We looked at each other and didn’t speak.
Then Ari said, The truth is that, for the time being, you’re not missing anything, bro. This town is disgusting.
It is? Oren said. Because Lonely Planet says—
Lonely Planet also says that the ferry to Bolivia leaves the port twice a day.
And what’s the truth?
Twice a week. Sunday and Thursday.
What day is today? I’m totally out of it.
Wednesday.
Wow. Excuse me a sec, I need the bathroom.
—
When he came back, we didn’t talk about the ferry anymore.
We watched Hapoel Cusco versus Beitar Lima. I think I’ve never seen a game in my life with so many red cards. At least seven. Every few minutes, the referee sent a player off the field, and they refused to leave each time, until their teammates pushed them off so the game could continue.
—
Take the ferry tomorrow, Oren said when the game ended.
We’ll see how you feel, I said.
Listen to this joke, Oren said. A straight guy, a homo, and a trans get on a train—
Ari and I give each other a “not again” look.
But Oren broke off in the middle of the joke and said, I’ll be right back. And rushed off to the bathroom again.
When he came back, Ari had already taken out a deck of cards and we played Yaniv on the bed until Oren said he was wiped out, but we could keep playing without him.
Ari collected the cards and I smoothed the sheet, which had become wrinkled when we sat on it.
We stood at the door.
Oren coughed lightly and said, Take the ferry tomorrow, guys. Don’t wait for me.
This time, I didn’t say anything.
Ari said, We’re in room four, bro, if you need something.
—
We had a huge alarm clock we’d bought in the thieves’ market in Quito. It rang so loudly that you couldn’t argue with it. We set it for six in the morning. The sun hadn’t risen yet and we got organized quickly. Literally, without making a sound. As if Oren were with us in the room and we were afraid he’d wake up. Neither of us mentioned him until we boarded the ferry. Only after we had moved away from the coast and the sunrise began to glitter on the water did Ari ask: You think we should have stayed with him? And before I could reply, he answered his own question, And then what? We’d have been stuck in Rafah until Sunday? Hello, this is a trek here, not punishment.
—
The ferry got stuck in the middle of the lake. One of the motors broke down. We waited half a day for another ferry to arrive, and we boarded it. In Isla del Sol, on the steps leading from the port to the hostel, Ari slipped and sprained his ankle. But only a week later, when we realized that someone had stolen our backpacks, with all our equipment in them, from the roof of the bus we had taken to La Paz, Ari declared the existence of the “Oren from Hadera curse” for the first time. We should have stayed with that Oren guy, he said. Fever almost 104, bro. Not a joke.
—
The Oren from Hadera curse pursued us for the next few weeks: We set out on a mountain trek and had to go back because of a snowstorm. When we got back, it turned out that all the rooms in the recommended hostel were taken and we had to go to a different hostel that was hideously depressing. No hot water in the shower. For a minute, I thought our luck had changed, because it was in that depressing hostel that Ari met Clara from Canada, the only girl he really liked in South America. But then we found out she had a boyfriend.
—
When we returned to La Paz, Ari dragged me to the Witches’ Market. To remove the curse.
We wandered around among the stalls until we found an old lady who supposedly understood English. We told her the story and she nodded and said, Very bad, very bad. Then she gave us two bottles filled with a yellow liquid and told us to drink them in one swallow at exactly midnight. We followed her instructions. An hour later, it turned out that the yellow liquid caused a huge, painful erection that lasted until morning, and two days later, in the middle of the street, someone grabbed my pouch, which contained four hundred dollars in cash.
We have to find Oren from Hadera, Ari said.
And fast, I said.
A long silence followed because neither of us had the slightest idea how to do it. There was no Facebook then. No cell phones. Nothing.
In Uyuni, a small city considered the entrance to Salar, the Bolivian salt flats, we met a group of eight Israelis looking for a minyan, not for prayer, but two people to fill the empty seats in their ten-seater van and join them on their trek. During the drive through the salt flats, they began talking about the antimalarial drug Lariam, and the sick dreams the people who take it have, although, if that’s true, a girl said, no matter how scary that drug is, it’s even scarier to stop taking it. Just last week the consulate flew an Israeli trekker from Peru to Israel after he caught malaria. Wow, really? Ari and I asked together, our voices too loud. Yes, she went on, the people he was traveling with left him behind and took off as if nothing had happened. The guy sitting next to her said, He was probably traveling with Germans, Israelis never leave the wounded behind. Never, Ari echoed his words. He looked at me. And lowered his eyes.
But then there was something else. In Brazil, on the beach in Fortaleza, we met a broad-shouldered Dutch girl who grimaced when we told her we were from Israel. Israeli men are bad news, she said, refusing to elaborate. It wasn’t until that night, after a
