Oren Shafir's Blog, page 9

Appointment at the top (180 word freaky flash fiction) by Oren Shafir)

Is this the longest escalator in the universe, or is it just because it is so late? So dark. Because the ceiling is so high? The place so still and empty?  I fight the urge to run back down, but I know they’d only find me – and my family.


I look at the ads rolling by on the side. I see coke, and I think car acid. I see green-pea soup, and I picture vomit. I see a baby in a shiny white diaper, and I imagine shit oozing out of the elastic seams and running down its chubby thighs. For a sec...

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Blitzes, bombs, the Bible, schnitzel and politicsFrom a village in Poland to the streets of Tel Aviv, Beirut, New York, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen, it all comes together in these 11 tales of persecution, wandering, love and family by Oren Shafir.
Download Small Truths and Other Lies"I found in these stories originality toward subjects drawn from a well of life and towards characters the writer is obviously very familiar with. His stories are well designed with gentle hum...

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Show more Show less Free ebook download: a great summer readBlintzes, bombs, the Bible. From a village in Poland to the streets of Tel Aviv, Beirut, New York, Los Angeles, and Copenhagen, it all comes together in these 11 tales of persecution, wandering, love and family by Oren Shafir. It's only free until Sat July 6th. Get it now.Download your free copy of Small Truths and Other Lies "I found in these stories originality toward subjects drawn from a well of life and towards characters...

I love the Dutch, that's why I came to Denmark... (short excerpt from comedy play by Oren Shafir)

In this short excerpt from my play, Better Off Dead, Ulla and her friends,  Lars and Lone, are trying to teach Rex, your average Texan cowboy, how to be Danish.ACT I, SCENE III, ULLA’S LIVING ROOM
(Lars and Lone are just entering)

ULLA
These are my dearest friends, Lars and Lone Lonelarsen. Lars and Lone, this is my new boyfriend, Rex from Texas.
LARS AND LONE
Oh, an American.
REX
What’s a matter, don’t you like Americans?
LARS
Yes, of course. We are Danish.
 LONE
We are very tolerant and extremely non-judgemental.
LARS
But we believe that all Americans are narcissistic, dogmatic hypocrites.
 REX
Why I might take offense with that if I knew what any of those words meant.
 ULLA
Now we shall have Danish hygge.
LARS
Yes, now we shall have Danish hygge.
LONE
Yes, we shall have Danish hygge now.


ULLAWe shall explain.LARS, LONE AND ULLA(Lars, Lone and Ulla lightcandles frantically as theysing this song)
THE DANISH HYGGE SONG
DANISH HYGGE IS SO DANISHIT’S AS DANISH AS CAN BEDANISH HYGGE IS SO SPECIALBECAUSE IT IS SO HYGGELIGDANISH HYGGE IS SO SIMPLEAND YET IT IS COMPLEXALL YOU NEED ARE 500 CANDLESAND SOME PEOPLE AT LEAST THREETHEN YOU NEED SOME DANISH HUMORWE ARE VERY FUNNYWE GAVE THE WORLD BLACK HUMORWE INVENTED IRONYDANISH HYGGE IS SO DANISHIT IS AS DANISH AS CAN BEDANISH HYGGE IS SO CHARMINGBECAUSE IT IS SO HYGGELIGALL YOU NEED ARE 500 BEERSAND SOME PEOPLE, AT LEAST THREEREX
Oh, that’s Danish hygge. It’s kinda like...
Read more or download the full play as a pdf.

Listen to the first act read in a live staged radio reading

All for one (350 word freaky flash fiction) by Oren Shafir

What kind of person could beat a man until his bare knuckles bleed? I know you think I’m horrible, but there’s some things you need to understand.

First of all, it was Frank’s idea. He’s the leader, the thinker, the planner. And he has a way of explaining things with that fancy English accent of his so that it all makes sense. Now that doesn’t mean I will do anything Frank says. No sir, especially not something like that. You need to be motivated for something like that.
You see, that poor kid Jamie is so sweet and innocent, and has been hurt so bad, you just want to protect him. Jamie is the best of us. And it’s like Frank says, if someone hurts one of us, he hurts all of us. So you see, I had to do it. I'm the one who get things done that the others can’t, even terrible things sometimes. I am the doer. Still when I walked up to that man I did not know what I intended to do. But then he smiled at me like he knew me. Almost like he had been, I don’t know, intimate with me. I could see how he must have hurt Jamie. I thought, Jamie is such an innocent kid, he wouldn’t have seen that; he probably just took it as a friendly smile.

“You don’t know me,” I said, and I swung my whole body connecting a hook to his temple so clean it sent him straight down. How was I to know that Jamie had been hurt so bad before, that he could get so confused, he might blame this guy for something else someone else did to him a long time ago?

I can’t talk to Jamie (or Frank for that matter) all the time, you know. Usually, one of us just takes over and uses the body, and the others disappear for a while. This time it was me, and I used it to beat that man to death with my bare hands.Read another freaky flash by Oren

Alone (200-word freaky flash fiction) by Oren Shafir

I’d been trying to remove a painful piece of nut lodged between my upper right molar and the one next to it when I began to suspect the tooth was moving as well. I tested it, and it was loose alright.

I tore off a piece of my rag shirt, the clean one, and dabbed at the area. That’s when I saw the pus and blood. Without thinking, I pushed it as hard as I could ignoring the pain. Back and forth, again and again ,until there was a crack.

I stuffed a piece of the shirt rag in the hole and looked at the tooth.  Tooth? Whatever it now was, I could only admire it. I began laughing. Softly at first, the kind of polite chuckle you would have heard at a dinner party or the library. But my laughter gradually grew - like it was being pumped up inside me. Soon, it was like the unchecked giggles of a child. Gradually, it became  hysterical. Tears rolled down my beard mixing with gooey blood. Had someone heard me, they wouldn’t have known whether it was laughter or the bellowing of a beast.  Had someone seen me, they would have thought me mad. Would have, if anyone were left, that is.

Read more freaky flash fiction by Oren

Dead Weight (300-word freaky flash fiction) by Oren Shafir

If you could ask me anything right now, what would you say?"Are you nervous?"

No, Doctor, I am not particularly nervous. At this time of night, around here, there’s not a living soul to see me moving the body.

"No emotion? How do you feel?"

If you must know, I’m really just concentrating on the practical nature of what needs to be done. The body is heavier than it looks. It was awkward navigating the spiraling staircase, fitting it into the trunk of my little Aygo.
Yes, I know, by referring to it as "the body," I’m objectifying, allowing me to avoid feeling anything at all. Isn't that about it, Doctor?It’s as if I can turn part of my brain off. The part that feels. How else could I have done this? When its eyes got big and wet with surprise and recognition at what was happening, all I felt was pleasure. I was in control. Or perhaps rather, I was relinquishing control. Yes, relinquishing control to that other part of me feels good. He takes what he wants, does what he pleases, and if something is bothering him, he simply does away with it.

I know - I said “it” again. And I referred to that other part of me in the third person. I need to accept that “he” is really part of me. But it would all require so much work. So much exhausting talk. Talking and talking. Me talking. You just sitting there with that mask on your face asking all the questions in that robot voice.Well, Doctor, it seems there’s another way to reconcile the two parts of me by letting him take over. Because he can get the job done. He tied rocks inside the pants legs. He drove it to the lake. He paddled out to where it is deep. Very deep. And I’m thankful. Because now, I won’t have to answer any more of your exhausting questions. All I have to do is get rid of "it." Dump it into the lake. And perhaps, just this once, I won't refer to it as "it."  It's not an "it I'm getting rid of.

It's you. I'm getting rid of you.

Goodbye Doctor.

Read another freaky flash

The True Mother (598 word flash fiction)

www.ashtondrake.comLook at you, so delicate and vulnerable. Translucent skin like fine tissue, delicate bones like precious porcelain. Tiny fingers and little rosy heart-shaped lips. Everything so small, except for those huge blue eyes staring up trustingly at your new world. Who would leave you here alone? Are you abandoned? Surely not, but still, anything could happen to you. She should not have left you even for a minute. There should be a mother test.   
  But I know. I know only too well. Even the best cared for baby in the world can just suddenly stop breathing for no good reason. For no reason at all. And even though everyone tells you, there was nothing you could have done, you wonder.

 Not just any people either: doctors and psychologists, all the experts in the world. And the people closest to you: your parents and sister and friends with children of their own. No one blames you – they say. Jonathan says it too. He says it over and over. He says it at the funeral as they lay the tiny coffin into the earth. He says it as he packs his suitcase. He says it all the way out of the house and into the cab. He never blamed you.   Still, you’re not a wife anymore. You’re not a mother. What are you?

 Round and round in my head it goes. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault. If anything, everyone had said I was overprotective. Always checking and checking and checking. Had you fallen asleep yet? Were your eyes closed? Were you breathing? But like everyone said, I couldn’t stay awake all the time. I was exhausted even as it was. And God knows, I never left you alone in public like this woman, at the mercy of the elements and fate and ill-meaning strangers.   It was in my own house. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it wasn’t my fault. If anyone deserves a second chance, it’s me, and not this mother. How long has it been now? How long have I been standing here? No one has come to check on her. No one has said anything to me. They probably all just assume she’s mine. And why shouldn’t they? I, a stranger, am more concerned for her well-being than her own mother. She should be mine. What should I do? If I pick her up and she doesn’t cry, then that will be a sign. That she wants to go with me. That it’s the right thing to do.

Yes, that’s right, pick her up. She’s not crying. No one is saying anything. Why? Because it’s natural. They just assume she’s mine because I care for her more than her own mother. No not mother. She lost that right when she left her here, alone and unprotected. I’m her true mother now. The door is right there. I can make it.      “Miss, miss, excuse me.”

      Oh, what does she want? I was almost out the door and then everything would have been alright. Surely she can see that I’m the true mother.
      “Miss, if you’re not going to buy that doll, I’m going to have to ask you to put it back on the shelf.”END

More of Oren's freaky flash fiction

When I Was Brand New

On the night I was born
My Dad used one of the two tickets he'd bought
To hear Frank Sinatra sing
Why Frankie decided to perform in Beer Sheva, Israelof all places
I do not know
My Mom was somewhat terrified
The first two births had gone reasonably well
But still they hurt like hell
And now here she was again, only 23
In a hospital in a foreign land
In the middle of the goddamned desert

She'd made friends with a lady doctor from Argentina
Who knew the latest in newfangled natural birth techniques
The lady doctor didn't really speak English
Mom didn't really speak Hebrew or Spanish
But I guess in those days you didn't need a common language to be friends
In Beer Sheva in the middle of the desert

The lady doctor promised to be there for the birth
Whether she was on duty or not
My Dad's Mom promised to come out and watch the other babies
My Mom promised the lady doctor would be godmother
My Dad didn't promise anything
 
So Mom ended up
In a hospital full of clunky metal beds, drab beige walls and stone floors
Which echoed the shrieks of immigrant women from Lodz and Minsk, Tripoli and Cairo
But she and her lady doctor friend
Blocked out the animal screams, and the mechanical rattle of primitive hospital machinery
They puffed and breathed, they pushed and panted
They concentrated unremittingly on the mission at hand

Meanwhile Dad sat under the desert moon
Listening to Sinatra's soft voice carry
Through the hot dry air
Across the thick purple sky
On and on through the silent night
Dad must have wondered how far Sinatra's voice would carry
 
Frankie must have had one of the those big shiny rectangular mikes on a stand
Can you see him swaying forward? Can you hear him singing:
"When I was 21, it was a very good year"
Frankie was 47; my Dad was 34, and I was brand new

A cosmopolite at large

OR How a nice Jewish boy like me ended up in a goyish place like this
by
Oren Shafir  (Originally published in Rambam, Danish-Jewish history journal, 15/2006) I’ve lived in Denmark for 15 years now, and I still feel like an outsider. But, hey, that’s not so strange. After all I am Jewish; we Jews are perennial outsiders. We’re contributors to the mainstream, yet never quite considered an integral part of the mainstream. We’re familiar with all forms of persecution, and we’re always on the move. Oh yes, Jews get around, and I’m no different.
When I was one-year-old, I got the travel bug and decided to emigrate from my birthplace of Beer-Sheeba to Los Angeles. Okay, the decision may not have been entirely mine. My parents were moving back to the States after four years in Israel. After settling down in Southern California, they tried unsuccessfully to move to Israel in 1970 before they made the move back permanently in 1979. And although they’ll now stay put in Israel for the rest of their days, they still like to travel a lot. What’s more, wherever they choose to go, they can find a family member to stay with, including of course, Denmark. I represent the Scandinavian Shafirs.

They don’t call us wandering Jews for nothing
Where all this Jewish wanderlust started, I do not know. The farthest back we can trace our family lineage is to Poland where, in 1772, the Jews were forced by the newly occupying forces of Austria to take conventional surnames. The name Mozyk Mandelbaum Szafir was officially registered. For the next 150 years or so, the family’s urge to wander dissipated. They stayed in Poland and apparently married whomever happened to be nearest. My maternal grandmother Helen and grandfather Willie had a double wedding together with Helen’s brother who married Willie’s sister. My paternal grandmother and grandfather were first cousins. Even after the family was forced by persecution to escape over the oceans to the US and Israel in the 20s and 30s respectively, the intermarrying wasn’t over. My dad left Israel to attend university in the States where he ended up marrying my mom – his second cousin (which, friends can’t resist pointing out, explains a lot).

But after that, the family circle began to widen. And widen some more. My Uncle Hal is married (third time) to a Mexican. My Uncle Jerry is married to an El Salvadoran. My cousin Lisa is married to an Afro-American. My second cousin Steve is married to an Australian. My brother Gary’s first wife was an Israeli of Lebanese descent. His second wife is a Chilean now living in Israel. My brother Dave’s wife is an Israeli whose family moved to Israel from Morocco. And then there’s me. I met my wife on Kibbutz Hagoshrim when I was there with the Nachal (an Israeli army program), and she was there with Dakiv (an acronym for Danish Friends of the Kibbutz, or as some people liked to call it, Shiksas Incorporated).

Why do I live in Denmark, you ask (Sometimes I wonder, too)
I live in Denmark because I fell in love with Lene. We married young, grew up together, and eventually started a family. I have two children who were born here, and I’ve lived here for 15 years now. That’s two-thirds of the time I spent in the States and about three times longer than I lived in Israel. I feel comfortable in Denmark, but I wouldn’t exactly say I have warm feelings about it. In fact, I’d characterize my feelings as grey.  It was grey on the December day when I arrived in 1989.  And it stayed grey for a month. I found the Danish landscape to be pretty, and the Danish people to be nice. But pretty and nice were as far as it went.  In general, the country and its people don’t inspire me to use strong adjectives.

Sometimes, it seems like my very identity is merging into the flatness of the landscape, and I yearn for mountains. Sometimes, I feel like I’m fading into the drab greyness of the long winter months, and I long for the sun. Sometimes, I feel like my individuality is slowly evolving to conform to this homogenous group of mild-mannered people, and I miss people who stand out. People who shout when they’re just talking. Like in Israel, where you’ll see two people yelling at each other in the streets in what might look like the prelude to a fight but ends up just being two friends discussing which restaurant has the best humus.

Yes, I’ve gotten used to Denmark. Like all Danes, I’ve learned to worship the sun when it appears.
And I do admire many things about Denmark and its people. I enjoy the easy-going life, the lack of skyscrapers and smog and anything resembling traffic. I appreciate the lack of poverty, and I admire the patience of the Danish people. For instance, I remember once when I first moved here, my father-in-law was driving me down a narrow street in Vesterbro, and he had to stop for a truck that was unloading its freight. I was watching him, waiting for him to honk, yell, or at least ask the driver politely to move it. But he just sat there patiently until the driver finished unloading. I thought, I can learn something from this man.

I still feel like an outsider in Denmark, yet it has become my home. I speak the language reasonably well. I own a house here. My own business. A dog. The one thing I don’t own is a Danish passport. Maybe, I would have felt more inclined to get a Danish passport had I come here at a younger, more impressionable age and more fully mastered the language. But the truth is, I just don’t feel Danish. And I probably never will. Yet I can’t let go of either my American or Israeli passport. For all my citizen-of-the-world affectations, I hold on stubbornly to some part of my identity as an American. As an Israeli. And not least, as a Jew.

A bisl American
Growing up in the States, I always felt a bit different, though not in a bad way. Maybe I even felt a little bit special as an outsider, as a Jew. Now, here in Denmark, the part of my American identity that I sometimes feel strongly about is intangible and transient, at times trivial even. The American part of my identity has to do with staying up late at night as a teenager in the company of Johnny Carson from the Tonight Show, every American’s father figure. Or staying up even later with Humphrey Bogart and James Stewart and Fred Astaire studying the all-important culture of classic movies.
It has to do with afternoons in front of the TV watching reruns of black and white TV shows from the 50s about WASPish families in which the children all had straight noses and freckles and the parents never raised their voices. But my American identity also has to do with playing touch football outside in the middle of our quiet suburban street in a part of Los Angeles that wasn’t that far from the innocence depicted on the old 50s TV series. Or at least, it didn’t seem to be. But in the background, my parents were watching nightly news broadcasts of body bags returning from Vietnam and racial unrest down in Mississippi. In retrospect, I know that the innocence of my idyllic youth, and my American identity, is largely in my head. The American part of me is gone. Did it ever really exist?

A bisl Israeli
My father is Israeli. I have lots of cousins in Israel. My parents and my brothers and their families live there. I’m a sabra, and I served in the IDF. But the Israel I feel part of doesn’t exist anymore, either. Not really. The deep part of my Israeli identity is a jumbo jet that lands in Lod airport to the tune of Jerusalem of Gold and to the applause of the passengers. If you look carefully at faces of the passengers, you might even see a tear or two. As we wait for our baggage, half of my Dad’s family wave at us through the glass wall separating the passengers from the locals (This glass wall was later removed for security reasons after the Lod massacre of 1972). Stout men with thick black moustaches hug and kiss my parents. Dark haired women, whom I can’t really distinguish from each other, kiss and pinch my cheeks. At the center of it all is my grandmother who kisses and pinches more than anyone, and who always dominates her surroundings, whether in the airport directing family members to carry suitcases or in Shuk Hacarmel (the open market in Tel Aviv) haggling with the Arab grocers. This is the Israel before cable TV, before the Internet, and before McDonalds. Before Yigal Amir, before the Intifada, and before suicide bombs. It’s the Israel of my childhood, my special place. And it’s gone.

Am Miesten Jewish
The other day, my son’s friend was sleeping over, and I overheard them talking. Like my son, the friend has a Jewish-American father and a Danish non-Jewish mother. But my son’s friend doesn’t attend the Jewish school, Carolineskolen, and his family is even less religious than we are (if that’s possible.) The two ten-year-olds were discussing how Jewish they were. My son, Joshua, insisted that he was half-Jewish. His friend, Emil, knew that Joshua attended a Jewish school and reasoned that he therefore must be more than half-Jewish. I was smiling to myself, but I wasn’t really sure what to tell them. Was there a formula for figuring out the percentage of your Jewishness.  According to Halahic law, of course, neither one is Jewish. But I don’t care much about that. I’m certain that my 10-year-old son, and his 13-year-old sister, Zoe, feel Jewish somewhere deep in their identity. Whether it’s one-half, one-third or one-quarter, I can’t say. They are what they are, and Jewishness is a big part of it.

Personally, I believe that my own Jewish identity and that of my children has to do with history. With the history of a people who were persecuted and had to flee Egypt. The history of a family, our family, who were persecuted and had to flee Poland. Those in our family who did not flee were killed. All of them. Such an event shapes the identity of ancestors for many generations to come.
Our Jewish identity also has to do with values. The values of a people who place great importance on family, on children, on life. A people who prioritize study, taking care of the weakest members of society, and perhaps most importantly, treating strangers fairly. Because if anyone knows what it’s like to be on the outside, we do. So, if it turns out that my son and my daughter feel a bit like outsiders sometimes, too, that’s okay. Anything else would be strange.