Be-Longing

On the way to the Dead Sea and Masada, we stopped for the night at a place, a cross between a Bedouin tent and Burningman. This morning, beautiful classical guitar is playing in the background, though last night it was techno-Arab-rave. The acacia trees host a myriad of birds, feral cats march into the kitchen and communicate their desires adamantly, the flies cover the dogs who lie snoring on mattresses in the communal tent. Last night, rain pitter-pattered on the roof, as the boys played 500 Rumi, I looked at a Nargila, the infamous Middle-Eastern water pipe, listening to any whisper of wild stories it might hold. Soft, amber light wrapped the divans, the rugs, the easy chairs, the fire pit, in a lazy, rich, calming hue. I sipped my Turkish coffee nursing my injury. Earlier in the day, my son had climbed an inviting hill so he could view the Judean mountains in Jordan. I was scurrying below him when rocks dislodged and came tumbling down, hitting me in the thigh and welting my finger blue-purple. Rachel made me go to the car and cry. I remembered that I had hardly ever cried in Israel over any hurts - apparently the training for a good soldier-so I indulged her and let out tears from an old well swell. I thought it had dried, like the arid terrain surrounding me. Any rain is welcomed here. But crying connected me to my grief, to the place of belonging and not belonging; to two Universes, two planets, opposing countries, fraternal cultures. There was a loneliness, a sense of disconnectedness, of being lost, like my people had been once, in the desert. How apt. So today, I sit amongst the cornucopia of longings, of not-knowings, of wanderings in the land of what-ifs what-nows and try to breathe in the Negev we so desperately cling to, no matter how desolate.