“Have a look at your ticket,” Dudi said, waving some printed papers in front of me. “And think”

Tovi:

The voices drift toward me as I sit in my airplane seat with my eyes closed.

“Of course I love you. You’re my brother.”

“It’s kind of hard to feel that, sometimes. But let’s try to believe it,” Dudi says.

“There you go again, with the cynicism. I’m talking seriously,” Abba answers.

Abba really does love Dudi. He just has his own way of showing it. His own language.

“I’m talking seriously, too.” That’s Dudi’s voice when he’s feeling like nobody in this family understands him. I think I do understand him. Abba thinks so, too, and it worries him. “You don’t really see me, Gedalya. All you see is ‘the brother who went modern.’ You can’t seem to show any real interest in my life… in the person I am. In my work. In the things I’m passionate about.”

•••

The airport was lots of fun.

It was very big. It was full of people and shops. And screens hanging everywhere, with numbers and letters that kept changing. At first I felt bewildered.

“I’d never be able to find my way around here on my own,” I told Abba.

Dudi encouraged me to try. “Let’s say you were here alone,” he said. “You need to get on a plane flying to Los Angeles. What do you do?”

I looked around at all the people and the signs.

“Um… I’d look around for a picture of a plane taking off?” I turned this way and that way. I didn’t really know what I was doing. “How am I supposed to know where to go from here?”

“Have a look at your ticket,” Dudi said, waving some printed papers in front of me. “And think.”