She answered after one ring.
I said: It makes no sense that in the twenty-first century, a person can fade away without leaving a trace. I suggested we raise some money and form a search party. Or that we hire the services of a well-known missing persons site.
You can’t laugh in someone’s face over the phone, but that was my feeling, Danya laughed in my face. A search party? To look for Hagai? First of all, if he doesn’t want to be found, you won’t find him. Believe me. My résumé includes hundreds of hours of playing hide-and-seek with him in the backyard. Besides, exactly who would you ask to contribute? All the people he owes money to? Do you know that your friend went through all the money I saved up in a year of waitressing? He asked me to lend him money right before he disappeared. Said he’d pay back everything in a week. You think you know him? You don’t know a thing about Hagai.
But I miss him, our conversations, finally I have someone to think about when I hear “Wish You Were Here”—I wanted to tell her, but didn’t. Maybe because it suddenly occurred to me that the bitterness in her voice had something to do with what had spilled over between them.
Ari didn’t think it was such a great idea either. You know what I think of Hagai, he said. A brilliant guy, but bottom line, the only thing he cares about is himself. You think he’d organize a search party for you if you disappeared?
And so it happened that the search party formed to find Hagai Carmeli consisted of only one person. Me.
I developed a ritual I follow on every trip I take. Right after checking in at the hotel, I drop my luggage in the room and check the schedule left for me on the desk to make sure there’s no interview planned for the next hour or two. I’m considered a minor, if not unsuccessful, writer in most of the countries I visit, that’s the bitter truth, but it has its advantages—the schedule they leave for me on the desk has enough holes in it to be insulting, so I can leave immediately to wander around the city. Without a map.
Those rambles have two purposes: The obvious one—to get lost. And the hidden one—to find Hagai Carmeli.
—
Two years ago, in Istanbul, I momentarily thought I’d succeeded.
There are chestnut vendors on the streets.
And one of them—it’s hard to explain.
Something in the way he moved his hands. His protruding elbows.
I moved closer to him.
I listened to him speaking with a customer. The voice—slightly hoarse. The cadence—slow. He could have dyed his red hair black. He could have surgically altered his face. That’s what you do when you want to disappear.
I went over to him and asked for some chestnuts. I tried to catch his eye. But he treated me as if I were just another customer. Picked up a handful of chestnuts with an iron scoop, dropped them in a brown bag, and turned to the next person in line.
I decided to take a chance. I walked about ten meters, leaned on the fence of Gezi Park and shouted: Hagai!
It’s instinctive to respond when your name is called.
I didn’t think he would look at me, but I studied his face for the slightest movement. The smallest twitch.
Nada.
A few birds, frightened by my shout, flew into the park, and the chestnut vendor continued serving his customers.
But the next morning, he wasn’t there. I told the story to my hosts from the publishing company, who explained to me that all of Istanbul knows that chestnut vendors are actually undercover agents for Erdoğan. They have been keeping an eye on the goings-on in Gezi Park since the attempted coup five years ago. That’s why they change their posts so frequently.
That explanation didn’t convince me and I kept searching for him in Istanbul. And, in fact, in every place I’ve been to during the last few years.
When I meet with people, during newspaper interviews, on the subway, in taxis, on the streets—I never stop searching for Hagai Carmeli.
In an act of desperation, I made him a character in one of my books. Under another name, of course. He also disappears in the book, and there are all sorts of rumors about him, but in the end, at the moment of truth, he returns. I’d hoped he would somehow get ahold of the book. I pictured him arriving at a meeting with readers—at first I wouldn’t notice him because he’s short and hidden by the crowd. Only later would his red hair pop up, and at the end of the meeting, he would wait patiently for the last person who approached to ask questions to leave, and only then would he come up to me, my book in his hand, and smile that mini-malistic smile of his at me.
Even in my answers to these questions—which I promised myself would be totally honest and open—I mentioned him as a genuine friend who played an active part in my life and included him in the last supper with Ari (it’s so easy to learn what didn’t happen in a writer’s life from the books he wrote, but most readers still insist on doing the opposite).
I also returned Yermi from the abyss of oblivion to that supper, even though I have no idea what’s happening with him today. In fact, even though I’ve been writing about circles of friends for years and lecture about friendship as a major value of Israeli society—
I’ve had only three good friends.
Only one is left.
And soon, maybe he…
Then what?
Where will I take my secrets? Who will I tell that I haven’t been sleeping at home for two weeks now and that when
