The story of Efi and Jasmine

Efi (second from the left) and Jasmine (second from the right) are a couple from Israel. Claire and I were lucky enough to spend a week with them on Zanzibar as they were staying in the little bungalow next door to ours on Pingwe beach. They live in India and have travelled all over the world, sometimes together, sometimes separately. Before heading to Zanzibar, Efi was a singer songwriter in their village playing to locals and tourists in bars and venues she is funny, loud and loves to talk. Jasmine works as a freelancer, doing digital marketing for artists on Etsy and whilst she talks much less than Efi, when she does speak, she always has something interesting or entertaining to say. The pair work very well together and are fantastic storytellers. They’ve been together now for seven-and-a-half years and one evening we sat down after dinner to hear their story about how they met and how, many years later, they ended up a couple.

The pair grew up in the same neighbourhood in Haifa, Israel. They were at the same elementary school but were in different classes and first met when Efi skipped a class.

“I skipped a class, and she skipped a class, and I met her,” begins Efi, before Jasmine interrupts.

“No,” she says, “I was excused because I already knew the subject.

So, whilst Efi was bunking off, she bumped into Jasmine, who was also not in class, as she was excused. They were eleven-years-old when they met and got talking, before Jasmine invited Efi to her bat mitzvah. It wasn’t long before they became best friends. They went to the same high school together, and spent all of their time together.

“We knew everything about each other,” continues Efi, “where we were, what we did, we knew our families, even in the army she came to visit me all the time.”

In Israel, they still carry out national service. This meant that the two best friends were working in different parts of the Israeli army for a couple of years after school, but this didn’t keep them apart. They would often meet up in their spare time and hang out in cafes. And during their time in the military, Efi became a very successful fencer. She represented Israel and ended up getting offered a fencing scholarship in the USA, in New York. The college was going to pay for her studies and she would be a part of their fencing team. As you can imagine, for a young girl, fresh out of national service, to be offered the chance to go to New York and study, Efi was pretty excited.

“So,” says Jasmine, “we finished the army, everyone does what they do and Efi got this amazing offer. Of course, Efi, as you’ve already noticed, she has a big mouth so she told everybody. She is leaving. She is going to New York. That’s it. Goodbye.”

All Efi needed to do, in order to get into the college was pass the SATs getting the required marks as set by the college itself. She knew someone who had been to the college previously, so found out from this friend what the required marks were. She never actually contacted the college to see the grades she would require to get in. Luckily for Efi Tel Aviv ran an SATs course that she was able to take to help her achieve her grades.

“But Tel Aviv is like a real party city,” adds Jasmine, “So Efi used to go out every weekend and go out and party and then go to the course which was on the Friday morning. Weekends in Israel are Friday and Saturday, so she was going out Thursday nights and then going to the course Friday morning.”

Efi then took the first exam. This was the test they made you take at the start of the course in order to see where you were in terms of your grades. Her friend had told her the score she had to aim for and she almost beat the score without even doing the course.

Jasmine continues: “Then, the course ended and she took the exam and she got like 100 points more than she thought she needed. She applied to the college and sent off her results. And by this point she had told everyone she’s going.

But this is where Efi’s decision not to check the requirements with her college came back to haunt her. She got a phone call from Uri, the Russian coach of the fencing team.

Efi begins affecting a deep manly Russian accent: “Efi I have very bad news for you. They did not accept you to the college.” Basically, her scores were too low. Efi was devastated as she had told everyone that she was off to New York. So, what were her options? She couldn’t retake the test as by the time the results were out, there would be no time to send it off to the college.

“So the other option,” continues Jasmine, “was to retake her high school exams and upgrade the scores she achieved there. So she chose a few subjects and locked herself in her house. And Efi had never studied in her life. So she locked herself in the house and started studying like she had never studied before. After two weeks of intense studying, she found out, again, that the results won’t get there on time, just like before.

“And then she had the most genius idea. She’s gunna fake her SAT results. So she told her dad ‘let’s fake it’. Her dad thought it was a really good idea. But her mum, who is German, was appalled by the whole idea. She didn’t want to talk to them, she wanted nothing to do with it.

“So they faked the diploma. But faking it is not enough. You need to get a notary to approve the certificate and translate it, to prove that it’s real. And it’s illegal obviously, what they were doing. So they faked it, completely randomly so it would look reliable. They didn’t want it to suddenly look like she had As in everything. So they played around with it and faked the diploma. Efi then went to the notary. She put her hair into two braids to look like a good girl and the notary gave her the piece of paper and approved it! So, she sent it off to the college in New York.”

Efi then waited for the response. She waited a few weeks and after hearing nothing back she decided to call Uri herself. Efi pipes up with her deep Russian accent again: “Efi I am very very sorry to tell you but they did not accept you into the college your grades are too low.”

So Efi had pulled off a perfect fake. The college in New York had believed her diploma was genuine, she had just faked grades that were, yet again, too low to get her access to the college!

“And that was just a big joke,” says Efi, “I just started laughing. The first time I got rejected I was crying like mad, but the second time I just burst out with laughter. It was hilarious. At that time, Jasmine, who was my best friend went to India. I remember she went to travel in India with another friend of ours. I remember escorting her to the train to take her to the airport and we were in a group of friends going to say goodbye to her and it was all dramatic. And I started crying because I thought I was going to New York for like four years and I’ll never see her again. And I cried and cried and all my friends were looking at me and it was really funny.”

Jasmine had been in India for three months and she kept in touch with Efi through email, telling her that it was ‘the best place in the world’. So what did Efi decide to do once her master plan of cheating her way into college failed? She decided to team up with her best friend again, this time in India. They met in Dharamsala in the North of India and Jasmine had just come out of a ten day silent meditation retreat where she was completely silent, meditating for ten to twelve hours a day.

“So I came out of this and Efi shows up,” continues Jasmine, “I’ve been travelling for four months and travelling alone was the best thing in the world. And then she comes and it’s all weird. Because you know when you’re travelling and you meet new people you can be whoever you want, not that I was making up a new personality, but nobody keeps reminding you of your past and who you are. And then Efi comes and there’s all these stories about our past. And we just didn’t fit.”

They had been best friends for ten years, but this time something wasn’t right and they weren’t getting along. So they ended up going their separate ways, meeting up again later in the year in Agonda for a week.

“This was the worst week for us together. Jessie [Jasmine] couldn’t stand me!” says Efi. “I had just had my heart broken by this guy I met in India and I needed someone to talk to, but Jessie couldn’t stand me.”

So the two weren’t getting on and went their separate ways again. This time, Jasmine went back to Israel. She arrived back in Haifa, their hometown, in 2006 at the very start of the second Lebanese War. She ended up arriving back into a warzone and it was the first time that she had experienced bombs going off in Haifa. Efi was still in India travelling.

Efi says: “I was travelling with this guy and she had found a job in this bar in Haifa. But I was so traumatised by the war. I wasn’t even there. You know when you hear those horror stories about a situation that includes the people you love and it freaks you out? I had dreams of bombs and things.”

Once the war died down Jasmine got back in touch with Efi and told her all about his bar she was working in, saying that she could get her a job. So, once she had finished her time in India, Efi went back to her hometown to be with her best friend again, working in a bar. They had loads of fun together, but were still fighting loads.

“Efi is the worst worker in the world,” says Jasmine, “I would never hire her.”

“I was so awful,” adds Efi.

“They kept her because people loved her. And people would come to see her. But she would just talk to the people, so they would always have to have other people working to cover her. They hired her with zero experience and she left with zero experience. I was so pissed off working with her.”

So, a year passed and again, Jasmine left Israel to go to India. She had saved up and decided to go travelling again and at the same time Efi had saved up and decided to head to the USA. She was travelling around the country and ended up living and working in New York. She was working for a friend in his fencing shop. It wasn’t the same as a scholarship to a college in New York, but she was in the Big Apple and getting paid through the medium of fencing, so it sort of counts.

Efi says: “I made hardly any money and I was so poor. And I was eating out and living as if I had money and I had none. I was living in my friend’s apartment and when his girlfriend would come home he would kick me out. It was not nice and I felt so poor. And Jessie was in India and she found this village in the north, in the Parvati Valley. In this magical valley, one of the most beautiful places in the world.”

“Parvati was the wife of the god Shiva,” adds Jasmine, “and she lost her earring in the river in the valley and that’s why it’s called Parvati Valley. It’s the most beautiful place in the world in my opinion. I found this amazing village. This tiny village with no tourists and I lived there for six months in this wooden house, spending my time with the locals and drug dealers. Because it’s the valley of drugs.”

Apparently, the Parvati Valley is a place where a lot of marijuana is produced. There are fields and fields of it growing there and people come from all over the world to ship huge quantities of the stuff. So Jasmine was living there with this family of drug dealers who taught her Hindi.

“And it was crazy,” she continues, “because they were drug dealers but they were the nicest people I have met. They would protect me, because I was the only girl there, and everyone respected me and looked after me. I was living there off of my savings and it was so cheap. At some point they just let me stay for free and they even fed me.

“I also met the Yakuza people, the Japanese mafia, who were there to buy drugs. The whole world comes there to buy their drugs. But I never felt in danger. First of all it’s not like cocaine trafficking or heroin, it’s ganja. It doesn’t involve guns or violence, no one got hurt. People were buying large quantities and it was making its way all the way into Europe.”

So Jasmine was living in the drug valley in northern India and her best friend was half a world away living with very little money in New York. Jasmine’s plan was to stay in the Parvatti Valley forever.

She continues: “Then they changed their visa rules and I had to leave. They made it so you couldn’t just go out of the country and come back, you had to stay out of India for six months before you could apply for another visa. So I had to leave. I had no plan B. I was planning to stay there forever and I had hardly any money.

“It was winter in Europe so that wasn’t an option. The only option in my head was Australia. I decided to go there and find work. But then someone told me that Israelis can get a working visa in New Zealand. I didn’t check it. I just decided I was going to New Zealand.”

“She told me that she was going to New Zealand,” adds Efi, “and I had no money so I was like, ‘OK I am coming’.”

So, Efi got together all of her things, scraped together the last of her money and flew to New Zealand. The pair met in Auckland, bought a van, made a bed in the back and started driving around looking for work.

“Apparently,” says Jasmine, “Israelis cannot get a working visa in New Zealand. We found that out when we were there. So we started looking online and in newspapers for jobs. And we found a farm and we didn’t have a visa or the right skills. But the guy said it’s not a problem. He said ‘you can come and I can get you a working visa’.”

Efi says: “We were working in this milking farm and it was hilarious. Although we had travelled in India we had never worked. We’re city girls, from upper middle class backgrounds and then we ended up in this farm and it was such a big funny joke. We had these giant boots and big overalls, Jessie had a dirt bike and I had a four wheeler so we would just ride around the farm collecting the cows like real cow girls. It was really cool. The coolest job ever.

“The first day of the job they showed us how to milk the cows putting the machines on the udders. I go there and I am working and doing it, and I forgot that when a cow raises her tail, she shits. So a cow just shitted all over me. I was covered in shit. And all the people who taught us how to use the machines were on the floor laughing so hard. I was laughing and I had shit in my mouth and eyes and hair. It was everywhere. That was the first day. It was so funny. And in the end we got so used to the cow shit that in the early mornings when it was pretty cold I used to put my hands in it to warm them up.”

It turned out that their boss at the farm wasn’t able to get them a visa in the end, so they moved on and ended up at another farm where they got to live in a house on site. It was just the pair of them together all day, every day. And they started to take care of each other. Whoever was working the morning shift would cook for whoever was working the afternoon shift. They started falling into a couple’s routine.

“We used to lay and watch TV together,” continued Efi, “we got along so well. We used to lay on the sofa together and it was all very intimate. We weren’t touching, but we just got closer and closer and closer. And we didn’t need anyone. We started to prefer it when people weren’t around.”

After working at the farm and saving up plenty of money they both decided to go back to India. This time they went to Goa where they had an amazing time. They had these little huts to live in, one each, each with their own bathroom. After a few months there they made friends with a German guy and the three started hanging out a lot.

Efi says: “And one night we were hanging out in Jessie’s room with this guy. And I went to be and I wake up in the morning and Jessie told me that she slept with him. And it was like a sharp knife in my heart. And I was so confused because, why would it be? She’s like my sister, that’s disgusting. It hurt. I can’t explain how painful it was, and I didn’t know why. I was so confused. I didn’t talk for like twelve hours. I couldn’t say anything. It was really bizarre.

“And then, one morning I go to his room and I said; ‘look, I really like you and all, but you need to leave. You need to leave us alone. You need to stay away from Jessie’. Why would I say that? I am so bizarre. I didn’t know where these words were coming from or why I was saying that. It was so intense and I couldn’t keep it to myself. So I just told him to go. I had another friend who I spoke to about it, a German girl, and I told her the story and she said ‘yeah you’re in love with her’. And I couldn’t get it. It made no sense.

“So I told him to leave. He was so offended, but he left. It was so bizarre and I really liked him. I don’t know where I got the audacity to say it. But I was hurt and he could see that. He left. And we left Goa and went to Jessie’s magical village in Parfati Valley. Again, I had my own room, Jessie had her own room but we were spending all of our time together. And we were getting along so well and we had pretty much developed a relationship just without the sex. And we never got sick of each other. It was weird.”

So the pair were living in Parvati valley when the German chap turned up again. Jasmine had written to him and Efi was happy again, so had no problem with him meeting back up with them.

“We would spend the whole day together me and her, and then she would spend the nights with him,” said Efi. “And I felt like he wasn’t interrupting our dynamic. They would spend the nights together and I was on my own and it was cool. And then one night the three of us were in the room together and we were on the bed together. And we started touching and the three of us were spooning. And it started to get sexual and that was the first time I felt attracted to her. Before that there was the jealousy without the sexual feeling, but then it was like oh I am attracted to her as well. And it was bizarre. We were touching and then I freaked out and left the room. So nothing happened. Then he left the village and everything was normal again.”

After their visas ran out for the second time Efi and Jasmine went back to Israel, back to Haifa and started working in bars again. Again they moved in together. This was around eight years ago. They were working, partying and enjoying life back in Israel.

Efi picks up the story again: “We were always together if we weren’t working and started taking care of each other. And we started hanging out in this cool bar and there was alcohol around. Which we hadn’t had in India. And one night I was working and Jessie was working in another bar. She finished her shift and I came to pick her up and she said ‘no look I wanna stay’’. And I was like ‘what do you mean, I wanna go back home with you?’ and she said she wanted to stay. And again I felt this pain inside. It was very strange and I didn’t understand this jealousy. I had this lesbian friend and they told me that I was in love with her. And finally I got it. It took me like a year to get it but I got it. I was in love with her.

“What could I do? She is like in a whole different parallel universe? And one night, we went to a bar, came back home and I attacked! And it’s been seven years!”

Jasmine says: “I said, ‘this is a very bad idea’.”

“And I said ‘shut up’ and that was it,” added Efi. And from then on they have been a couple.

“It was shocking afterwards and I was overwhelmed,” says Efi, “I was never with a girl before and it’s Jessie and she’s like my sister and there was a lot to process. And I was so scared as it wasn’t just a fling. I was in love and it was my best friend and it was forever. I was really shocked. And then boom we were in a relationship. Jessie was into it straight away. Jessie lives in the present whereas I look more into the future. It took me six months in the beginning to get used to it. First of all we hid it from everyone. And the hardest thing was the label that everyone put on us.”

Jasmine said: “We didn’t want to tell the world as then to the world we would be ‘lesbians’ and we’re not lesbians. And it took us a long time to tell our friends and when we did they were shocked. They couldn’t believe it. And it was hard. It was finding out that when you tell people that you’re in a relationship with somebody with the same sex, the way they perceive you is completely different.

“And it’s not like all our lives we were living this lie. It just came out of the blue. You go from having boyfriends and walking around and no one is looking at you, to becoming the gay person that you never thought you were or would be. That was really hard. Handling society.”

“And Haifa is a small city,” says Efi. “Israel is a very western country, but just next to where we were there was a Muslim neighbourhood. We were surrounded by mosques and we knew the local people and we had to hide it from everyone. We were worried people would see us walking down the streets. Even in Berlin one night we were walking holding hands, in Berlin the gay capital, and this girl was shouting ‘lesbians’. And it’s like, why do we have to be the subject. The topic. You know?

“That’s how people define us. Forever. I will give you an example. I am the village singer, I am the only girl that does music in our village in Agonda, India. So in this beach I am the only one who is constant and is singing. So everyone knows me. And a friend of mine had met this girl who was travelling around and my friend talked about me, and the girl said ‘Ah I know her, the lesbian singer’. And I don’t even know this girl, and it was like, is that the way she defines me? She could say ‘the arrogant’, ‘the annoying’, ‘the fat’, ‘the pretty’, ‘the whatever’, but that’s her definition. And she was just this random person. It’s really weird. And when you hear someone say that you know that they have been talking about you. I am not judging them, as we all do it, but it’s not how I want to be defined.

“It’s not how anyone wants to be defined. Nobody wants to be put in boxes,” adds Jasmine.

Efi continues: “And we don’t fit in that box. It hurt, it used to really hurt. I guess now I am fitting more and more into that box as it has been seven years and now I accept the way people put me in that box, but it is not the way I would define myself. No one would say ‘that’s the straight Adam’.”

It was lovely sitting with these two and just listening to their story. They are such natural storytellers and have had such interesting lives. Claire and I just sat for an hour hearing what they had to say. We’re already missing Efi and Jasmine and we haven’t even been apart for that long. So when we get back home after our trip is over, we will most certainly have to visit them in India. Mainly so I can write down another of their stories. The one about how they got married in Germany so Jasmine could get German citizenship. It’s a real cracker!