Danny Dean, the one who sees and is unseen, has returned, and he is real.

It's all a matter of timing. She knew that.
Haifa – it was their destination.
After finding parking in one of the alleys near Gan Ham in Carmel, the two got out of the car and walked arm in arm.
Towards the Carmelit subway station.
The age difference between them was noticeable from afar – she was young, beautiful, tall, with black, lush hair that flowed almost to her waist, while he had full hair that was starting to turn silver. Many years older than her, no doubt. If there was a time when such a couple attracted looks of surprise at best or reproach at worst, those times are a thing of the distant past. There is no longer any surprise and no raising of eyebrows at anything. Everything is acceptable or, in contemporary parlance, inclusive.

As soon as they got out of the car, she noticed that her partner was absorbing the sights: the row of hotels facing Zionist Boulevard and their backs to Yaffe Nof Street, and the Mother Garden, which they walked parallel to. They turned and went down the stairs toward Carmelit.

As the only subway in the country, the Carmelit, stopped at stations on its underground route from the center of Carmel toward the city below, she noticed the subtle smiles that crossed his face as he examined the murals or the advertising windows at each station. She didn't ask, not now. Timing was important. They got off at the last stop. Paris Square. When they emerged from the tunnel onto the street, he stopped for a moment and looked around as if searching for something, as if trying to identify the woman he had never met and with whom he had set up a date at this very hour.
She knew there wasn't one. She was his date.

With his arm around her waist, he gently turned her to the left. To the center of the square. Before they climbed the steps leading to Sderot Haginim and from there through Maronite Alley to Shivat Zion, their destination, he slowed down and his gaze lingered for a moment on the edge of the square that kissed one of the old stone buildings. There was something sad in his gaze. She took note of every detail and then, in a moment's decision, she said quietly, "Go ahead, talk to me."
He looked into her eyes. "We'd better sit down," he said, directing her to a nearby public bench.

More than once she had seen him drifting off into thought. Sometimes they were accompanied by smiles, and at other times she recognized sentimentality or sadness in them. When she asked him about it, he dismissed her with a word or two that covered more than they revealed, and smiled a smile that only increased her curiosity. Today he seemed in a mood for questions, and she wasn't going to let this opportunity slip away. She wouldn't press, but she wouldn't let up either. The dosage was important.

Ultimately it's a love story.

She tried to start it. "I saw your gaze linger for a moment on that corner," she said, nodding toward the old building across from the entrance to the Turkish market. She saw no sign of the market there, but that's what he called the place, so be it.

"Yes, that was his corner," the silver-haired man muttered.
"whose?"
He thought for a moment and then said quietly, "I didn't know him by name, but between myself I called him Chaim. Chaim Chatz."
"I'm listening."
He was silent for a long minute and then said, "Look, this is a different, different, special love story, but in the end...
love story."
"Of a young couple?"
"Yes, but not only."
"You know there's nothing more powerful than a love story to captivate a woman."

He watched intently at two teenage boys who had stopped a short distance away. One pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, took out two and lit them for himself and his friend. They inhaled and exhaled and continued on their way, and she thought she saw the flicker of a smile in the corners of his eyes. His gaze broke away from the two teenagers and turned to her, "You know what? 'Chaim Chatz' is a slightly sad story. Moving and special, but sad, I'd rather start with something else, Chaim won't run away anywhere. My late father used to say, 'A word in time is good.'"
"I'm with you."
The two young men brought back a not-so-old memory to him and he decided to start there. Life will wait.

Danny Dean

"Tell me," I asked my fellow thinkers. "How is it correct to say, 'They talked about this and that, or about that and that?" He stared at me for a moment with an expression that I saw as surprise, or perhaps a kind of 'sympathizing,' but he didn't have time to answer. The principal's distinctly unmusical voice echoed toward us, like a fierce east wind whipping at a speed of a hundred kilometers per hour. "Come on, hurry up, the meeting is already starting."

We got up from the wooden bench on which we were sitting, courtesy of the Israel Foundation, and walked defeated and with our shoulders slumped toward the teachers' room. Why defeated? Because that's what happens when you sit in pointless training courses or long, exhausting teacher meetings without any practical conclusions to implement, hearing irrelevant questions and answers that, even before they were published, boasted a small inscription on the side - expired. Defeated by the system, that's why.

So, in a kind of defiance or perhaps as a practical solution to the endless boredom, I sat as usual in one of the far corners of the staff room with a book on my lap under the table and read. Trying to survive under the radar, trying to blend in like Dunedin, the one from the old story about the boy who sees and is not seen, and overall trying not to waste precious time that will never come back. About fifteen minutes of pleasant reading passed and… boom.

I instinctively flinched because of a kick I received under the table, a kind of alarm from my colleague, who had not had time to answer my question before we entered. The radar detected me. "Yes?" I blurted out, looking up from the book that was more interesting than anything else in the immediate vicinity. My friend gestured to me, surreptitiously and with a trembling finger, to look ahead, towards the lion's den. It turns out that the principal had asked me a question, probably in a kind of provocation, or as a thick hint that she was aware of my sneaky Dunedin maneuvers. I didn't hear the question, and all I knew was that the topic of the meeting was the smoking problem at school, and now all the representatives of the Ministry of Education were looking at me. They kept talking endlessly about the same topic without any real, practical solution, but I was in the middle of the tension and she interrupted. Except that it didn't matter to her, in fact it drove her crazy.

"You're not with us," the principal said reproachfully. An accurate diagnosis.
"I'd like to hear your opinion," she added firmly.
I ran through the subject of the meeting and what could have happened in the last twenty minutes. Smoking. How to address the problem, how to enforce it if at all, or perhaps demarcate designated smoking areas. My mind sent me a lifeline, 'Probably nothing practical has changed in the last hour, so any answer you throw into the room will be relevant.'
"I'm against smoking!" I announced with exaggerated drama into the air. Always appropriate.
"Shhh... what a genius," my colleague whispered sarcastically.

I entered the room. "Smoking corners - this is an admission of failure. In fact, it is raising a white flag. Giving up on this matter means that we are tired of teaching. So how do we excuse our fatigue or calm our conscience? We say, let's be flexible, let's come to them, only allow designated corners, and what will be the next thing we will 'be flexible' about? And in general, where exactly does the smoking corner cross the line? If he or she smokes two meters from that corner, is it a disciplinary offense? And what if they are on their way to the corner? There is no half-way point; either yes or no. A smoking corner means - smoking is allowed! That's it."

The commotion of 'but no', 'but impossible', 'but how' began. I didn't think for a moment that my flame-throwing speech would change anything, after all, we are dealing with the education system. If I take a square piece of board, I can saw, sand, and round it. With the education system, this possibility doesn't exist. There are no circles. A square is especially tough. Later, as I was leaving the teachers' room, my colleague blurted out to me, "Regarding your question about this and that, then there's no problem with who to put before whom, you could say about this and that or about that and that."
"Exactly." I smiled back at him. "You see, for the two friends..." I couldn't finish the sentence. The clearly unmusical voice was very close to us and interrupted my words violently. Culture? Not at our school. "Come on, wait a minute," the principal said and pulled me aside without a trace of politeness into a crowded conversation with a clear forecast of an approaching hurricane. She doesn't get along with me and I can understand her, I wouldn't get along with me either.

"Listen, it's impossible like that. Either you don't come to the training at all, or you come and leave after ten minutes and in the meetings you're like you're not with us, in fact, you're present and not present." Another accurate diagnosis. No doubt, she's good at this. I had an answer ready in one of the drawers. "Look," I replied. "If I sit in a training and spend two hours listening to someone who is supposed to be a professional in their field, I expect to be praised for something, I expect value. If I went into the training - X, I expect to come out of it, at least, X plus one. If I went in X and came out X, what changed? I wasted two hours."

She stared at me.
"Impossible with you, simply impossible," she hissed through pursed lips, turned around and walked away in demonstrable anger. 'Impossible with the current education system. Simply, impossible,' I might as well have said. The next day I was in physical education class with the eleventh graders. Seventy percent of them were smokers, about. I arrived with a pack of cigarettes in my pocket, half sticking out so they could see, ask, and hear. The reactions were not long in coming.
"Hey teacher, what's up, have you started smoking?"
"What's up," I said, patting the box. "It's just a reminder."
"What, what are you talking about?"
"Okay, sit down, you'll hear something interesting."
"Look..." I began. "When I was about your age, I smoked a pack a day, and then one night I started doing financial calculations. A pack costs me 30 shekels, and a month – 780 shekels. I took off the Sabbaths. A year – around 9,000 shekels if I smoke only one pack. That means if I stop smoking now and instead of blowing the 30 shekels on smoke, I save them aside, in ten years I will have 90,000 shekels.
"'Amazing,' I thought to myself, 'in a year I'll be able to buy a new car with an intoxicating nylon smell, and all this without working but just from 'not doing', from 'not smoking.'"
"Well, what car did you buy after ten years?" one of the students asked.
"Better," I continued. "After ten years, instead of buying a car, I bought an apartment."
"what how?" Someone shouted.
"The amount that accumulated allowed me to give an initial amount as a down payment to purchase a small apartment, and thus I could take out a mortgage on the entire remaining amount. A few years later, I sold the apartment and bought a larger one."
"Sounds simple," someone said.
"And that's true," I said. "All from one pack of cigarettes I didn't smoke. Without working, just from 'not doing.'"

Wait, so what's the deal with Ha Veda?

Two years after that lesson, one of them came to visit. Already a year and a half in the army, an officer in uniform, a man. After the hugs, the usual updates over a cup of coffee, and just before we said goodbye, he told me with a smile, "You know, I won't forget that pack of cigarettes, but I plan to go straight for the big apartment."
"Really, how?" I asked.
"It's simple," he said, "I would smoke a pack and a half."
"Sounds simple." I laughed.

I walked back to the teachers' room, a smug smile on my face. The boy-soldier did me a favor. The wise man, who was sitting in one of the corners of the room, which I had secretly called an enclave of sanity, motioned for me to come closer. Our brief discussion about 'this and that' was not over and it turned out that it was still bothering him.

"What's your crazy thing about 'this and that'?"
I laughed. "I just wanted to clarify a certain point. As you said, it really is. You can put Da before Ha or Ha before Da, there's no mistake in either situation. These two old friends don't care who comes first, they have no ego. Now imagine if we were like that too, without ego, how many problems and troubles we would be spared. Conflicts on any front you choose, at work, at home, on the street, and there's a situation where even wars would be avoided, and above all, wars between us..."

My friend looked thoughtful. "There is no doubt, there is no doubt about it."

(The girl and the silver-haired man continue to travel through Haifa, from the lower city to its neighborhoods, through the Prophets' Steps to Hadar and its alleys, its special buildings, the markets, the cinemas, the colorful characters, the well-known and lesser-known corners of the city, and everywhere there is a special story based on reality. Sometimes sad, sometimes full of humor, authentic and always exciting and breaking with routine. All of this appears in the recently published book "Stanton City."

Warning: The author is not responsible for side effects such as pain in the jaw joint due to a broad and prolonged smile, insomnia, or choking hazard due to nostalgic cuddle lumps that may block the airways.)