Just imagine this scenario, which I imagine will set the stage for all the turmoil that follows. You’re traveling somewhere in The States without a care in the world, just trying to get from point A to B. All of a sudden, you’re in the middle of a super-sized traffic jam caused by a multi-car accident half a mile ahead of you. You can keep plowing ahead, figuring the road will clear at some point. Or….. you can get off the highway and, with a little ingenuity, get onto a four-lane road that will get you back on the same highway twenty or so miles ahead where there will be smooth sailing ahead. What you don’t realize is that you’ll be going past miles and miles of strip malls that have their own traffic problems. You’re not the only savvy traveler taking this detour, so there is more traffic ahead of you than the road can handle. There’s also all the cars and trucks coming out of the mall parking lots cutting in front of you, slowing you down even more. But the cherry on top of the cake is the traffic light in the middle of all this doing nothing but holding up traffic. Wait a minute, I think I see some police officers up ahead starting to direct traffic. Maybe that will help; otherwise we’ll be here forever.

We here at The Dreaded ‘M’ Word are not dealing with traffic – at least not the vehicular kind. What was holding us up was not a stop light but the cockamamie system for buying and selling real estate here in the Land that stops you dead in your tracks. Our buyers couldn’t give us the money we would need to move forward because their buyers hadn’t gotten their money from their buyers. How many more transactions were in abeyance down the line I cannot tell you, but we were at the top of the chain, and we were getting somewhat frantic. (That’s it; ‘frantic’ says it all.)

Finally, the first day of chol hamoed Sukkot, Shlomie, appropriately mortified, arrived at our door with a check to cover the remaining 180,000 NIS of our mortgage for us to deposit. Why we needed his money for this transaction is something you may wonder at, but that’s the way it is here in The Land. Well then, the first chance we had, we trotted off to our local bank, check in hand. We’d better both go, Barbara, because I’m sure they’re going to make us sign something, and they’ll need both our signatures. (How did I know? A little birdy told me.)

Even the simplest thing isn’t so simple. The check that Shlomie gave us was made out to Bank Leumi, not to us. And it was for 4,000 NIS more than the required amount. The ‘personal banker’ at Leumi – Russian to the core – had no idea how to handle this transaction. What saved the day was the arrival of some higher-level functionary, a guy in a black t-shirt, who assured her ‘no problem.’ The check was accepted, the money to pay down our mortgage was deposited, and, sometime later, the extra money was put into our account.

Now what? As soon as possible (the next day) Barbara would have to call the mercaz (The Bank Leumi mortgage department central office in Tel Aviv) and inform them that the mortgage for our current apartment had been paid off. They would produce some sort of official document to that effect and, within a few days, send it to our local mortgage banker, who in turn would notify our lawyer, who would pick it up and send it to ‘Gouda,’ our buyers’ mortgage broker. Then, and only then, would the ‘big money’ sitting in our buyers’ account be released to us, so we could send it to our ‘kablan.’

(You’re sitting there with either a perplexed or a bemused expression on your face while you’re reading this. You and everyone else are asking the same question. Isn’t there a way for the branch in Ma’ale Adummim to notify their central office directly so that the necessary official document can be generated automatically and sent back right away? Why all the rigamarole? That is what you’re thinking, isn’t it?

Do you know what this reminds me of? (Of course not, so I’ll tell you.) This was years – and articles ago – when we were with tour guide Cindy Kline on the safari to Tanzania. Our group, along with the other passengers on the flight from Rwanda, landed at the Kilimanjaro airport and were directed to a line where we were given a form. From there, we got on a second line to hand in the form; and from there to a third line, where we gave that clerk the appropriate amount of money to enter the country, all of which took several hours. They probably could have streamlined the process, but then, two of the three clerks would have been out of a job in a country where there aren’t a lot of jobs to hand out.)

Back to our situation. After our adventure at the bank, the plan was for Barbara to spend the afternoon with our (step) granddaughter. Liel had one thing that floated her boat; she wanted to go ice skating. During much of the year, to satisfy that urge, one would have to travel to either the Ice Mall in Eilat or the rink in Metula (at least when this northern city isn’t under siege). But, being chol hamoed, there was a make-shift place for skating right next to the First Station in Jerusalem. I, among others, pointed out that seventy-seven-year-old women with osteoporosis are probably better off eschewing the slippery stuff, but my better half is nothing if not intrepid. Until she got on the ice. Whereupon she realized the folly of her ways, turned around, and headed for the exit Too late. She fell and broke her wrist. A trip to Terem was next and then to the emergency room at Hadassah, where she was outfitted with a cast, which she will be wearing for a month or so. All of this activity put a damper on our plans to collectively celebrate a festive meal in the Natania-Gil rooftop sukkah.

But life – and the need to do battle with the bureaucracy – goes on. The next day, my one-hand enabled wife called the mercaz, although it was the second time around. A few weeks before, we were advised that one of the forms we had signed from Bank Leumi – with an Oct. 1 date – was now obsolete and needed to be reissued with a later date. No problem; that issue was resolved right away. But now, there was an even more sense of urgency. Understand, we can’t put in a kitchen or install an a/c unit in our new apartment until all this bureaucratic falderol is straightened out. So can you do us a HUGE favor and get us the form we need.

All we could do was wait and pray. We would be praying anyway, as Shemini Adzeret was only a few days away. After that, give it a day or so and then call. Emanuel, what are you hearing? I could see the look of dismay on Barbara’s face as she heard our lawyer’s response. Something had gone awry. Nothing had been done the previous week; in fact, Dudu, our mortgage banker, had been on vacation. (Which is one of the iron laws of bureaucracy. Get enough people into the mix, and it’s almost a certainty that one of them will be out sick, on vacation, or – God forbid – sitting shiva when you’re in need of something to get done.) Barbara should call the mercaz one more time to get the ball rolling. And what was the answer from the folks in Tel Aviv? The official document that you requested last Monday was sent out yesterday (Sun.) It can take up to five days to arrive.

The sound you just heard was the squeal of the oversized (virtual) truck cutting us off just as we were about to get past the traffic light on the imaginary corner, the one that lets two cars go through before it turns red again and stays that way for at least three minutes before meandering back in our favor. Five days? This is taking forever. And we don’t have forever. We might as well go back to our original plan for the morning, heading to the market to go shopping. No matter what, we will have to eat and shampoo our hair – even if we don’t know which kitchen and which shower stall we will be using by the next month.

We were soon back home again, unloading our purchases from our shopping cart, when the phone rang again. Once more it was Emanuel, this time with some much better news. It didn’t seem possible, but somehow it had happened. The elusive form from the mercaz had miraculously been delivered to Dudu our mortgage banker. He (Emanuel) would pick up the form the next day (Tues.) and get it to our buyers’ mortgage people, which would allow the floodgates to open and the ‘big money’ to be transferred from their bank account to ours. Is this like the traffic cops getting involved and making the tangle of (virtual) cars and trucks ahead of us go away so we could get to where we are going? I keep talking about ‘life in the slow lane,’ to describe the vagaries of life, but sometimes it seems to be happening for real. We’re only one month behind schedule. It just seems like forever.