Passover
Few minutes into the journey the train makes a sharp turn and enters the mountain ravine, I am ready. My face pressed to the window and I follow the brook running from one side of the tracks to the other, maybe this time I will see them. ‘Emek Refaim’ the valley of the giants, the words, like a mantra, spin in my head. Another sharp turn thrusts me back into my seat, then the piercing noise of the horn, breaking into hundred slivers against the mountain side, echoing back, giants…giants…gia, and within minutes we are out crossing the open fields.
*
In the central bus station in Tel-Aviv, lines of buses puffing and spitting smoke, ready to lurch. Dense cloud of fried foods’ odors hanging in the air. The sun so hot on my head. Sweating, my hand is clutching my mothers’, if I’ll lose her, like the last time, who will find me?
*
When the bus climbs up the last hill she says, “Be ready” .My eyes glued to the window and still it always catching me by surprise. She points out, at the lattice of greens and browns, the valley of Jezreel.
*
I count the minutes now. The signs at the side of the road are hard to make out, as the bus accelerates on the last section of the road. Yael, Deborah, Heber the Kenite, the Hill of Moreh, images of glorious battles pale in the face of the new coming adventure, running to catch the bus to the ‘Moshav’.
*
Now the road is narrow and bumpy, the mountain of Gilboa on our right, “O mountains of Gilboa, Let not dew or rain be on you…” comes alive in view of the bald spots on the slopes. At the familiar cement brick, bus stop, we are being let off.
*
Quiet, just us and our suitcases .We are waiting for a ride in. Yellow fields of wheat, almost ripe and ready to be harvested and across the street the crumbling walls of the Ottoman – British train station. Still guarding the line from Syria to Haifa.
*
Minutes later a horse drawn wagon let us off at the back of my aunt’s house.
*
We walk inside through the back door and pile into the kitchen. “Surprise,” I scream at the top of my Lungs.
*
It’s Passover once again.
This was a fascinating piece. I was taken by the nearly ripe wheatfields in conjunction with Passover--I immediately thought of "Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life."
ReplyDeleteAnd the second vignette reminded me of the Psalm: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,
let my right hand forget her cunning." Forgetting, losing, hands to be held, hands to lose their cunning, journeys, flights, families--somehow you've wonderfully managed to conflate your childhood memory with the Passover story.
I am always going to trust the tale over the teller, so if you say to me those verses I mention were not in your mind as you wrote, I am going to reply that your mind knows things you don't know it knows. But of course if you were aware as you wrote, that's good too!
ReplyDeleteTrust the tale over the teller. It makes a lot of sense to me. I am not sure if I had these sentences in my mind when I wrote the piece. What I had was me – the child – all excited to go on our yearly Passover trip and me-the adult – reflecting on that trip bringing in another layer of meaning to it. And me the adult yet again feeling oh, I guess, nostalgic remembering those trips and amazed at how these biblical phrases and symbols are so much part of who I am. Much more complex then I realize while I was writing.
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