Last week, I promised to keep you posted on the missing documents saga. You may remember that Micha’el was told that their package of original documents returned by the authorities had been picked up from Castelo Branco Post Office, although they did not know by whom; all they knew was that, whoever it was, it was definitely not anybody who had any right to pick it up.

Then, a few days later, a neighbour stopped Tslil on the street, and said: ‘By the way, there’s a package for you at the petrol station.’ 10 months in Portugal have taught the kids that things that make no apparent sense may still have a logical explanation. Sure enough, when they went to the petrol station, there was a parcel waiting for them, containing the documents. Apparently, the clerk who had addressed the envelope had omitted from the address both the house number and the village (Penamacor). Instead of (as it were):

26, Something Street
Penamacor
Castelo Branco

the parcel had been addressed to:

Something Street
Castelo Branco

It had therefore been sent to Castelo Branco, where the postman had, of course, failed to find the street. Realising the mistake, the authorities redirected it to Penamacor, knowing that there is a street of that name in the village. However, since it was missing a house number, the postman could not deliver it, and so he handed it in at the petrol station, to be claimed from there. ‘Why the petrol station and not the post office?’ you ask. Good question! If I had to hazard a guess, I would say because very few people go to the post office regularly, whereas everyone uses the petrol station, and the proprietor, knowing where everyone in the village lives, can mention to the next resident of the street who stops by that, when they see the Orlevs, they should tell them that there is a parcel waiting for them.

‘Why, then, did the postal authorities tell Micha’el that the parcel had been collected?’ you ask. Full of good questions this week, aren’t you! Well, you see, in order to leave the parcel at the petrol station, the postman had to get the proprietor to sign for it.As far as the Post Office was concerned, this meant that the parcel had been delivered. There you are, you see: a logical explanation. It may not make any sense, but it’s logical!

Every confrontation the kids have with Portuguese bureaucracy confirms what I said when we first made aliyah. We started off at an absorption centre: this was a wonderful arrangement, since, whatever bureaucratic nonsense we experienced on any given day, we would always be able to find someone among our neighbours who had had the same experience a few days, or weeks, or months earlier, and who could reassure us that everything would work out in the end. Despite that, someone or other (usually, you may be interested to know, an American – I just report the facts as they are; I don’t comment on them) would regularly rant about the Israeli authorities and their Byzantine bureaucracy and incredible inefficiency. Incidentally, the bureaucracy was indeed Byzantine, since much of it was a remnant of the days when this neck of the woods was part of the Ottoman empire. Israel even adopted a little of the Ottoman bureaucratic vocabulary, notably the splendid Turkish word for rubber stamp – gushpanka.  

Whenever I heard such a rant, I would respond in the same way. ‘Have you ever tried to immigrate to the USA? Ask someone who has what the process is like!’ This was, of course, in one sense, an unfair comparison, since we all, as Jews, enjoyed the Right of Return to Israel, which isn’t the case for most would-be immigrants to the USA. However, it is fair to say that no native-born national ever really appreciates how daunting the immigrant experience is. You know none of things that ‘everyone knows’; you only find the right way of doing something by doing it wrongly first; and, of course, you can’t really understand anything anyone says in an office, much less on the phone. The best pieces of advice we were given were: ‘Always bring a small child’ and ‘When all else fails, cry’. We have, of course, passed this advice on to the kids.

What I don’t know is whether Portuguese bureaucracy follows the British or the Israeli model. In Britain (in my experience), if a clerk in a Government office tells you ‘Impossible!’, there is no point in arguing. Even if what you are requesting is, in fact, possible, you will never get the clerk to admit to being in error, and, if it is impossible, then you will never get the clerk to bend the rules.

In Israel, by contrast, ‘Impossible’ is nothing more than the clerk’s opening gambit in a protracted negotiation. We once knew an immigrant from Britain who applied for an Israeli heavy goods licence, even though his British driving licence only qualified him to drive a car. He arrived at the relevant licensing authority at eight o’clock one morning, and, on being told that he was not eligible for a heavy goods licence, argued for an hour and a half, and then announced that he was not moving from the office until he had his licence. Those of you who live here will not be surprised to hear that he left the office at the end of the day with a heavy goods licence (which, thankfully, he never used).

Sadly, official Portugal sounds, at this point, more like Britain than Israel. However, Micha’el’s people skills are so good, and Tao is so adorable, that my money is on them. (Be honest: could you say ‘No’ to this child?)

I’m sure the kids will eventually achieve what they need to do in order to move on to developing the land as they want and achieving permanent housing. Fortunately, Micha’el and Tslil are keen players of Go, and so they know all about playing the long game.