Amir

30.1.10

This is dedicated to Amir Kerten.

Today I received a phone call from Israel; it was a friend of mine who had already called me once before during this week. I asked him what’s wrong and he said: if I’m calling you for the second time this week, what can it be? I guess I was just trying to postpone hearing the news which I knew were coming: Amir had passed away during the night.

What can I say about someone who fits the cliché so perfectly – one of the good guys? Maybe the fact that his wife is now pregnant with their second child is proof to that he wasn’t making any “plans” to die, or wasn’t aware of his coming demise, and that is a good thing, though I’m sure some would argue the opposite.

I find it so horribly ironic that his children will never get to know him, as he never got to know his mother and sister, who had died of cancer when he was too young to remember. This cancer had challenged him to a duel too, when he was 18 or so, and he fought it like a lion. That time he had won; death looked him in the eye and said: you’re a brave bastard aren’t you? here’s your life back, for now. Second time around the lion was defeated. A cancer in Hebrew is a crab, but who would have thought that a crab could beat a lion.

I think of him now and I can’t imagine him more alive if I had to; his smile is what I remember: a beautiful guy with a beautiful smile. I asked him last time I saw him, if he realizes that he’s as much a father to his son now as his father is to him. He said that he can’t imagine it; fatherhood was still fresh and his own adulthood hasn’t quite arrived yet.

Being in Berlin I cannot properly mourn him; death is nowhere to be seen here; my German friends have no recollection of Amir and I don’t have any means to translate to them who this young man was. I remain in a state of grieve-delay and perhaps that’s why I found it more suitable to go out for a drink tonight instead of staying at home and waiting for a skype-consolation call.

A few months ago I was looking for a Michael Jackson video I haven’t seen in a long time; I googled his name and amongst all the results I noticed one which read: Michael Jackson is dead. I knew it had to be false, since if he was really dead, I would have gotten more than one result. I watched the video and when I googled his name again suddenly five results claiming his death appeared, and then ten, twenty and a hundred. I realized then that I was witnessing his death online and therefore, experiencing it in some way. It was a sad night for me, saying goodbye to my childhood idol.

But how am I supposed to say goodbye to Amir via the internet? I enter his name on Facebook and though we were friends in life, I realize we were never Facebook friends. I know it’s too late to befriend him now, but I want to do it anyway. I look for him, but his profile is no longer there.