The Israeli Trousers

Iselin called and asked me to come over. She thought I should come and try on some of her old clothes, since she was leaving the country and couldn't take them with her.
I jumped at the chance. Iselin was Norwegian, but she dressed just like an Israeli hippy and she had the funkiest fashion sense of anyone I'd ever met.
The broiling concrete bit my feet as I scrambled down our seventy two steps and let myself out our padlocked compound gate. It was the season for chamsin, the desert wind, and it's fingers curled hotly into my hair as I walked to her apartment.
It was there I met the Israeli Trousers.

I had never seen such large, baggy, red pants! The crotch hung at my kneecaps and the rough cotton legs slumped passed the lumps on my ankles. You could have fit three of me into them. Iselin showed me how to fold back and tie the waist so they wouldn't flop off.
If a garment ever had ethnicity, it was these pants. Their noisy red shouted back the vibrancy of Israeli culture, and the harshness of their sun. They were unconventional and mismatched, like the nation everyone is trying to solve. They were outspoken and unashamed, and I loved them.
I wore them all the time, hitching and rehitching them over my hips so they wouldn't fall of.

When we left Israel, I crammed them into my suitcase to take with me. However, I soon discovered that they didn't belong in New Zealand, my old home. Meant for the aggressive Mediterranean glare, their bold red looked garish in the soft watercolour light of South Pacific. Soon, they developed a reputation; Cherry's Big Red Pants, and my friends would growl about them. My trousers kept on acting like Israelis, rude and pushy. In the Middle East, being self assured is a virtue, but here one must be careful not to offend.

Mostly they sit in the back of my drawer now, wishing forlornly to return to their homeland.
I still wear them sometimes. When I do, I can still hear the hot, dry chamsin whisper.
It breathes "Come Back"