Grapevine: Coronavirus diary

Staying at home so much in recent months put greater regularity into my eating habits, which in turn affected my sleeping habits. I haven’t slept so well in years.

By GREER FAY CASHMAN
Buses on a Public transport route in Jerusalem on March 16, 2020. (photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
Buses on a Public transport route in Jerusalem on March 16, 2020.
(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90)
When people talked about the dramatic changes in their lives in comparison to their pre-coronavirus lifestyles, I could not really identify with them. As a childless widow without siblings, I have spent most of life living alone, so the major restrictions brought on by COVID-19 were mostly quite familiar to me.
However, during lockdown when only people working in essential professions, or who were buying food or medicines, were permitted to walk the streets, going to the supermarket became an outing. Instead of buying a week’s worth of food on Friday mornings, and then throwing half of it out, because I hadn’t been home to eat it, I started buying exactly what I needed for two days, in order to have another reason to go to the supermarket.
Staying at home so much in recent months put greater regularity into my eating habits, which in turn affected my sleeping habits. I haven’t slept so well in years.
As a journalist, I was permitted to go out for more than food and medicine.
Until early June, I hadn’t ventured beyond Jerusalem, but then, when invited to a diplomatic reception in Jaffa, I went with a colleague in his car.
The second time, toward the end of June, I went alone to Herzliya on public transport. There were fewer people than usual, but the bus from home to the central bus station was fairly full.
The bus to Tel Aviv enabled each passenger to have a double seat to herself – a rare privilege to those of us who traveled frequently before the crisis.
But the sherut from Tel Aviv to Herzliya filled up very quickly.
On the way back to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, there was no queue stretching back way beyond the railing as in former days. In fact, there was no queue at all. I arrived at the bus and boarded. It was approximately half full.
This week, I had to be in Herzliya for a lunchtime event at the Dan Accadia hosted by Satybaldy Burshakov, the ambassador of Kazakhstan.
I left Jerusalem early, not knowing whether there would be a lot of people going to Tel Aviv. In the past one sometimes had to wait for two and even three buses to fill up before being able to board, which often meant a 20- to 40-minute wait.
This time, there were less than a dozen people in the bus, and I was the first to board. En route from home to the central bus station, we passed through Agrippas Street, which was almost devoid of people – a great feeling when shopping and not having to push past anyone, but very sad to see from a passing bus.
As soon as I reached Tel Aviv, there was a near-empty sherut, which after 15 minutes gave up on waiting for passengers. The driver closed the door and we sped off in the direction of Herzliya, picking up a few more passengers on the way. The passenger load on the local Herzliya bus included a group of 10 religious boys who treated the railings on the bus like monkey bars. They were swinging backward and forward and from side to side and were more or less on top of each other – but they all wore masks.
In the lobby of the Dan Accadia, there was a device mounted on a stand which took the temperature of everyone who came in and photographed them at the same time.
I passed the temperature test, and was directed to another part of the lobby, where I sat down opposite a fellow journalist, Sylvia Golan, who works for a digital diplomatic publication.
After we’d been there for a few minutes talking to a very pleasant security guard, he left and another far less pleasant, albeit polite security guard put us through the third degree, demanded to see our press cards, after which he wanted our ID cards. When I told him we had invitations, he wanted to see them and photographed them. He then passed all our documents to a third security guard, who kept on examining them and reexamining them as if they were fake. The second security guard, meanwhile, had temporarily disappeared to check our bona fides.
“At this rate,” I said loudly to Sylvia, “we’ll be left in our underwear.” She’s originally from Argentina and knows a thing or two about a totalitarian regime. “Do you think this is communist or fascist?” I asked her. The second security guard, who had meanwhile returned, overheard me, gave me back the documents and told us we had been cleared.
Soon after we discovered that the possible reason for such security was that the event we were attending was graced by two former prime ministers of Israel – Ehud Barak and Ehud Olmert – who are constantly accompanied by bodyguards.
Neither Sylvia nor I look like terrorists, but then what does a terrorist look like?
On the Herzliya bus to the Tel Aviv connection, I was the only passenger. On the bus to Tel Aviv, there were five of us.
Back in Jerusalem, I took a No. 18 bus, which in pre-COVID-19 days was always overcrowded. There was room for everyone, and quite a few empty seats.
One of the perks in having two seats for themselves is that passengers can now put their backpacks and packages on the other seat without getting dirty looks from people who want to sit down.
Agrippas Street in the late afternoon was not much busier than it had been in the morning.
The bus took less time than usual to get to my stop, because with more people staying home, there’s less traffic on the roads and therefore less congestion.
It had been an interesting day, but I was glad to be home in Jerusalem.