1991 (I am 11)

I watch my mother straighten out the tinfoil she just took out of the book she was reading. She uses a comb or something, I am not sure, something straight to press down on the tinfoil so it is all slick and shiny.

My mother tells me to ‘watch the door’ in her hospital room to make sure no one sees what she is about to do.

“The white jewish doctors have no clue, but the Arabs might recognize the smell”

For a moment, I worry about the rustling noise of the tinfoil and what would happen of my mother gets caught in the act, how embarrassing might that be?! but then I realize that it’s 4pm in the afternoon in a busy hospital on the Carmel mountain in Haifa. No one cares about the aluminium-foil noise that my mother is making as she preps her “dose” atop her hospital bed.

I note the Arab guy watering the plants on the balcony across the hallway, could he smell it all the way from there? It’s a pretty distinct smell.

I remember the first time I smelled it - with my lungs. It’s a sweet memory actually. That smell is nostalgic for me.

You see, my parents (mother and step-father) wouldn’t let any of us 5 brothers to enter their bedroom while they were doing whatever they were doing with the tinfoil and endless fire in there.

It was a VERY big deal, for me, that they finally let me in there with them.

I remember the smoke filled room, I mean really really foggy.

“Close the door” Alony, my step-father, whom I called “Abba” (dad), would say in a voice that sounds like he is holding in a fart - but in his mouth. Have you ever filled up your lungs with air and tried to talk without letting air out? that’s exactly how Alony sounded like.

“Close, close the door quickly” he would squint with his throat, inviting me into the bedroom-temple of smoke. I remember the first time I inhaled this special super thick fog - ooch that spicy, spicy smoke going down into my lungs, making me want to cough and inhale even deeper at the same time - a very very strange sensation.

Like I said, it was an honor for me to be “let in” the bedroom with them. I liked it, it separated me from my younger brothers.

I already felt like the weird one, with the “break in case of emergency” father in America. Always feeling out of place, knowing that one day - I will get the F out of there and escape to the American Dream. So yes, inhaling that sweet spicy smoke was a great moment of belonging with my “here and now” parents, coupled with the sense of maturity, after all, it is me - the oldest they are allowing in the room.

I stand by the hospital room door, paying attention that on one has any intention of coming in. Once again, I get to be the responsible mature one, this time protecting my mother from any spcicy-smelling Arabs that could interfere with her administration of medicine of choice.

My mother struggles to open and unpack the little baggy of white powder, the one that was stuffed in my socks, for 2 hours, on the way up here.

She struggles keeping everything balanced on her knee. Not only is the hospital bed uneven, but her legs from from the knees down are a terrible mangled mess with all kinds of metals sticking out, really scary - which do not make for an even surface.

She manages to open up the little baggy with one hand, emptying its content on the flattened tinfoil.

Back at home, I used to help Dad/Alony by making these endless wicks from toilet paper so they wouldn’t have to hold up a hot lighter for too long. But here in the hospital, the best way I can help is by watching the door.

I suppose bringing the “stuff” here is very helpful. I sat next to a solider on the bus on the way here. His gun was literally rubbing the little baggy stuffed in my socks. I knew he would never ever suspect that the little religious boy sitting next to him is transporting heroin to his mother at the hospital.

I gotta admit, I loved that secret spiritual gangster feeling. Perhaps that’s what kept me in the Urban Shaman business during my 30’s.

As a child, and perhaps as an adult I liked being the undercover guy.

I loved being a religious nobody on the bus, aspiring to be somebody helpful for my mother.

My mother is fortunate to have her own room in a private hospital. Pretty dope (no pun intended). Everyone is pretty clueless about my mother’s scandalous activities. She flicks the lighter on, slowly puts it under the tinfoil, right below where she piled up the white powder I had personally sock-muled through two bus rides today.

She pulls air through what looks a silver handmade tinfoil straw, she inhales slowly, without rushing… keeping the vapor in her lungs while she gently shakes and moves the bubbling powder back to the center of the newly -made and blackened groove.

She flicks the lighter again and takes another big pull without losing a drop of lung-air.

As she holds it in, I feel the entire universe in suspended animation. Everyone at the hospital corridor has stopped walking, I can hear my own heart beating and across the hallway the Arab’s water has frozen midstream.

My mother finally lets the smoke gentle escape her lungs and the entire universe is buzzing in celebration again - we made it through another day, we made it through another day.

2 year ago, about 30 years later, still on the Carmel Mountain I smelled that sweet spicy smell again. I was attending a Buffo Ceremony with a Shaman from Portugal.

It was very special, especially the long quiet wait as we each waited for our turn to be personally served the medicine of the gods.

When I took a big hit from the glass pipe, the shaman has instructed to hold it in for as long as I can.

That’s when I immediately recognized that burned spicy smell in my longs… perhaps that’s the universal burned synthetic powder smell. I don’t know.

As I safely fell backwards, allowing the ground to swallow me, I felt a strange connection and compassion for my childhood.

Mom, Dad, I get it.