Calle Cantera, Santo Domingo

I was standing in front of a one-story house at Calle Cantera in Santo Domingo, taking pictures of it, when a woman came out of the house behind me and approached me rapidly, shouting something as she neared. She was clearly very excited about something. It was some time in February of 1992.

I was 9 years old when we left the Dominican Republic. We had only been there two years, but to a kid that young, it seemed like a really long time. I spoke fluent Spanish then, but after just a few months back in Israel with no Spanish-speaking people around, I quickly forgot most of it. Nowadays I can just get by with the very little that's left in memory.

It had been 22 years since I had last been there, at La Cantera. Just a couple of hours earlier I landed at Santo Domingo airport for my first visit in the Dominican Republic since our departure in 1970. I was now 31 years old. I got into a rental car and took the road into the city. When I accepted that I had no idea where I was going, I stopped by a communications center and phoned my dad in Israel for directions. Did I really expect him to remember anything after 22 years...? Well, he didn't. From my description of the area he knew where I was, but couldn't remember how to go from there. So I got back in the car and drove around for a while. Finally, I parked the car and hailed a taxi. Asked the driver to take me to Calle de La Cantera, an obscure alley in an upper-middle-class neighborhood. To my great surprise, it was only a few blocks away. He dropped me off in front of the house where I had lived over two decades prior.

The front yard was now gated, there was a strange construct on the roof, and the garden was very well developed with abundant plants and flowers. But the house itself looked exactly the way we had left it. I took some pictures and was preparing to leave when I realized that the woman who was rushing towards me was shouting "Zafi" - my shortname!

I was dumbfounded. She grabbed and hugged me and finally explained that she was Amanda, Guaroa's mother. They were our former neighbors in the house at the other end of the street. Guaroa was my age and his younger sister was the age of my younger sister. We were childhood friends.

I asked Doña Amanda how on Earth she could have recognized me, considering that she last saw me when I was a little boy. She said, "an obvious foreigner, this age, standing in front of this particular house, taking photos. Who else could it be?"

She then took me by the hand to the front door of the house and rang the bell. She told her neighbors who I was, the boy of the Israeli family. They knew all about us. We were invited into the house to have a look. I saw our living room, the kitchen where Rosa the maid cooked tostones and diced mangos for us, the porch where we had our kids' pool, and my very own old room. What an amazing experience, who would've dreamed I'd get to see that?

After thanking the family profusely, we went over to Doña Amanda's. On the way, I asked about Guaroa - was he still living in Santo Domingo and was there a chance I could meet him? Well, not only was he in town, she said, but he's right here in the house fixing something for her...

This was ridiculous, I couldn't believe my luck. A couple of minutes later I was already shaking hands and hugging with my old pal. And then we went on to meet Carlos - another one of the former neighborhood kids. In the evening we all went out to the bars to celebrate our surprise reunion.

At one bar Guaroa met Lucy and they have been together ever since. And I have since been visiting the Dominican Republic, my second home, every few years.