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Down and out in Tel Aviv By Vered Lee Tags: Tel Aviv, drug addicts Noon on Sunday. Tel Aviv is awash in sun, the cafes and restaurants are packed, people are walking dogs on the avenue and there's a pleasant buzz punctuated by the chirping of cell phones. At this very moment, he is wandering in your midst, perspiration running down his face, dressed in stained trousers, a soiled and wrinkled shirt and shoes that are falling apart. "Excuse me, can you give me a few shekels? I haven't eaten all day," he begs the cafe patrons, who are busy eating. One of them stares intently into his cup of coffee, trying to ignore the beggar's presence. G. stands firm and asks again. The man opens a newspaper demonstratively and immerses himself in reading. G. lets go. He tries his luck with a girl at a nearby table. She turns away. "Please, I'm hungry," he implores, holding his stomach. "Give whatever you can." The girl stares at him and sends distress signals in every direction. He moves like a somnambulist, but he is alert, misses no potential donor in the coffee shop. A young couple observes him with sorrow, and the man is about to pull a bill out of his wallet when the manager of the establishment hurries over. "Get out of here, kid," he tells the uninvited guest and slips a few coins into his outstretched hand. "He was going to give me money - why are you butting in? You make your money, I make mine. It's totally legal. I have the right to ask," says G. The manager asks him not to come back, but G., overwrought, declares his rights articulately and ardently. The argument does not abate. The security guard comes over and asks him to leave. "You can?t even drink coffee these days without seeing homeless people who ask you for money all the time," a woman snorts to her companion. Advertisement G. walks away quickly, on edge. He cloaks himself in silence. Seeing a group of people in the street, he tries to regain control and calm down. "Excuse me, I'm hungry, can you help me?" he asks a man in an elegant suit, who responds by quickening his step and looking away. A young woman bends over her bag, opens a purse slowly and hands him a few shekels. He thanks her and smiles. According to Elem, an association that assists young people at risk in Israel, there are about 1,000 homeless people aged 18-26 in Tel Aviv, about a fifth of them women. Three-quarters of them are addicted to drugs. Seventy percent are from the former Soviet Union; they either immigrated to Israel alone and ended up on the street, or found themselves without a home because the immigration process shattered the family group. Cruise with the young addicts around the old and new Central Bus Stations and you will discover the scale of drug abuse. The building at 1 Fein Street, home to junkies, is still operating at full tilt, but because of the inferior quality of the drugs, the violence and the police raids, it is home only to terminal addicts. Selling takes place on every sidewalk, every street corner. Under the blazing lights of Tel Aviv, merchants of death unabashedly offer every type of drug, and the kiosks that sell freshly squeezed fruit juice also function as non-prescription drugstores. By midday, when G. heads out to panhandle, he has already shot up twice. "I need at least six doses a day," he says. "I get heavy convulsions every four hours. This is my life. This is my daily round." He will turn 25 next month. He is clearly sensitive to the way people turn away when he approaches them on the street or in a cafe - the lack of compassion, the contempt, the mockery, the body language that projects panic or repulsion. He collects and accumulates it all, together with the coins that gradually fill his pocket. A security guard asks him to leave a cafe, and G. moves away. "This has never happened before - I'm hardly collecting anything." He walks away in despair. A young man opens his wallet and gives him NIS 28. "What a man," he waves to me, emotional. "When people give me something, I am happy." He slows down. A smile spreads across his face. A young woman gives him NIS 5, an elderly man adds a few shekels. Is it humiliating to ask for money? "Yes, of course. I feel rejected, hurt. A lot of times, because I am ashamed to ask, I get convulsions because I need a fix. But I fight it, force myself to get over the shame. Because it's either convulsions or a fix." He takes me to a hidden corner in the midst of a busy area. This is his hideaway. "Here's where I've been sleeping for the past year," he says. On a bed of dry leaves lie a worn mattress, a sullied pillow, a torn blanket and a book. "I love to read. I'm afraid to keep things here, so as not to leave signs that someone is sleeping here, because then people will kick me out. So I keep just one book." A separate bag contains clean syringes. "I don't shoot up here, and I make sure the place doesn't get dirty, so people won't find me. A hideaway has to be far from the movement of people, dark so it will be possible to sleep, quiet if possible, even though it's the street." Don't you have any property stuff at all? "I don't need property, and anyway I can't stockpile anything. What I need I get at that moment." Perpetual motion He was born in a Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) home, he relates. His mother is a convert to Judaism from Belgium, his father grew up in a kibbutz and became ultra-Orthodox. As a child, he was sexually abused in the neighborhood he grew up in, and in adolescence was sexually assaulted. He first escaped to Tel Aviv at the age of 13. "I grew up in a home with a violent father," he says. "I was always afraid when he came home from work in the evening. I felt safer out of the house. One night he came back, a quarrel developed and I ran because I was scared. That's how I got to the street. From an early age, I felt the house was not safe and the street was." His face is pocked with fresh stab wounds from a night battle with another addict near the new Central Bus Station. "Let's keep going," he requests. "I hate to stand in one place. I have to be in motion all the time. Have to move. Have to keep walking." He surges forward. The sound of women opening a purse is heard time and again. G. stops for a moment, enters a McDonald's, and emerges with the remnants of a hamburger and a soft drink left behind by a client. "Even if I get hungry, I will never in my life buy food. I always eat scraps that people throw on the street," he says. "I don't know if anyone can understand. I can't explain. All the money goes for the drug. It's stronger than me - but that's what addiction is." When he was 18, he relates, he fell in love with a girl. After going through many boarding schools, smoking pot, becoming addicted to contact glue, experiencing hallucinations, then indictments, arrest, an attempt to kick the habit and rehabilitation in a hostel, he felt for the first time the effects of a natural drug: love. But his first love was a heroin user, and he joined her. "I felt it was good," he says. "It wiped out the downs and the pain, but I already knew inside that I was going to be a junkie. That my life was down the tubes. I remember how it scared me. I was afraid that everything I dreamed of at the time - to be a counselor, to help people, to be an actor - would crash. Now I don't dare to dream anymore and don?t believe in myself. I am a failure. I feel like a failure. I didn?t do anything with myself - I haven't even been in love since then." He quickens the pace. Draws into himself for a moment and again starts asking people for help. His look is touching and the money pours into his hands as though he had won in a slot machine. "I have NIS 98 already," he smiles with true happiness. "It's not the money that makes me happy. I don't care about money. It's the thought that soon I will get some drugs inside me." Suddenly he asks me to wait for him, enters a yard and throws up. Then he forsakes the Tel Aviv bustle and heads for the site of the old Central Bus Station. The craving for a fix makes him take the exceptional step of boarding a Line 4 minibus. During the short trip he fantasizes like someone dreaming of a banquet: "I will mix brown [heroin] with white [crystal]. It looks as though I'll treat myself to a cocktail - I have the exact amount." At the old station, he buys heroin from a dealer on a street corner. The dealer counts one coin after another and in full public view hands over the drug. G. proceeds to 1 Fein Street. He goes inside and emerges five minutes later with crystal meth. He enters one of the courtyards in the compound, making his way through twisting fences. Other addicts are there, each on his own trip. G. is equipped for the mission. He takes out a metal bottle cap, puts in a little water, sprinkles lemon salt and dissolves the heroin. Quickly he adds the crystal. Mixes and draws the material into the syringe. Lowering his pants, he disinfects the place and injects the drug into his groin. "My veins are finished," he says. "The only place I can shoot into now is my groin. Sometimes also the throat, but that's rare." His eyes grow misty, his body sways. His eyes open and close, he speaks slowly, the words interspersed with spaces of silence. "Their mixture is superb. It holds the down and also pulls upward," he says. At moments he seems to be deep in sleep. An hour later, he will again make the rounds of the cafes and restaurants in the other part of Tel Aviv. You could spare yourself all the walking if you put aside part of the money. "I don't keep a shekel for myself, or for afterward, not even for the next dose. I don't have any thought of afterward. I see only the fix now. After shooting up, I will start the collection and the war again. I have to fight the war anew every time." A different life He has been on the street since he was 20. Soon, a friend persuaded him to make easy money from prostitution. "That was the trauma of my life," he says. "I don't do that anymore. I worked in that every day from five in the afternoon or eight in the evening until the night. I'm not gay, that isn't my thing at all. I slept in an abandoned building and made NIS 300-400 a night. I used an insane amount of drugs in that period, almost the same amount I shoot up today. But back then I was healthy and strong, and you couldn't see that I was an addict. I couldn't be with a client without drugs. If I didn't take some before, I would absolutely throw up. It wasn't for me. I hated it and I hated myself." How did you stop? "It was thanks to being imprisoned for half a year and then being sent to detoxify. It was my sixth or seventh try to kick the habit. I dropped out at the beginning of the year and went back to the street. I didn't have a choice: I worked in the same thing again for a month, almost every night, and felt again that it wasn't for me. I knew the kind of abysses it led me into in the past. Gradually I understood that I could make money by begging in the street. True, it's hard mentally to hear curses and be humiliated, but it's a lot easier than working as a prostitute. I would like you to write that what I do for money I do because I have no choice. I never wanted to get into this situation of stealing, prostitution and begging. I would like to have a different life. I want a family, love, children. I want to be like the people I sometimes see in the street, who are out walking with their kids and look happy." G. doesn't feel well. He throws up again. In the meantime he has collected NIS 40. He turns around and heads back to the old bus station. But in the wake of a police raid, there is no heroin at 1 Fein Street, only crystal. He comes out of the building and walks down to the new station. There are dealers at the stop where you can catch a minibus to Lod. G. buys a dose and goes into one of the station's washroom to inject. He shoots up but doesn't feel calm. "The pressure because there is no heroin in the compound [1 Fein Street] is driving me crazy," he says. "I want to collect more money fast so I can buy some more." He cruises restlessly. Soon he has more coins in his pocket. An hour later he is waiting for a minibus from Lod that will bring a new shipment of "big H." There are no dealers or minibuses around. G. is edgy. Perspiring and agitated, he prefers to go back to the old station to find a dealer. He arrives, spots a woman from a distance and buys a dose from her. Evening falls. He enters a courtyard behind one of the stalls, disinfects the groin area, heats up a plastic bottle cap, mixes the drug with water and lemon salt, draws the dose into the syringe and injects himself. His eyes close, his body sways to an inner rhythm. Wants. Needs. Wants. Needs. Wants. Needs. What do you feel now? "Nothing. Everything is erased. All the insults, the evil, the traumas, the pain, the sadness, the humiliation. I don?t feel a thing, and that is so wonderful." Mom's true love The homeless and the addicts who frequent the day center called Someone to Run With - the title of a novel by David Grossman about on-the-loose, doped-up youngsters in Jerusalem - have one mother. Fatina Jamjoun, 50, Jaffa-born, mother of four who was widowed 23 years ago. She worked in a Jaffa center that assisted youngsters from broken families, was the house mother in Another Place (a hostel for children and adolescents run by the Tel Aviv Municipality and the Youth Protection Authority), and has been working for the Elem Association for 12 years and in its day center since it opened. Jamjoun, whose black kerchief highlights her beaming face, established a weekly kabbalat Shabbat - a traditional Friday evening ceremony welcoming the Sabbath - that begins with Kiddush and continues with a homemade meal she herself prepares. "During the whole week the food for the center is a donation from the David Intercontinental Hotel. On this day I wanted them to experience 'Fatina Intercontinental,'" she laughs, "to take in the scent of home cooking, taste food from home." The first thing every young person who enters the center does is give her a loving hug and get warm kisses in return. Everyone who was interviewed for this article and all the other addicts and street dwellers who visit the center call her Mom. "She is a true mom," G. says. "You will always see her looking after everyone equally. She doesn't discriminate between Jew, Arab, Russian or Ethiopian. It's a mother's true love. She is the Arab mother of us all." In a corner of the room Jamjoun is persuading a young Russian to shower and change clothes. When her efforts do not bear fruit, she allows herself to raise her voice. "I give them a feeling that someone loves them, knows them, accepts them - but I also set limits," she says. "That is the hardest thing, but they need it so badly. Knowing that someone truly cares about them. Here we demand that they not engage in criminal talk, respect one another. We give them a place where they can take a break from the street." Spotting the Russian emerging spick and span from the shower, she smiles. "Ya habibi, aren't you the gorgeous one. Come on, we'll find you some nice clean clothes." She embraces him with unabashed delight. At midday, David Berg, the center's director, takes to the streets to locate homeless youngsters, make initial contact with them and get them to visit the institution. As he prowls Levinsky Park and the area around the two Central Bus Stations, he unerringly picks out young people who find themselves here for the first time and spots sheets of cardboard that attest to sleeping places and neglected yards that are used as havens. The Elem Association has been running the day center for five years, with the support of Rabbi Yehiel Eckstein's Friendship Fund. "Our goal is to locate them, gain their trust and give them a feeling of home, at least for a few hours," Berg says. "Based on the ties we forge with them, the intention is to advance them to detoxification and strengthen their relations with the community." The center offers a shower, clean clothes, laundry services, food, a rest room and an area for socializing that contains computers, musical instruments and a library. Shiatsu treatment is also available. Most of the funding is from donations (NIS 10 to light a bulb on the "Lights of Hope" flag, consisting of some 600,000 light bulbs that will be illuminated on Azrieli Tower; a donation can be sent by text message to 9960, with the number 10). The center also provides legal counsel, makes available social workers and enables treatment and consultation by a general practitioner and a psychiatrist who offer their services on a volunteer basis. However, the center is open only during the day. "We do not provide sleeping accommodation," says Zion Gabai, the director general of Elem. "It is heartrending to see young people who wait outside for the center to open in the morning and find it hard to leave when it closes and return to the street. They can sleep in the 'Gagon' [a shelter for addicts], but it is psychologically damaging to let young people bed down with street dwellers of 50 who have long since forgotten what home is and whose mental state is unstable. The young people have been on the street for two to four years and still have a vague recollection of home. They need a place to sleep that will let them believe it is possible to get off the street and break the drug habit." The upside of AIDS "Won't you be ashamed to walk around with me? Won't you be ashamed to be seen in the company of someone like me?" asks S., 22, and examines my reply with an intense gaze. Drugs have not yet taken their toll on his handsome face or his young appearance. He has been sleeping in the streets of Tel Aviv for the past year, but the experience has not eroded his surprising gentleness or his fine, cynical sense of humor. He is captivating. A book by Stephen King, in Russian translation, protrudes from the white cloth bag on his shoulder, which he uses in his small-time thefts to finance his habit. Now, though, his eyes are weary and his expression worried. "I didn't sleep all night," he says. "I just walked and walked. I tried to get to sleep in a parking lot, but I was uptight. I knew I didn't have enough money for a dose in the morning, and in that situation I cannot be calm. Just the thought of the convulsion gives me a convulsion," he says, the pressure in his tone palpable. He is a quick walker. "I shot up badly and my foot became infected. It's when I stop or sit down that I feel the pain, but if I walk fast I forget about it," he explains, biting his lip. Were you in hospital? "Yes, a few times. The last time was a month ago. I waited for hours but they didn't even bother to dress the foot. But they discovered something that really makes me forget the pain in my foot." What did they discover? "That aside from my testing HIV positive for AIDS, everything is hunky-dory." He smiles. Are you getting treatment? "It's dormant. I am a carrier. They told me to go to the Kupat Holim HMO in the city I grew up in, fill out forms and go to a hospital. You have to take medicines every day. I live in the street. I need five doses of drugs a day at least. I suffer from serious convulsions. How, exactly, am I supposed to take medicines every few hours? I'm not even capable of taking antibiotics for my foot every day." He falls silent. Then, "I know exactly when it happened. I was in the Fein compound and having convulsions. I needed a syringe urgently. I didn't care about anything. I found one that someone had thrown away, and used it. I don't know, maybe they made a mistake in the test." Do you have a family? "My parents are not in Israel. I don't know when they left or where they are." After a long silence he adds: "My father is an alcoholic. He is hooked on the bottle but hates junkies. My mother loves me. I know. But dad is domineering and won't let her get in touch with me. The ties were broken long ago, the moment I started with the drugs. I feel that my family gave up on me. They don't care about me. Neglected, not neglected, sleeps outside, living-dead. Only because I'm a junkie." He immigrated to Israel with his family when he was 13, he relates. "I learned Hebrew in an ulpan" - intensive study course - "in three months, but I stayed in the house for a year and didn't actually go to school. I felt like an outsider. No one in the class talked to me. There were no Russians at all in my class. A year later I was already in a school where there were Russians, and maybe it's too bad that happened, because I hooked up with a bad group and went downhill." He started sniffing heroin at the age of 16. He threw up, hated the stuff and swore he would never use it again. A pinch of heroin was added every day to the bong his buddies used. One day, at the age of sixteen and a half, he woke up with convulsions and knew he was addicted. He was able to kick the habit for a short time. At seventeen and a half he started shooting heroin, and at 18, instead of entering the army he entered prison for 15 months for drug dealing. During his time behind bars, he succeeded in getting off drugs. After his release he stayed clean for two months. But he kept dealing drugs and eventually went back to using them. Six months after his 20th birthday he arrived in Tel Aviv with high hopes and 50 grams of heroin, and started living at 1 Fein Street. There, he says, he started to sell drugs at fair prices and without mixing them with other materials. He saved up NIS 35,000, he says, but then was attacked and wounded by other dealers. "They stole my money, made up a fictitious debt, claimed I owed them NIS 25,000 for using and took out a contract on me. If they find me I am a goner. I mustn't go near the compound." Everything is closing in To pay for his habit, S. developed a routine of small-time thefts. "I hate to beg, it's humiliating," he says. "I tried it a few times, but I got vicious insults. I will never work in prostitution, so this is what's left." He starts to walk faster, surveying the stores in the area as he moves along. "I hate this," he says, and pulls the white cloth bag tighter onto his shoulder. "My heart is beating like crazy now. I'm getting a big adrenaline rush. Some people are addicted to that, but I guess I'm not part of the 'natural drugs' scene," he says, flashing a smile as he makes his way into the store. Seeing him enter, the salespeople tense up. One saleswoman leaves her position almost on the run and follows him closely with heavy steps. Without turning around, S. already feels the presence that is forming around him. He pauses a moment at one of the shelves, then turns and walks out of the store. "As soon as I saw him, I dropped everything else," the saleswoman excitedly tells her colleagues who crowd around her. "Check to make sure nothing is missing," the manager says in a booming voice. S. walks away with pent-up anger. In a foul mood, he steps up the pace, dragging the infected foot with obvious pain. "I'm burned in that store," he says at last. "It was a mistake for me even to go in there. Just a waste of time. I need a fix and I still don't have any money." He casts a despairing look at the nearby stores. "I'm burned in this whole area. People know me here. I have to go to a different area." He stops, writhing in pain. He tries to recover and continues his rapid walk through the city streets. Fifteen minutes later he enters a kiosk in North Tel Aviv and emerges waving a bill of NIS 50. His body relaxes visibly and his pace of walking changes. "Now everything is all right," he says with a smile. "There is a sure fix. I got this on account. I bring them merchandise every day and he makes a good profit off me. He knows I'm a junkie and need a fix, and he makes a simple calculation that it's worthwhile for him to give me something on account. He doesn't want to lose me. He makes a lot of money through me. I sometimes bring him Gamla wine that costs NIS 79 a bottle for payment of NIS 25 - so it's worth it, no?" With the money in his pocket, S. is loose. He concentrates and makes a quick mental calculation about which dealer he can get to first. We go to the Florentin neighborhood. S. enters an apartment building and comes out two minutes later with a wrapped heroin dose. Now he is almost floating and allows himself to smile. He enters the yard of a house and from the cloth bag takes out a syringe, a metal cork and a lighter. He heats up the stuff, draws it into the syringe and searches for a vein. "I can't shoot into my legs anymore," he says. "I have moved to the arms." For 20 minutes he looks for a vein in intense silence. When he finally shoots up, his body falls still for a few minutes. Then his eyes open and he says in a melancholy tone, "The stuff is nothing special. It's really weak. It's a small dose for me, I hardly feel a thing." He collects himself carefully, tightens the cloth bag, holds his breath for a moment because of the sore leg, and resumes his walking. We are approaching a store. He enters. Ten minutes later he emerges. The saleswoman follows him with a look as he leaves, squeezes her eyes in suspiciousness and finally goes back in. S. rushes off. "That's the most uptight thing, suddenly to feel the hand of a person or a policeman who says 'You're under arrest.' It's more pressuring than the stealing itself," he says. "I have four or five open police files. Everything is closing in on me. One more small mistake and I am inside. But what can I do? How will I get the fix? I am like a sick person who needs medicine." He opens his bag. Inside are six deodorant sticks. He removes the price labels that give away the store?s identity. "They cost NIS 30 each, and I will get NIS 10 each." With quick steps he makes his way to the new bus station. S. makes it clear that he has rules: "I do not steal from old people. I do not steal from small stores; I prefer the big chains. I learned everything I know from two certified thieves. For example, until you pass through the exit door you are a regular customer. If you are caught inside the store, you can always say you intended to pay, or 'Yes, I was going to steal but changed my mind,' or 'Here are the products, I am giving them back,' and leave with most of what you have taken on your person." "Sometimes," he continues, "when I see that the security officers and the salespeople are suspicious of me and know I want to steal, I like to fool around and just walk through the store for about 15 minutes and watch them get uptight. The whole store turns into a labyrinth or into an acrostic crossword - but that is when there is time to spare," he says in a smiling reverie. "You know," he says, "I feel different walking the street with you. If you weren't with me, people wouldn't treat me like this. Usually people move aside when I pass, look at me as though I had landed from a different world. It's insulting. It becomes like Nazis and Jews. We junkies are the Jews. You tell us, 'Don't sit here,' 'Get away from here,' 'Beat it, you dirty addicts,' the way people once said 'dirty Jew,' as though we are not human beings. The Central Bus Station has become a ghetto. A ghetto of addicts." Aren't you too young for all this? "Yes, very young. But I don?t know what else is left to me. I have nothing. I don't even know what I really want. People hate junkies and think they have an easy life. Like, all day it's drugs and fun. It's hell. Go get five or six doses a day, because the body demands them, and if not you begin to fall apart and shake and hurt. We work hard for the money and we are exploited. All day we are under pressure - stealing, selling, figuring out angles, running, frightened, being caught." Haven't you had enough? Don't you want to kick the habit? Change direction? "Of course I've had enough. I don't know what will happen. I am starting to think about detoxification, but I don't know if I am capable of living a regular life after all I have been through. I have no home, no family; I am down and out on the street, alone." S. unloads his merchandise in a store in the new Central Bus Station. Gradually it becomes clear how products make their way around Tel Aviv, move by twisting routes between the stores, change hands. "I steal everything," he admits. "There is nothing that can't be stolen, nothing that can?t be sold." As he leaves the store, he is visibly angry: "They pay a very low price here. I should have sold somewhere else. Everyone takes advantage of the junkies. He knows I need a fix in a hurry, so he deliberately offers a low price." The NIS 50 note rustles. S. leaves the station and heads for the 'flights to Lod' site, where he buys a dose from a dealer who has come in from that city. He goes into a washroom in the station to shoot up. Emerging after 20 minutes of attempts, he is upset. "A shitty dose. The quality of the stuff here is awful," he says. "I don't feel the drug at all." He crashes in despair onto a bench, perspiring and staring ahead sadly. "The thought that I have to steal again today, and sell again, makes me want to die," he says. "Everything is closing in on me. I have the feeling that all the stores know me already." He curls up within himself, like a furry cat, and casts his gaze far. "I want to go home," he says suddenly, his eyes lighting up for an instant with a childlike spark. "I would like a break from this madness. To lay my head down and go to sleep in a place where people don't stare at you when you walk by. A break from this hell." Bad stuff In the commemoration corner of the Elem Association day center a memorial candle is lit for D., an Arab from Jaffa. On a small table next to the entrance are flowers, a photograph of D. and a death notice. D., 26, was the first interviewee for this article. I met him a month ago in the old Central Bus Station area - hungry, sick, holding his left side in pain. I told him about the article and he said he would like to be part of it. I took him out to eat. He ate greedily, in obvious hunger. "I was born with an addictive syndrome to parents who were addicts," he told me. "Dad died when I was little, mom died two months ago. I started to shoot heroin when I was 16. The family ostracized me and I started to live in the street. I lay my head on a stone on the sidewalk and sleep. At the age of 18 I started to work in prostitution here in the station." D. twisted with pain and said that two days earlier he had injected bad stuff. "It was horrible," he said. "I feel really bad. I want to stop the whole thing. I stopped the prostitution a week ago. I am already sick, and no one wants me anyway. I want to stop with the drugs. The last injection was enough for me. I'm sick of it." That was Thursday afternoon. After the meal D. asked me to lend him NIS 50. "I have NIS 20 and I want subotex [a drug substitute]. I really want to kick the habit," he begged. "If I wanted heroin, I would get another NIS 20 and would already have a dose. I took a pill this morning, and I need half for Friday and Saturday. On Sunday I will get the National Insurance allowance and be able to buy it myself." We arranged to meet on Sunday at the Someone to Run With center. D. lay in the resting room, the joints of his hands swollen, groaning with pain. On Tuesday, April 1, the center staff found him nearby with a syringe at his side. He was barely conscious. An ambulance was ordered, but D. refused to be evacuated. He insisted on going to the bus station to buy subotex, promising to return. That day he was taken to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv in an ambulance that was summoned by passersby in the old Central Bus Station. He arrived at the hospital unconscious and remained in that state until he died six days later Bookmark to del.icio.us   Clear, present danger Survey : 52% of youth believe Israel faces existential threat. Feeling guilty Europe's criticism of Israel is more than just anti-Semitism.   1.   Leftie Esther from TA and her ilk prefer to care for pal terroris 02:01  |  Absolute Sweden 26/04/08   2.   The Promised Land 02:09  |  Moishe 26/04/08   3.   government and Tibi are at fault 05:02  |  Great White North 26/04/08

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