Don't Judge a Book by Its (Tablet) Cover
At 6:30 in the morningon Wednesday, September 25th, sirens went off, warning of an impending rocketattack on Tel Aviv. Along with the other passengers on the train that haddeparted from Modi’in half an hour earlier, I lay on the floor. The train slowedas it neared the Tel Aviv University Station. When it came to a stop, I rushedoff and took shelter in the arrival hall below the tracks.
It was the first timethat a missile fired by Hezbollah came close to striking Tel Aviv in theongoing and escalating conflict. The IDF Army confirmed it had intercepted thesurface-to-surface missile after it was launched from Lebanon. There were noreports of casualties or damage.
I breathed a sigh ofrelief and hurried toward the station’s exit. As I walked, I adjusted mybackpack and found that one of the pouches was unzipped. I felt inside anddiscovered that my tablet was missing. Maybe in my rush to get off the train Ihad placed it inside another pouch? Had I had left it on the train?
I need my tablet toread
My journey to work onthe early morning train lasts 37 minutes, and I utilize the time to read. Thatmorning, I had been just a chapter or two short of finishing Songs for the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari, an excellent novel by a highly talentedwriter. I was thoroughly enjoying the book and planning to write a verycomplimentary review. But when I arrived at my office and checked my backpack,I confirmed the fact that I had lost my tablet.
I opened a ticket onthe Israel Railways website reporting the loss. I joined several Facebookgroups—Lost and Found, Lost and Found in Tel Aviv, and Lost and Found on theTrain. I posted a quick note about losing my tablet and provided a briefdescription. I checked my Facebook feed every hour to see ifanyone reported finding it.
A few words about mytablet. It is a very old, outdated Samsung model, dating back to 2013. I onlyuse the tablet for reading. I don’t watch videos on the tablet; I don’t playgames. My tablet serves me solely as a digital book.
The mostdistinguishing feature of the tablet is its black cover. The cover is as old asthe device and shows extensive signs of wear and tear. It’s faded and startingto come apart. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a picture of the tablet to post onFacebook.
One of the firstthoughts that went through my head was how would I finish the last pages ofTsabari’s novel? I downloaded the Kindle app to my phone and on my return trainjourney home, I read the ending of the book on a very smallscreen.
I order a newtablet and then…
A week and a halfpassed, and I had given up hope of ever seeing my tablet again. I went onlineand searched for a new tablet to buy. I didn’t want anything fancy, and Icertainly didn’t want an Amazon Kindle, a device that continues to frustrate mywife months after she purchased it. I found an affordable model and made theorder. The tablet would be ready for pickup at an electronics store down thestreet from my office the very next day.
And then I got a phonecall from Israel Railways.
“Do you have a whitetablet?” someone asked me.
I didn't know the color! I couldn't remember ever seeing the tablet without its fraying cover.
“Does it have a startbutton at the bottom, like an iPhone 4?”
“I don’t know what aniPhone 4 looks like,” I admitted.
Don't judge a digitalbook by its cover
After work, I went tothe Lost and Found department at the Savidor Center Train Station. The clerkcouldn’t find a record of having called me that morning, but he did have myreport of a missing tablet listed in his files. “Is this one yours?” he said, holdingup a huge device.
“My tablet issmaller.”
“What about this one?”
“No, mine is muchsmaller”
“And this?”
I immediatelyrecognized the tablet by its old black cover. “That’s it!”
As the clerk wrote uphis report, I turned on the device. Amazingly, after having gone missing for aweek and a half, the battery was at 75%. And the Kindle app opened to the exactpage in Songs for the Brokenhearted that I had been reading when thesiren went off.
“You seem surprised,”the clerk said.
“I can’t believe thatI found it.”
“There are good peoplein this world,” the clerk said, referring to the honest anonymous trainpassenger who had turned my tablet into Lost and Found. “And your tablet is avery old model that no one uses anymore.”
No one uses? My tablet had just survived a missile attack and reappeared after disappearing for a week and a half! Even after all these years, it is still a suitable device for reading, especially when it comes to excellent novels like Songsfor the Brokenhearted by Ayelet Tsabari.
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