Twelve was a difficult age. My body, with its growing aches, the sense of impending new responsibilities, and the separateness from others were foreign and worrying. Embraced by the harsh arms of the sun, albeit the loneliness, I found comfort.
To my great relief, my mom did not mention my upcoming bat-mitzvah that year.
June’s heat came with the crude memory of my father’s death. Now, three years later, the bitter memory, supposedly fading into the past, was as real as snake venom spreading under a skin – hidden and thick.
The bible stories I learned that year were unfolding in the harsh surroundings, minimizing any loss, and pain in comparison. Sarah, Isaac, Samson, Hanna, Joseph, and Jeremiah, with their desperate pain and destined tragedies along with all the other thousands that had been killed because God was angry — were my soul companions. Time seemed to stand still, vast and engulfing, at the heart of the ceaseless heat.
Out of the dry yellowness of late summer with a sudden fervor and no discussion, my mom said: “you better go abroad to see the world instead of a bat mitzvah party. I am going to arrange some money for this”.
These kinds of statements were part of her repertoire — statements of desire rather than actual plans. I joined her worldly escapes, in her monthly visits to the lush green vistas of the Swiss calendar hanging in our kitchen. “Abroad” meant a dream enveloped by cigarette smoke, few words and much imagination.
However, this time she had realized her dream though it looked nothing like the Swiss calendar.
The ocean was gray, the waves huge, and the sky opaque. Layers of heavy clouds lay on top of the horizon as if resting on a shelf. There was no yellow sand, no pieces of trash or lost plastic shovels along the shore. There were only silvery pebbles on a pristine, clear, uninhabitable long coast. This was the Atlantic Ocean. For the first time I looked out at a real ocean — not a sea.
I was part of a group of kids my age that flew to England to stay in Filixto College for a month and a half. We were there to learn English, ride horses, play tennis, and mostly to learn good manners. Most of the kids had been there or in similar places before. I was the only one who did not know how to ride a horse, had never held a tennis racket and whose parents were not traveling across the world leaving their kids in a fancy summer schools.
After we landed in Heathrow, the two young counselors, Riki and Mica, also for the first time in England, gathered us for our first pep talk.
With infectious zeal they promised us endless fun, adventures and unforgettable memories. Mica declared enviously how lucky we were at such young age to be abroad; and how he and Riki had had to wait until their twenties to see the world. Riki, with a constant mischievous smile, declared how they would be our parents for the next forty-five days only much cooler than what we could ever imagine parents to be.
We then went on a shuttle that took us to a central station. A two story red bus showed up in the distance a few seconds before 2:00. Mica said as if responding to a miracle, “I swear he is going to touch this curb exactly at two just like the schedule says.” All of our gazes were directed to a big clock on the station wall.
London was clean, dark and wet, mostly dominated by black red and gray colors. People walked in the street like we would in the library — purposefully and quietly.
When Mica’s prediction came true he raised his fist up, as if bragging about a goal he just scored and said, “Yes! It works like a Swiss clock”. Mica had established his authority and the bus rode through massive raindrops to Felixto College in the north west of England.
During the first night in the small room, which I shared with a British blond girl about my age, I woke up from my own scream. She woke up too. Her look revealed a mixture of pity, curiosity and repulsion — a look one would have for a wounded animal.
The tail of a dream passed through – in desert land my mother laying on the arid ground her lips are white, her eyes sunken in – and then the dream, like sand through a crack, vanished.
The next morning the blond girl moved to another room. The image of my mom on the hot sand kept erupting like an Atlantic wave — ominous and unpredictable. Riki knocked and opened the door. Smiling, she entered and said “So what are we gonna do with you girl? When was the last time you ate something? Look at you, you are going to disappear soon.”
To disappear without explanation, like Elijah, to vanish into the blue sky; or like Lot’s wife to turn into silent salt; or like Joseph to be lost in Egypt with no language or name – was all I wanted.
“What’s going on?” she said and ran her hand softly through my hair.
“My mother is dead in the desert — that’s all I see”, I said quietly while peeling a loose cuticle on my finger as a drop of blood emerged.
“Ouch” she blurted and rushed to bring a damp towel for me. “Don’t you hate when that happens?” she said without judgment. “I have to go back home now… you have to help me,” I said seriously. “That’s the silliest thing I ever heard…” she said quickly, “What is going on with you?” And after a while changing her wondering tone to cheerful suggestion “How about you and me go to the kitchen and ask for some ice cream…huh?”
“No,” I mumbled, “I really have to go back…” and squeezed my finger with all my might, as if holding onto my own plan of going back.
“That’s enough sitting by yourself in this dark room. We’re going to take a walk now” this time she commanded.
The next day I escaped.
At the bus station with my red suitcase packed and my mind set I could finally feel a tinge of hope. I handed the bus driver, who looked more like a grandma in uniform, the biggest bill I had. She gave me a curious second look and asked “Where to love?”
“London” I said without hesitation but a bit baffled that she called me love. She said a few more things that I did not understand and handed me the change.
The coins were different, thicker and heavier then the thin and simple coins I was used to.
Outside the window stretched never-ending green meadows absorbing the endless amounts of rain.
I could see Noah in his ark around the tops of the grassy hills waiting for the known naked dry mountains of Jerusalem encased by the unseen walls of heat.
London was the last station.
“Please excuse me, where the airport are” I asked an older woman who wore a light blue plastic raincoat and a plastic hat of the same color. Only later did I see the blue number on her arm. She stopped at my question and responded with a long fluent stream of English but did not point me to the airport.
I thanked her and started to walk towards an arriving bus to approach another person. She followed me and asked lot of questions I did not understand.
I said most politely “I want flying to Israel today”.
She suddenly looked at me as if she had found something, took my hand and said slowly but with certainty “yes, yes, come with me.” Her hand was cool and comforting, like my Nona’s hand, and I followed her.
At night, in bed of pink sheets and light mothball smell, surrounded by pictures of what seem to be her daughter, I tried to weave her story. She laid an extra blanket, and tucked me in, with experienced hands. She run her hand through my hair softly, and talked for a while in a soothing voice. Despite of a strong urge to put my head in her laps, I turned to the side and closed my eyes. She left, leaving the door cracked open.
Soon the heavy blanket turned into desert, the pink sheets into arid ground and my mother paled face turned into mine. Nothing moved, only a lazy barren death lingered around the corner. Pulled into stillness by hidden force, I suddenly, woke up by a wave of terror. Panicked, drenched with sweat and pounding heart beat.
In the morning, after a toast, soft-boiled egg and hot chocolate, two policemen knocked on the door. She talked fast and in a high pitch. “You have to go back, I am so sorry” she said while holding my hand as she cried. Before I got into the police car she hugged me — her sleeve was rolled up and she saw me staring at the blue number on her arm. Going back to Filixto College, to Riki and Mica, to the ocean. I even didn’t know her name.
Forty-five days later, two by two, we came out of the airplane into the blinding sun. I wondered if Noah also felt so indifferent when he finally touched the dry land. It home I whispered to myself finally home I looked at the bright smiles of Mica and Riki for inspiration but could not feel excited.
Outside the window of the bus to Jerusalem, the summer laid its heat, like a blanket, covering its naked land. The brilliant static light cast occasional hollow shadows on the rocky ground. Back to the motionless quiet death, back to the familiar mother tongue, the eminent fatherland; back to my repeating dream.
An occasional lonely carob tree in the hazy landscape was a sole evident for movement in time.
I entered the house laying the red suitcase in between us. She was cutting a pineapple, its juice pouring down her elbow, “For you” she said, then looked below my face and said, “You grew up.”
I looked at her face surprised to find it was full of color and life. Hope, like sweet warm syrup spread in my body.
She was not dead.