The Blogs: A week in The Land of Israel, part 3

It was only a week, yet it felt longer

Lots condensed into

Seven days

of doing.

Last Sunday, I left you at Nova.

I recently learned that more people have visited the site of the massacre than any other in Israel.

More than the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or the Dome of the Rock.

Just think.

It has become a Holy Place, without the rabbis’ involvement.

This is perhaps,

At least,

To my mind,

True spirituality,

The reason we are endowed with brains able to pass beyond the material.

My brother and sister-in-law dropped me off in Ashkelon.

A place with many spellings!

There I met my old friend O.

I’ll call him Oliver as I don’t have permission to use his name,

OK,

That’s not very Israeli,

Let us opt for Oz

as in

Amos Oz

which like most Israeli names is taken from the bible,

Oz, meaning courage, which works.

And so,

After a break of, we weren’t sure, perhaps 20 or more years we met.

Oz led me to his flat.

It’s that one, he said, pointing to a block; the one with all the plants.

And it is here that I am annoyed at myself as I never took a photo as I would like to show you what it looked like; essentially, eight floors of a sea-front flat, with 15 verandas all, with the usual accoutrements of bikes and laundry and Oz’s an explosion of plant life; cacti, succulents, trees and other plants. An oasis, which is apt, given where we visited the following day.

Oz works for the Israeli water company – a publicly owned, that is non privatised organisation that ensures adequate water supply to those living in Israel and I imagine the West Bank and Gaza; he understands desalination, aquifers and water sumps.

On Friday we visited a couple of inland reservoirs, off the beaten track, known, I imagine to only a few hardy Israelis and some water-workers.

We talked and it felt, despite the time and our aging, like we were young again.

I left Israel when I was almost 17; Oz and two of our other friends at the time had been a close group. It was Oz who helped me buy bottles of Goldstar beer that we stashed outside my parent’s flat for later consumption on Friday nights, it was Oz and J and D who travelled with me to Eilat and the beach and the various school adventures I have previously recounted.

What became clear as we talked was that as my Israeli life had fractured when I was 17 – that is 35 years ago, the natural turn of events had not taken place, i.e. I hadn’t lived in the same routine; my time in Israel became a sacrament, a place I returned to, inhabited in my imagination and recollection for subsequent years, when I found myself in the canteen of Langside College in Glasgow, a lecture theatre in Dundee or delivering letters and magazines to the residents of the Gorbals.

This period, bright, like the light of The Land, remained with me, overwhelming subsequent events.

For Oz, his life continued.

My intercession had been a blip; there was no discontinuity and with this, no etching into memory the events of those years I was in Israel, J’s broken wrist, D’s clicking knee or Oz’s curly hair. All gone although perhaps D’s knee still clicks when he runs.

I am not sure if anyone who hasn’t had such a contrasting period in their life can relate; the rapid switch – flat in Ra’anana to living in a bedroom in my parent’s friend’s house in Glasgow; in the blink of an eye. Ostrovsky High School to Langside College; delivering Yediot Aharonot, Haaretz and Davar on my bike to walking the streets of Pollockshields and Shawlands with a red Royal Mail bag.

All change.

Nothing stays the same.

And so, I brought back memories for Oz.

We talked of the past and of course the present.

I learned about his life and his work.

He showed me the Oxalis triangularis growing on his veranda which I have acquired since returning and now wait for the corms to sprout.

We then walked to the nearby marina for a two-hour sail in a boat that Oz had hired; Oz, amongst his many accomplishments is a certified captain.

This was my first experience in a boat at sea; we sailed along the coast.

There is Gaza City, he pointed out, in the distance, behind the haze, behind the desalination works and gas storage tanks.

The continuity of sea.

This was during the brief ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

There might have been some Palestinians paddling in the same water, a few kilometres south.

I took the helm as we chugged; there being too little wind to use the sail. Oz jumped in the sea and encouraged me. I remained in the boat. I have always been a scaredy cat, even with my Manvers Lake exploits. The sea looked cold, and I wasn’t prepared.

That night I met J. someone I had not seen or spoken with since 1994, that is, thirty years, which is, a long time, longer than the life of my children, longer than I have been a doctor.

It is very strange when you meet someone you last saw as a young man who is now middle-aged, not that he has aged badly although all three of us have lost our hair and gained weight around the middle.

We ate at a nearby restaurant and talked and drank beer and discussed more of the old times and the current insanity, the government and the state of the country, if you had listened to the conversation you would probably have reflected, ‘listen to the old farts talking about the good old days,’ and yes, those days were good; the human mind has a wonderful ability to diminish the intensity of sorrow and preserve the good.

J. has now retired; yes, he is the same age as me and he no longer works, which perhaps tells you that his life has been different to mine. He, Oz and D have travelled the world, scuba and sky dived hundreds of times, sailed boats and had adventures that I can’t begin to imagine.

For their 50^th birthday they travelled to Scotland for a tour of distilleries. They didn’t contact me and yet, when I have visited Israel in the preceding years, I hadn’t contacted them either and yet it doesn’t matter; perhaps this is a definition of friendship – those things that are bumps in the carpet, can be ignored and when meeting again, the relationship continues as before.

That night I slept in Oz’s spare room on a mattress that smelled of the past.

The next day, following a breakfast of homemade yogurt (Oz showed me the fungus his brother gave him for the conversion of milk), we travelled to visit his mum Y.

En route we drove past Sderot and Nachal Oz and Be’eri, the Nova site again; all the places of recent trauma, again realising the scale of the invasion on October the 7^th. Miles of land were over-run with men with guns and knives and explosives, with murderous intent.

There are bomb shelters along the road. Now painted with birds and scenes of nature. The same concrete structures where Hirsh lost his arm, where his friend threw the grenades back to the terrorists, that horrible game of catch and dodge that murdered so many.

As I have said, we stopped by the lakes; an anomaly in the desert (we were by now in the Negev); I picked up a stone which I have with me now. Oz described the way in which the adjoining wadi overflows in winter to supply the lakes, to preserve water and keep the land flourishing.

We travelled to Midreshet Sde Boker which is a small-town build beside the Kibbutz of the same name.

Upon arrival we visited David and Paula Ben Gurion’s graves. I was a little surprise at the paucity of stones (in Judaism we leave stones at graves rather than the Western practice of flowers).

Oz pointed out, the nearby desert, the Wilderness of Zin.

An ancient, expanse of canyons, dried-out riverbeds and trails that was beautiful in the late morning sun.

We then drove to Y’s house.

I had not seen Oz’s mum Y since 1989, that is, again, to count, 36 years.

It was very emotional.

I used to spend time in Oz’s old house in Ra’anana when we were young. Their house was magical; a place where the front door was never locked, where Y’s many children sat, playing musical instruments or games of chess and their little long-haired terrier kept everyone company.

Y, a ceramic potter, activist and teacher, led us through lessons at school about ‘sovlanut’ which means tolerance. Providing a context and an understanding of how we and the Arabs are the same peoples, natives of the same land, with potential to live in peace and harmony.

It was Y who arranged for my school to visit an Arab school in Haifa, who arranged for me to taste labneh and casseroled lamb in the home of one of the students.

It was Y who supported my understanding of Israel and Hebrew through teaching me the Israeli Declaration of Independence, a document which you probably haven’t read, which you should and which despite being written in 1948 shows more vision and prescience than all the misdeeds of today.

It is a document based upon mutual tolerance, respect and democracy, peaceful co-existence and collaboration.

If you are interested, here is a link.

All the stuff than Netanyahu is undoing.

Y’s house is on the edge of the village, abutting the desert (the same Wilderness of Zin), Ibex saunter past her house, flowers blossom in her garden; she made us a pot of tea from freshly picked lemongrass and lemon-geranium.

We talked of the past and the present; I described some of what I do, my experiences over the previous few days, showed Y and Oz photos of my family.

Y, now in her 80’s has grandchildren the same age as my children, there are photos covering her fridge of little boys and girls who are now adults; the passage of time, like the desert dust that settles on the room is subtle.

I won’t write here about all we discussed. I am not touching on my feelings and thoughts as I am still processing.

Suffice it to say, it felt like a blessing.

Later we drove to Jerusalem where Oz dropped me off outside my brother’s rented flat – he and his family had arranged to spend the weekend in the capital, in a place next to Mahane Yehuda Market.

I might tell you more later today, or it might be tomorrow.

And, yes, the snake.