Yesh Matsav

On Friday I returned to Tel Aviv after 17 hours or so of traveling through four different airports – Dhaka – Doha, Doha – Amman, Amman – Tel Aviv. It’s not easy to get places in the Muslim world directly from Israel, or the other way around. I brought two bags with me – one suitcase, and a blue nylon bag that I had bought in Bangladesh in which I had packed all the papers and books that I collected for the labor assessment.

Today I went to my office at the Tel Aviv University Law School, bringing with me the blue nylon bag that I hadn’t opened since I arrived back in Israel. As I started unpacking it, I was startled to see something that was not supposed to be there – a very suspicious looking small packet wrapped in white paper with some Bengali writing on it and sealed by orange tape.  It looked like a drug packet right out of central casting. I immediately called Yofi who was in her office, and she came down to take a look at it and exclaimed “oh my god.”

Yofi’s brother in law is a Tel Aviv police detective, and she summoned him to the law school to take a look. He came right over, and using a plastic baggy picked it up to inspect it. He confirmed that it smelled a little odd. Wrapping it in a plastic bag, he carried it out of the building with Yofi and myself in tow. Fortunately, he talked his colleagues out of evacuating the building, which would have been the usual procedure, and which would also have been a rather inauspicious start to my visiting professorship. He brought it just outside of one of the entrance gates of the university, which was promptly closed to all traffic, and called in the police van.

Yofi and I were told to leave the crime scene while the cops investigated the parcel. Campus security, handguns at the ready, came to ensure nobody could enter or exit, one of them informing the stubborn and agitated Israelis who demanded to know what was going on that the gates were closed because “there was a photo shoot going on of playboy models.”

After about 30 minutes of police investigating, we were informed that a thorough analysis revealed that the packet was not filled with cocaine, heroine, or hash – but rather hundreds of small dried Bengali fish. Nevertheless, official procedure required that the package be blown up to ensure that it really wasn’t a bomb in piscine disguise. The area was cleared out, and after the police issued a warning, there was a loud explosion, spreading Bengali fish dust throughout the Tel Aviv University campus.

How that odd parcel made it into my bag, however, remains a mystery. Was it a message from someone or some entity, or perhaps just a friendly parting gift from some good hearted Bangladeshis who thought hummus and dried fish would make a delicious culinary combination?