What do you mean you’re not Russian? |
Potential subtitle: My face keeps writing checks my vocabulary can’t cash.
There is a brief moment that occurs several times a week in Israel when a Russian-speaking stranger sees me and becomes visibly relieved.
It happens in pharmacies, supermarkets, elevators, bus stops, and government offices. The setting hardly matters. Sooner or later, someone studies my face for a moment and decides a mystery has been solved.
Finally, they seem to think. One of us.
Then they start speaking Russian.
And just like that, I ruin everything.
The disappointment is immediate.
Not anger. Not hostility.
Something closer to heartbreak.
I respond with the same apologetic smile immigrants everywhere eventually perfect.
“Sorry,” I say in Hebrew. “I don’t speak Russian.”
This answer rarely resolves the situation.
Instead, it introduces confusion.
The stranger stares at me.
We both know something has gone terribly wrong.
Until moving to Israel, nobody ever mistook me for Russian. Since moving here, I am approached more often in Russian than in Hebrew.
The blonde hair doesn’t help.
Neither do the blue eyes.
Nor, according to one........