S A M S O N    I N    M U G R A B I   C I N E M A          

                                                                    A short story

                                                            By  :  Yoram Wollman

                                                                  Tel Aviv , Israel

                                                       Revised and Translated April 2009

                                                                           2

1952  .

Mugrabi cinema , Tel Aviv.

Victor Mature ,the movie star from Hollywood , threw away the bare jaw of the donkey and crossed the cinemascope screen of the Mugrabi cinema from left to

right .Samson, the monk of God, was exhausted. Suddenly he stopped , brushed away the sand from his hair and his arms and looked back amazed. He could not believe he had just killed the lion. Will Delilah believe him ? There were no witnesses . He shrugged his shoulders and picked up some stalks of corn with which he tied his long hair . All the other animals were watching him , keeping away from him with fear .

" This movie is shear shame ! " , shouted Avigdor , our bible teacher in the elementary school . He did not criticize , he ordered ." They took Samson , our own biblical hero, and transferred him to Hollywood !? Would anyone take a Siberian bear and place it in the Negev desert ? And worse , the greatest shame of all : Samson speaks English,  Ha ! ". Avigdor was furious . Some of us swore they heard him say "Shema Israel" . 

But we, Avigdor's pupils, we did not care too much. Indeed, we did keep his words in our minds but actually we dreamt of Miryam, Avigdor's 15- year old sexy daughter who was already in the first grade of high school , just one year ahead of us , and already wore a bra.

After the lion got the fatal blow , the convertible roof of the Mugrabi cinema opened up and the sky full of stars  shone above us . What a view ! .What a grandiose end of

the first half of the movie ! The intermission was about to begin and everybody will rush out for some ice cream and soda.

                                                       ………………….

Samson the Hero had already been there , at the corner of Allenby and Ben Yehuda and Pinsker streets in Tel Aviv , dressed with a long old black leather coat and

sandals in winter and in summer . Pleasant breeze was blowing from the sea along Allenby street . The big clock on top of the pole in front of the Mugrabi cinema showed 6.45 p.m . 

Not only Samson , Prof . Friedrich Manheim was there too .A year before he was still  heading the archeology department in the university of Dresden, but now he stood  by his little four – wheeled cart close to the clock- pole , dressed with his long white robe and a tall white cylindrical  cook's hat on his head , he was waiting for the hotdogs in the boiling water to be cooked  thoroughly. Soon the Mugrabi viewers will come to buy them. He had only fifteen minutes to make his profit . Then they will go back into the  theather for the second half of the movie , and he will pack up his vehicle and return home to Greta , his wife ,with whom he lived on No. 85 Rehov Ben Yehuda Shtrasse  

" Bitte Shein " , Prof. Manheim extends his hand holding the roll with the red

hotdog  and mustard in it , wrapped in a white paper, handing it out to a customer  and then adds , " Danke Shein ", when he is paid . But at the same time he keeps an angry eye on Samson the Hero . He fears that Samson's zealous biblical speeches spoken in Hebrew , a bizarre asiatic language which neither he nor his wife Greta ever bothered to learn ,those speeches may distract the attention of the Mugrabi viewers from his hotdogs as the  short intermission will soon end . And worst of all , Samson's sweat smelled so repulsive. Have they fled from their beloved and so civilized Germany because of the Nazis to deserted Palestine to run across a guy like Samson the Hero ?? Nein ! . Oh! Mein Gott.  And Mugrabi cinema saw them all .

That was , in fact , the arena of  modern Samson .  Far away from the seducing

Delilah , so remote from the Phlistine idol Dagon and from the Philistine officers in Gaza. The middle of the twentieth century ! And here , at the entry of Mugrabi

cinema , where Alenby and Ben-Yehuda and Pinsker streets meet , Samson made his speeches to the residents of small and young , only 40- year old , Tel Aviv. Those residents , the busy and the curious Germans , the Poles , the Yemenites , the Romanians , the Iraqis , the Kurds , the Russians , the Persians , all those people who were  still excited from the burst of independence only three years before, old residents as well as newcomers , many of them survivors and veterans of World War Two . 

None of  them had known Samson . Some said that he came from the Bible . But once he appeared from nowhere , he stayed there . The new Samson hold a long thick stick in one hand and a bible in the other . He had big brown eyes , thick eyebrows and long and quite magnificent nose . Whenever he shook his hairy head , an unidentified burst of  words flew out his mouth mixed with much "fire and sulphur" .

                                                         ………………..

Once again I went to Mugrabi cinema to see the movie Samson and Delila .  I went

Down along Allenby street and after a while I smelled the sea . And then , suddenly , here it comes , the cinema itself , like a royal fortress .

People were streaming towards the elegantly shaped stairs of Mugrabi cinems , gathering around Samson just as tiny grains of iron powder do when they assemble around a magnetic pole .Samson was at his best , ready for the show .He stood up , climbed the upper stair , lifting his arms . Magically, all of a sudden , the audience became silent .

" This land … this land is full of false prophets, of charlatans ,of fortune tellers and

politicians who shout their manifestoes from every balcony and every roof " he cried with his deep vibrant voice , " politicians of every day  and politicians of the holy, and all of them are just a bunch of greedy people who dare preach for peace and justice . They promise to build again our ruined country but in fact they are going to erect the towers of Babylon…we do not need them …Now, comrades , residents of Tel Aviv , please , listen to me , listen to the voice of faith : Do not believe in these people …" . Samson paused a bit and someone from the crowd shouted at him : " Yeh , give them hell , Samson " . The fervent orator drew back a bit in surprise , slightly confused , but soon came back to his senses . He coughed  slightly and went on :

"… These people are not honest  because they distanced themselves  from the spirit of the Bible … and therefore I beg you : come back to me , come back to the reign of God , open your hearts and discard the thoughts of evil from you  as there is no other justice but … " , and here Samson turned back a bit , lifted his long stick and touched the face of Hollywood Samson in the huge poster  behind him , " …  but my justice , the biblical justice which gives us strength and power . So , my children ,  sons of Israel , my strayed sheep , come back to our old fathers , to Abraham to Isaac and to Jabob and to the old mothers , to their simple way of life and to their holy language , to the Hebrew . But …. " , Samson bent a bit forward in a kind of warning and looked sternly at the people around him . Then , after a very brief pause he concluded , "….   But if this does not happen, then a fire will come down to us from the sky and burn everything in its way ! " , he lifted both his arms up and hit the poster with the edge of his long stick . The audience applauded.

Someone up there must have heard Samson the Hero's prophecy . But the real hero,

the true symbol of the young city and the  rejuvenated nation, the Mugrabi cinema ,at the junction of three main streets , named after three meaningful figures in the new

history of an old nation, Allenby and Pinsker and Ben Yehuda, that humble hero -

which embraced within its wings so many young kids enchanted by the movies and  applauded to movie stars like Carry Grant and Gary Cooper and Hedy

Lamar and Abbot and Costello and Randolph Scott and Susan Hayword and many                               

others- caught fire and reduced to ashes. It has not been rebuilt . Instead , on the empty place they built a parking lot .   

                                                      …………………..

2001.

And now , at the doorstep of the twenty first century , the city of Tel Aviv has expanded and grown to unbelievable dimensions , wide and mainly high, and became the city that never stops. More newcomers of different cultures and various origins do settle in it or pass through it. And there are new prophets too . But the new prophets do not need stairs of a cinema or a roof of a building to preach to people . The new prophets do indeed prophesize on the fate of our shares and bank accounts as they sit behind closed doors in banks and investment companies with computers in front of them. And the city that never stops , as they call Tel Aviv now , does not need the Mugrabi cinema anymore . Who knows what kind of a monsterous mall they are going to built there instead of Mugrabi . Yet , the builders should better be careful , perhaps another Samson will suddenly reappear and preach against corruption and evil and social injustice embodied in the towers of Babylon .