World Shadow by Nir Baram

Author:Nir Baram
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2021-11-13T00:00:00+00:00

HOW ALL THIS HAPPENED

The nineties were intoxicating. The magic of dreams forged in the eighties was in their boldness, the youthful glee with which they were hurled at the world, besieging it with their inventiveness. They were begging to come true. Now it was happening, in a huge wave that swept away all doubts, and the evenings at Bottle, when business cards of visitors from faraway lands had been scrutinized with the admiration of little boys collecting soccer cards, were a distant memory. The horizon that had always stretched into a blur beyond their reach glowed so closely now that it seemed touchable, and they fell upon the opportunities it offered. They had sealed plenty of deals in the eighties, too, small ones, in which every step demanded huge efforts, but during that decade they had studied how to propose ideas to American businessmen, how to soften up European companies that disfavored Israeli policies, how to assemble a team to bid for a tender, and when to bring up brokerage fees. Now they were ready to implement the knowledge they had amassed; the days they had yearned for had arrived.

There were people around them who, stunned by the dazzling light of the decade, shuttered themselves deep inside their second-rate kingdoms—the small advertising firm, the financial advisory with four clients, the factory in Holon clinging to a patent filed in the seventies. These castaways sat in their little gray offices drinking instant coffee, denying the passage of time, while everyone else sent out tentacles in multiple directions and got gigs as consultants for international companies interested in opening branches in Israel or buying Israeli businesses. They won bids; they built power plants, desalination facilities, hotels, shopping malls, and office towers; they paved roads and laid down railroad tracks.

Wolfson and Horwitz came back from Washington, DC, where they had taken part in the events surrounding the Oslo peace accord signing, and leaped into the whirlwind. They joined up with an Egyptian businessman to mediate between a Saudi oil company and Canadian refineries, but it was a complicated deal, and it fell through because some brokers had flaunted contacts they didn’t really have. Wolfson and Horwitz amused themselves with other grandiose plans—a network of highways that would connect the Middle East’s major cities; a “Silicon Valley of the Middle East” to be built on land already purchased between Nablus and Ramallah; an investment bank owned by Spanish and Moroccan companies together with Koor Industries and businessmen from Ramallah—and traveled to conventions in Barcelona, Riyadh, Brussels, and Davos. They were in constant motion, believing that if they were to stop for even a moment, a profusion of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities would pass them by.

Gavriel felt the days growing shorter and the pace speeding up. Everywhere he went, people were abuzz with rumors and new ideas. Sometimes when he came home at night, his head was exploding with names of countries, companies, and people, and it took him a long time to unwind. Ever since he

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