Holy Cow

40 ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL

Joe the camel led us deeper into the desert to his secret place in the wall where the stone had crumbled away slightly and the razor wire fallen down enough for us to squeeze through to Israel’s territory. There were no guards in sight, and just like that, we were back on the Israeli side of the West Bank wall. There would be no more fence between us and Jerusalem. As we kept walking, the villages got nicer and nicer, and the irrigated desert got greener and greener.

“Where you headed?” asked Joe.

“Wailing Wall,” Shalom said.

“Ah, tourists,” sighed Joe. I didn’t know much about camels, but I could tell this one was depressed, his hump seemed deflated. “I never go into the city proper anymore. I hated it when they used to mob me ’cause I was famous, now I hate it more when they don’t mob me ’cause I’m not famous anymore. I’m afraid you’re on your own.” He sat down dejectedly. “These days I just wander the desert so I don’t have to deal with the public. Such is the life of a has-been.”

I glanced around. Nothing looked familiar. We were lost without a phone, and I was desperately afraid we might wander again into a dangerous area.

“We’re never gonna find Jerusalem,” moaned Shalom.

“Did you guys see the guy they got to replace me?” the camel asked. “He’s got nothing. No charisma. No spit. All he’s got is youth.”

Tom stared at the camel and then exclaimed, “Aha!” He elbowed me aside with his wing, whispering, “Father issues.” He sat down next to the camel.

“You zay you used to advertise for ze cigarettes, ya? Ze Promethean phallic zymbol, ya?” asked Tom, once again sporting a ridiculous German accent.

“Advertise? No, man, I was the whole deal. I was the ‘it’ camel.”

“I zee,” said Tom. “Allow me to offer you ze paradigm shift.”

“Ze what?”

“Ze shift. From ze model to ze role model. You zold cigarette and you did zis better than anyone, but you know what, ze cigarettes are kaput for your health and kaput for the environment, and you are actually doing ze right thing by not agzepting ze blood money of ze tobacco companies anymore.”

(Just got a call from my editor. She says, “There goes another possible sponsor and here comes another possible lawsuit. This is not what I mean by ‘product placement.’” She cracks me up.)

“Wait a minute,” Joe said. “So you’re saying that being good at something bad is bad, and when you stop being good at the bad thing, that’s good?”

Tom nodded sagely. “In layman’s terms, perhaps ya. It makes no moral sense to miss your former A-list lifestyle. You made ze righteous rejection of ze military-industrial-entertainment gomplex. You used to be ze big part of ze problem, now you are ze small part of ze zolution.”

“I’m part of the zolution!” The camel rose to his feet and I could visibly see his hump straightening, as if it were being inflated by an invisible bicycle pump. “Thank you for the… what did you call it?”

“Ze paradigm shift. That’ll be one hundred fifty clams. We made good headway today, but I think you should probably come back three times a week for the next thirty years or so…”

I cut Tom off. “Joe, I know you don’t like the fans anymore, but do you think you could be part of our solution and point us in the direction of Jerusalem?”

Joe paused, took a deep breath. “My fans will have to accept the new me. Everybody loves a reinvention. Everyone loves a comeback. I will not only point you, I will escort you.”