.
“No, I was on a kibbutz. The volunteers were having a Castenada phase.”
“Kitty had a gap year,” boasted Fysh. “My grandfather founded a kibbutz.”
I wished I knew its name. “Maybe it was the same one.”
“I was at Kibbutz Galuyot,” she said. “Right in the middle of Israel. Halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.”
“Did they have good hashish?” asked Fysh.
“Not as good as in Egypt.”
“You went to Egypt, too?” She was like one of those intrepid women adventurers you read about in the Sunday papers’ books pages. “Wasn’t it dangerous?”
“It was. I nearly got raped by a cop.”
“What a scumbag,” said Evie.
“What happened?” Skunk wanted to know.
“I told him I understood his impression of Western women as cheap slappers, but this was just capitalist bullshit, just TV and advertising. I said I was an ordinary girl. I asked him to think of the women he knew – his mother, his sisters, his cousins. He wouldn’t want this to happen to any of them, would he?”
“Too right,” said Evie.
“He went off the idea and went away. I was just glad I had good karma.”
“Karma?” repeated Skunk. “Give us an example of this ‘karma.’”
“That was an example.” Kitty’s cheeks turned pink.
“Give us another.”
“Alright then. I was on a trip down south, to Luxor, and I got talking to the bus driver. He wouldn’t let me buy a ticket. He was like, ‘That’s okay, it’s on me, man.’”
“And that’s it?”
“On the bus back to Cairo, there was this guy sitting next to me. He was friendly and cool, so at one of the stops I shared a doobie with him. At journey’s end we said salaam, and he planted a little Judas kiss on my cheek. Seconds later, two cops appeared. They knew I was carrying ganja and said they were going to take me in.
I gave them my money, and luckily they got bored and waved me away. I binned my ganja and wondered how I was going to get to Cairo with no money. Then a bus pulled up. It was the same driver. He recognized me and let me travel free again. If that’s not karma, I don’t know what is.”
“That is karma,” Fysh confirmed.
What I needed was help from the British consulate [in Amsterdam] which, I hoped, would replace my passport, lend me some cash, and provide me with a pair of shoes. All being well, I would be out of here in the morning. How good it was to be British!
My optimism diminished as a night of aimless wandering wore on. Britain’s consular staff were hardly likely to treat a drugs tourist who has come a cropper as a matter requiring their urgent attention. I would have to wait my turn in a bureaucratic labyrinth. I could just see how it would go.
“Her Majesty’s Foreign Office does have a policy of lending money to those who, through no fault of their own, find themselves stranded, but we are not a charity, and we do need to be satisfied that the claim is genuine, and that the claimant is a bona-fide subject of the Crown.”
“My claim is genuine. And I am a bona-fide subject of the Crown. I’ve lived in England all my life. Can’t you tell by my accent?”
“Furthermore, to be confident that the claimant is sincere in their stated intention of returning immediately to the United Kingdom, we need proof that they will embark on the first available passenger ferry or airplane…”
“Well there’s nothing to keep me here. I’ve got no shoes, no money, and nowhere to stay.” I didn’t have any hash either.
“…pending prior approval from the relevant authorities, which is to say, Customs and Excise, the Home Office and…”
“Hang on a minute. How long’s all that going to take?”
“That depends on the queue ahead of you.”
“How long is the queue?”
“It’s not the queue’s length so much as the complexity of individual cases that slow things down. One complex case can take longer to resolve than numerous straightforward cases.”
“How complex are the cases ahead of mine?”
“I am not at liberty to discuss other cases. That would be most improper.”
“Well, how complex is my case?”
“We won’t know that until it’s processed.”
“When will that be?”
“That is hard to predict. We’ll need a police report to verify your story. And we will need to interview you in person.”
“You can interview me now.”
“That would be jumping the queue. Now, why don’t you leave a contact address with my secretary…”
“I don’t have a contact address!”
“There is really no need to raise your voice.”
I had to lower my expectations, too. “I don’t suppose you could lend me a pair of size eights?”
“We thought you were dead,” said Junkie Simon, after a slow double-take. A drugs peddler of no fixed abode and Flat 22’s most honored guest, Junkie Simon turned up at any time, day or night, spouting incoherently. He jacked up in central space, or in Gordon’s groovy pad if he wanted some privacy, and passed out wherever he happened to be. He didn’t want to hear the Grateful Dead when we could be listening to Joy Division, and he didn’t know how we could live in such a pigsty, but he stayed for days and was happy to pitch when there were chores to be done.
“I’m soooo sorry,” shrieked Evie. “I got my days mixed up. Are you alright?”
“I got mugged.” At last, I could say it.
“I knew it.” Evie rushed up the steps for a hug.
“I got mugged,” said Junkie Simon. “About a year ago. In Gladstone Square I think it was.”
“Occupational hazard,” said Boney.
“It was my own fault,” I had to admit.
“When you didn’t come straight back, I felt so guilty I went to see Father O’Malley,” said Evie. “I told him all about you.”
“What d’you do that for?” I had never heard of Father O’Malley.
“I didn’t know if we’d ever see you again. Father O’Malley told me to pray for you.”
“Makes it all worthwhile, like,” muttered Boney.
“He invited me into his living room and we sat in armchairs round the fireplace,” said Evie. “It was really nice, actually. Father O’Malley got out a bottle of brandy and read passages from the Bible. I never knew there were so many crazy characters in the Old Testament.”
In the summer holidays we played several times a week on a court in Luxembourg Village, hoping that Junkie Simon’s cocaine would enhance our game. In reality it only enhanced our edginess and Skunk’s tantrums. On the other hand, the joints we smoked to remove the edge had us playing shots in slow motion or laughing at random absurdities, which was not conducive to good tennis.
“It’s going to rain,” said Skunk.
“It’s not going to rain.” Kitty had caught the habit of contradicting Skunk.
“It’s bound to rain if we play tennis,” said Skunk.
Kitty looked through the window. “They’re not rain clouds, are they?”
In lieu of a game of tennis, I flicked through Kitty’s records. “English hippy,” said The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter. “International bohemian,’ said the Liberation Music Orchestra. “Borrowed from Fysh,” said The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus. A portrait of Napoleon illustrated Beethoven’s Emperor concerto. A landscape of rolling fields advertised Vaughan Williams. “To Kitty, love Diana,” read an inscription on Death and the Maiden.
“What’s this?’ I asked of an album that pictured Mahler gazing into space.
“It’s a Sannyasin commune.” She was talking to me. “I’m a Sannyasin.”
“Really?” I didn’t know what a Sannyasin was but I recognized her misplaced zealotry. “I was an anarchist.”
“Tell them about David Owen,” said Skunk.
“Who’s David Owen?” Diana asked Kitty.
“‘Politician,” scoffed Kitty.
“Jake threw squishy tomatoes at him,” said Skunk.
“Why?” Kitty wasn’t one for student politics.
“He already told you,” tutted Skunk. “He was an anarchist.” I gave them an account of the David Owen incident, taking in the history of anarchism, including quotations from Kropotkin (“Where there is authority, there is no freedom”) and Proudhon (“Property is theft”) and references to the Paris Commune and the Spanish Civil War, with an aside on finding squishy tomatoes at the co-op, but for all Skunk’s titters of support, Kitty wasn’t interested and Diana was wondering where she was.
I was trying to remember what she was. “What did you say you are again?”
“A Sann-yasin.” Kitty answered for her.
“What’s a Sann-yasin?”
“Sannyasins are followers of the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh.” Diana straightened her back. “We travel from all over the world to Poona, to be with Bhagwan.”
“And you went to Dharamsala,” Kitty reminded her.
“That’s up north. I trekked through Mother India for three days, on trains so crowded you had to sit on the roof or hang from carriage doors.”
“Have you got any photos?”
Diana pulled a face. I was so uncool. ■
MY OTHER HALF
By David Isaacson
AoS
266 pages; $16
