A Tale From The Vienna Woods
I jumped off the bus. Blinded by an all consuming orange flood of the 5pm summer sun, I stopped to choose a song in my headphones.
While the crowd of passengers proceeded to a subway station I looked the other direction and squinting to the sun I found myself on a cute little bridge above the railroad, over a small half drained canal navigating between the rocks. And with a panorama of the prettiest town, sitting on its banks. Reaching all the way to the horizon. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath enjoying the light and the air. An adventure would happen today. I could feel it. It was in the air. You know what they say. Wanna live a fable? Look for adventures.
So I switched from Nancy Sinatra to Michael Jackson and while filling my heart with infinite love ("Heal The World" was playing), walked to the metro. I loved that station. The whole thing was a set. The station building, the open railway tunnel and the canal. All designed in the end of the 19th century by Otto Wagner. With it's matching green and golden Jugendstil ornaments and the black-n-white chessboard floor every station looked like a magic portal to the era of secession. I loved taking rides along those exact Wagner designed lines. They were my favorites when seated comfortably in a train observing life around me. And in this art-nouveau styled framing which brought a hint of bohemian chic to the picture, life just looked better. I liked to distance myself from reality, looking at the world as if it was only a motion picture on the screen. It helped me to gain perspective and see things more objectively, I thought.
So that's where I was supposed to meet my new friend.
I met the guy a few days before at an anarchist demonstration. I just ran straight into it while rambling the streets on a sunny day. Stopped out of curiosity, and there was Samir who was kind enough to explain to me what was the gathering for.
He was a Palestinian born in Israel, spoke fluent Russian because of his studies in St. Petersburg. His English was better than average too as he also had lived in London for a while. I was fascinated by the list of the residences and wanted to know more about this curious, friendly looking kid.
So I waited a bit and finally down the street, I saw him walking towards me, looking like some little urban Mowgli. Black-eyed, skinny, not taller than me, in old ripped jeans and multicolored poncho. His dark long hair going down almost to his waist. His bronze skin and radiant smile glowed in the rays of the setting sun as he walked up to me and said 'privet' in a slight Arabic accent.
Evening set over the city and darkened the sky. It was a film festival that the Viennese society was lucky to have every summer. They would hang the screen on the beautiful neo-gothic city-hall facade and every night watch musicals, operas and dance performances on the square under the open sky. With a charming park around, where I believed fairies lived, as once I did find a mushroom circle there, and you know what that means. We came late and found no available seats so we sat on the asphalt, still warm after a summer day and talked, watching the dance.
As the film ended, Samir told me how he didn't finish his computer science course in Russia and had to go back to Israel because of increasing racism and nazi activities. We sat in the dark, watching white titles running down the black box.
'Hey, would you like to… ah, never mind' he said suddenly stopping.
'What?'
'No, it's nothing.' How could poor Samir know that there was no way my curiosity would let go like that.
'Tell me, what? What would I like? Whaaat???'
'Ok! I just thought you'd find it a little crazy, but I have a favorite place, and it's a hill on the edge of the city in the Vienna Woods. I wanted to suggest we go there, we could take a ride on the night-line bus. But it's late and you're probably not up for something like that.'
I gazed at the Palestinian. Did he look trustworthy? Ripped jeans, black eyes… Yes, he did.
'I don't have to work tomorrow,' I said.
'Really? So.. you wanna go?'
'Sure! Geschichten aus dem Wienerwald! I want to see the famous Vienna Woods!'
'But don't you need like, to tell your host-family about it?'
I tried to picture myself telling two Austrians, who's toddlers I Au paired, that I wouldn't sleep at home because I went for a walk in the woods at night with an Arabic guy who I met a day before. The picture was rather funny and completely surreal. I shook my head slowly and smiled:
'Yeah, I don't think it's any of their business'.
The next thing I knew, we were walking up a quiet, crooked street in the outskirts of the city. I had no idea where I was. Then Samir stopped and said:
'We're almost there, you gotta close your eyes now.'
'Close my eyes?' I repeated, articulating and giving him a mistrustful look.
'Come on, I'll lead you from here, but don't peek. I promise, you won't regret it!'
'Well… Alright.' I took Samir's hand, closed my eyes, and cautiously walked with him. The paved road under my feet changed to high grass that tickled my knees. I kept walking, honest as I am pressing my eyelids together, not peeking even a little! Unable to stop smiling, almost laughing with building excitement and at how childish this all was. We stopped.
'Now look,' he said.
I opened my eyes, and startled. In front of me there was… the whole of Vienna, glowing with lights in the night. I was standing on the top of a hill. Just to take my eyes away from the striking beauty that was impossible to comprehend I looked up and millions of stars were there. I felt weak in the knees, fell back into the grass and watched the Milky Way through the high and thin weeds dancing in the wind. I'd sit up to glimpse at the toy-like city just to fall back again to dissolve gazing at the sky. A few minutes later I felt almost able to speak again, and found my friend sitting beside me, eyes fixed on the magical view.
'Thank you, Samir,'
'You're welcome,' he looked at me and smiled simply.
I could see it all, the whole town glittering like a puddle of spilled pixie-dust on the dark plains of the Austrian land. Split down the middle by a black string of Danube river, running all the way from the mysterious German mountains and into my poor old Ukraine. I could see the shiny chimney of the Hundertwasser's cool waste combustion complex that looked like a gigantic playground from a fantasy land. Could see the peaks of St. Steven's Cathedral and the Votive church, and many other gothic arrows aimed at the sky which names I knew not. And the ferris wheel in the beautiful Prater park of course. The one that I even rode once. It was all there.
'So how did you end up in Austria anyway?' I asked Samir as we spent another half an hour praising all the visible beauties of Vienna.
'Well, it's a long story'.
I turned to Samir, and starred, intensely smiling as a demonstration of my readiness to listen. He smiled too and started:
'After I came back from Russia I couldn't help feeling the anger at the unfairness of the world boiling in me. In Israel it's really tough for Arabs. We're like second rate people to the authorities. I became politically active, seeking a fair life you know. I wrote political graffitis, spread flyers, organized a peaceful demonstration when then the governmental secret service came after me'.
'Say what?'
'Yeah, the secret service! Israel is very into that! They have like the best spies in the world! They knew everything about me. One day the police came to my apartment and showed me a search warrant. Three men in uniform came in. They didn't look anywhere, didn't touch anything but walked directly into my bedroom, opened the second drawer of my bedside table and took out a small pack of weed. They knew where it was! Then they made me come with them. My friend was there so they took him too. They drove us to some kind of station out of town where they interrogated us.'
'Oh my God,' I couldn't believe he was actually telling me this, 'did they hurt you?'
'No! My friend, whom they also took was Jewish. That saved my ass. So they were sort of polite. They did it all just to scare us a little, to show how powerful they are, finding the weed like that.'
'But that's crazy! How could they know exactly where you put it? Was there someone at your home who told them?'
'I don't know, might be. But they knew everything. At the interrogation they were like, 'hey, a few days ago you talked on the phone to that girl, she asked you this and that, you told her that and this. Why did you tell her that?' They repeated our conversation literary. They knew it all. I didn't tell them anything. Nor did my friend. In the end, one of them turned to him and said: 'You're a nice Jewish boy. Don't be friends with an Arab.'
A heavy silence fell and I was shocked and speechless.
'So that's when I decided to move!' Samir said in a loud, silly way, turning to me and making big eyes and smiling at me, as to clear the air of the awful graveness that drew around us.
His story caught me a little off guard as I was in a completely different state of mind, dreamy and totally optimistic just moments before when I watched the view. Samir realized that and tried to change it back. I shivered and zipped up my jacket.
'Are you cold?' he asked, I nodded, 'Oh, you poor thing,' he said in a puppy-talk and put his arm around me. He was very sweet. I noticed then how madly romantic the whole scene was and realized (not without delight) how innocently Samir behaved, not once giving me a reason to doubt his friendly intentions.
'Hey, I know what we can do to get ourselves warm now…' He smiled at me in a sort of a cunning way, and I swear to God he almost winked. Oh, no, I thought, ready to be once again disappointed of all men in the world.
'What?' I asked tensely. Preparing myself to say 'no' to whatever was about to be offered.
'We can run to those trees and back!' Samir exclaimed pointing his hand at a bunch of trees standing in the distance.
I laughed with relief. Thank God, I muttered and screamed:
'Oh yes!'
And we ran. To the trees, back, then to the trees again. And when we ran out of breath, rolled in the grass, cried like crazy animals and laughed like wild children. I sure felt warmer! After that we climbed a big horizontal branch of a stand-alone tree on the meadow facing the city view (naturally). We kept gazing at it, never getting enough. A lost boy and a lost girl sitting on a tree. Too old to pass for children, too simple to be considered adults.
'I've been to Palestine once' I said.
'Really! When?'
'My dad took me and my sister there to see holy Christian places. To Israel too.'
I remembered the hot little town of Bethlehem, white sandy rocks of the Judaean Desert, a boy on a donkey waving at me down from a mountain top. I remembered waving back. I would never forget the warmth and hospitality of that poor, waterless land and it's children that surrounded me and my little sister on the playground one afternoon. Asking our names with their first-school-year English and pointing at our blond hair. And then waving as we drove away, shouting 'bye-bye!' all together. The place tasted of honey and lemon juice. The same way as beautiful Israel did. The air was filled with something that makes you want to come back even in spite of soldiers with guns in the streets in both countries.
I also remembered pictures that stroke my imagination painted on the grey wall separating the two places (years later I learned the artist's name was Banksy). One picture was of two donkeys, a black and a white one trying to walk away from each other but with their tails entangled. Each donkey had a city-scape on it's back. They weren't much different, those donkeys. I saw them. Same sweetness, same carefree air mixed with the ghost of eternity. Only one was drowning in flower gardens while another was a bare desert. Poor donkeys.
'I know', Samir said as we continued walking an alley among the trees. 'It's funny though. When I came to Austria they gave me a residence permit very easily because I am a citizen of Israel. You know they have this whole Jewish-welcome policy now as an apology for genocide. And legally I am a Jew to them! While on the other hand, I'm now taking part in this action aimed to boycott Israel made products to make their government see that the world doesn't support what they're doing. I'm being called anti-Semite for that! But I AM a freaking semite! I mean learn ethnology, people!'
I giggled. It was so dark in the forest I could hardly see the path. And to me, meeting a ghost seemed like the only possible danger that was likely to exist in that magical wood. But not one mugger, not one maniac, not one body covered with last years leaves as one could expect walking suburban woods in my home-town of Kiev. No, just a ghost and maybe a wild boar. But I liked both animals and spirits, and it felt so safe all around. We reached a crossroad.
'Ok, where should I take you now?' Samir slowed down. 'Ah! D'you wanna go to the holy spring with water that can heal the blind?'
'Huh, I thought you didn't believe in that kind of stuff'.
'I don't. But the water tastes great!'
'Well, I believe that stuff. Let's go there.'
'And to the circle of talking stones!'
'Talking stones???'
'Yes. And a tree calendar!'
'Wow!'
Samir took me everywhere. First to the enchanting circle of trees and stones that would start speaking with different human voices if you came close. Coming out of artfully hidden dynamics German words spread loudly above the ground to every corner of the huge, empty, dark field and came rolling back like thunder. Then we went to the holy spring deep in the forest and drank it's water. The night full of adventures was running out of time, the sky got lighter. It was a dawn already when we left the spring. We came out on to another meadow on a hill-top, in time to catch the sunrise over the city, sitting on the roots of a big old tree.
Even though the miraculous wonderfulness of the night made me as happy as I could be, something was bothering me a little as I watched the morning entering the virgin-white city.
'So you moved to Vienna to escape those horrible secret service guys?'
'Sort of. But one day when I was getting ready to go, on my way to work a man came to me in the street. Just some man, looked like an ordinary person. He came to me and said 'Hello, Samir. We know you're planning to leave the country. It's okay. If we want you, we'll get to you anywhere.' And then he left.'
'And you're still doing that action against Israeli policy?'
'Oh, I'll do more! I don't know if they can get me here but I just don't care. It's not the point whether it's safe or not. So many people are dying, suffering. I lost my best friend in that war. And to stop it would be so easy if they wanted! It's all about money and greed. Fat billionaires. People don't want to fight.'
This time I put my arm around Samir and wished I could heal the wounds left by hatred on the surface on his soul. But not inside of it. His heart was pure and loving.
'I think you are very brave, Samir'.
'I think I'm an idiot,' he kept silent for a moment. 'So these are the famous Vienna Woods,' he summed up the night.
'And this,' I sighed, turning to the city, 'is the famous Vienna'.
We watched the lovely city equally foreign to both of us, greeting another happy day under the peaceful blue sky. Was it true? Could those people get Samir here if they wanted to? Could anything bad at all happen in this safe, almost utopian heart of Europe? Was it our fault that we weren't born here and needed permission to stay in the place where you can freely express your views and safely walk the night? And could these people, who lived here and who's biggest problems was recycling and animal rights, escape the horrors of the world, going to their work in that beautiful Otto Wagner designed metro? Or taking in the high class music in that great Viennese Opera? I knew I couldn't. Couldn't close my eyes at what was happening outside this little heaven on Earth. I knew I couldn't turn away from Samir's pain or from anyone else's. I confess I tried. Running away to this country I planed to care only about sunny days and blue skies. But I didn't manage, as here sat Samir, my new friend who risked his life, fighting for a free world. And I cared.
A lady-bug crawled up my knee, spread it's tiny wings and flew away followed by my sight. The Sun went up high. Yesterday I watched it setting, today I saw it coming up. Danube kept flowing in the same direction. And the ferris wheel in Prater park kept turning, introducing travelers and tourists to Vienna's unforgettable view.