Not IL, IL - 2

I was spending yet another weekend in Ramat Gan with my family. It was right near the beginning of second semester and my friends were going to see the Hunger Games at a theater in Haifa. Being that I never read the book and honestly had no idea what the hell it was, I didn't feel bad ditching the group of Nativers to go see my family. Shortly after arriving in Ramat Gan, my 21 year old cousin told me he was going to see it with some of his friends. Since I wanted to spend time with my cousin, I agreed to go. I traveled for an hour and a half to go to another city…to do the same thing my friends were doing in Haifa.

I had been in Israel nearly five months at this point and not much shook me culturally at this point. That being said, as we drove up to the mall I was blown away by what happened.

After picking up my cousin's two friends, we were driving up to the mall and went to find the parking garage. As we pulled into the parking garage, a man in a yellow traffic vest came over to meet us. My cousin pulled down the window and the man asked him to open the trunk. From the passenger seat I was thinking, "excuse me?! You can't just walk up to us and ask us to pop the trunk…mind your own damn business (expletive)." Without a question, my cousin opened the trunk, the guy took a look, closed it up, tapped the car, and we were on our way.

Israel lives with the constant threat of terrorist attacks, and a commonly reoccurring theme between the thousands of attacks Israel has experienced are bombs and public places full of civilians. The slanted tree next to the cafe at the Hebrew University that I ate at marked one such location.

Maybe a second after we pulled away from the garage attendant, it occurred to me that everyone who pulls into that garage gets searched. I imagined someone in America being asked to pop their trunk, the yelling match that would occur, the declaration that his constitutional rights were being infringed upon, and the weeks of media coverage that would surround the issue.

I commented about the encounter to my cousin when we walked into the mall. He hadn't given it a second thought.