Udi Levin

East to West Udi Levin

The JFK airport looks like a giant galaxy to the newly arrived, especially some like me that arrives from a Middle Eastern country that at the time had a very small airport called Lod. It was early morning in JFK and the plane landed in the corner on a warm dark morning. As I get my turn to the next available immigration officer, I look at him and my heart is beating fast. "Where are you going to be in the USA?" he asks. "I will be travelling, but for now I will be staying with family friends in Brooklyn for the next few days." "Are you planning to travel in the USA?""Yes. I will be visiting a friend in Texas and will meet a lot of people.""OK."I thought the session was over when the officer says: "come with me!"He sounded serious. I did as he asked and thought that we are running out of time. All the stern warnings I heard came up in my mind: "they are not kidding and don't joke with them; don't say anything that you don't know how to say in proper English; don't argue; they can send you back home on a whim, if they don't like anything about you; be nice."Finally the immigration officer comes back and with my passport and the forms that I have signed. He looks at me very seriously and I can almost hear my heart pounding. "OK Sir, you have been approved!" I am flooded with joy, happiness and gratefulness. I am in America!Why I went back to IsraelIt can be best explained by two books and there dreams. In the third dream, I am travelling around the world, alone. The world is huge and the oceans are even bigger. I am sailing in a small boat in a dark side of the globe, something off the map, never known to me, somewhere east of Japan and close to Alaska. It's very cold there and it full of ice in the water. It night and dark and it's not clear whether one can cross these oceans and make it safely back home. It's not clear where home is but it is certainly not there. The view is total darkness and there is no land in sight. In one version of the dream, I mange to pass through a foreign island only to discover that the voyage is still a long, scary way home; it would take months if not years. There are floating pieces of ice that need to be considered for the route; moving of the boast is slow. It's not clear at all that that it is possible to go back. Waking up from this dream is usually a happy end to a dark dream.