Working for the Mafia

In September, at the end of the European summer, the Maya Circus were invited to a performance art festival in Israel, in an ancient fortified port-city called Arce.

This city is amazing. It has been inhabited since Phoenician times. It was the end of the Silk Road and was never taken by force, not even by Napoleon. The city is pretty unique with an easy-going mix of Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Bahai faith.

Leon Uri and I were invited to the festival by Sheva, a group of Jewish and Islamic musicians who were the festival organisers. It was a real honour to be invited to the festival by these guys, they had number-one hits in Israel and were famous for their shows in the festival. Not only did they want us to perform in the festival they wanted us to be part of their own show.

Life was good! We didn’t want to leave. So, we stayed on illegally.

You may be shocked to learn that I was pretty much broke at the time (there’s not a lot of money in touring as a micro circus).  When we were offered $3,000 to do decoration and performance for a 1,000-people warehouse party in Tel Aviv we jumped at the chance.

Itzak, the event organiser, shouted us falafel and cold beer on the beach during our lunch break. While we were enjoying the meal, he pulled out his wallet and showed us his badge. “I’m a police officer…”

Right…

Itzak used to put on parties in the late 80’s but his gigs kept getting raided. He joined the police force to work out who to bribe so his parties wouldn’t get busted and now works for Benjamin Algranati, the patriarch of a Jewish-Italian family who own casinos, restaurants and nightclubs throughout Tel Aviv. Itzak reassured us that he’d paid off the police for the night.

I grew up in a small town in the Waikato and I’m sure that’s not how things worked in Cambridge. Maybe in Hamilton…

The venue looked awesome, the sound system was huge, the line-up was stellar.

One o’clock in the morning I’m backstage with X-Dream, my favourite act at the time. I was trying not to be a fan-boy and failing miserably when the sound system stopped. At our gigs in New Zealand, the first thing we would do is get someone on stage doing a fire show while the tech-heads fixed the problem.

Jamie to the rescue!

I pulled on my monkey mask and jumped on stage with flaming clubs. Ready for action!

Next thing I know I’m being frog marched off stage by a gorilla in a dark blue uniform. He’s holding my arms and yelling in my face. I lifted the mask off and said “Ani lo medaber Ivrit”. Without missing a step, he switched to English and spat “If you get back on that stage I’ll break both of your legs”.

Righto… Nothing ambivalent about that then.

Itzak came to see us the following day. They weren’t able to pay us the $3,000 that they owed us, but they’d pay us twice the amount to do the next gig in one month. 

You’ll never believe this. The same thing happened! Fool me once.

Then Eran and Yair found us. They’d seen our décor at the X-Dream gig and wanted us to turn their warehouse into a night club. Could we do it for $3,000?

Shit yeah we could!

After ten days of hard graft, working day and night, we finished the artwork. They loved it. But they didn’t want to pay.

So they attacked.

There were knives. Someone had a gun. I got hit over the head with a chair and it split my scalp. There was blood.

I guess I was lucky to get out of there with only a head injury.

Three thousand! Three times! Israel’s insane!

In the early 90’s Israel’s population was around 4.5 million, the same as New Zealand right now. When your country’s this small everyone knows someone, who knows you. Everyone knows your business.

My friend Lior, who was a musician in the band Sheva, lived in a high-rise apartment in Tel Aviv. At sunset he would sit on his balcony and play his flute. His neighbour was Benjamin Algranati and he would sit on his own balcony and enjoy the music. Over the years they’d become friends. Lior told Benjamin what had happened in the nightclub.

I got a phone call. It was Lior.

“Jimmy”

Israelis can’t say Jamie.

“Jimmy… Eran and Yair’s club opened last night and Benjamin Algranati sent some of his guys. They trashed the place. It’s ruined Jimmy. All the bottles are broken Jimmy. They smashed the windows. They smashed the art.”

Oh shit.

“Benjamin said to tell you that his debt to you is cleared.”

Oh shit.

“But Jimmy, you should be very careful, Eran and Yair are not nice guys. You should probably leave Tel Aviv”.

Oh shit!

Then things got surreal. I got death threats via third parties. My flatmates got calls from Eran and Yair telling them they wanted to break my legs (quite a common threat in Israel apparently).

I was sleeping in the hallway of a friend’s apartment and I was seriously broke. I spent one week with 50 agorot in my pocket. It was the last of my money in the world, the equivalent of twenty cents in New Zealand.

I bought some hot cashew nuts and ate them, sitting on the warm sand, watching the sun set. I cried.

Then things changed. Within a week I got a gig with Vodaphone Israel. Along with two friends I was paid one thousand dollars for a three-minute show. Three hundred and thirty-three dollars each! One hundred and eleven dollars a minute!

I sold some art to a friend and got a one-way ticket to India. I landed in Delhi at four in the morning.

I was broke.