A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [16]
I look at it for a long time. Then I find the beautiful painting with the gas station. I like it as much as the tiger one. I want to be right inside that painting.25
After that I go in order. Some pictures are boring and I skip them. Others are very interesting. I try to figure out their story.
I ask Daddy which painting he likes best. He says he likes them all but I keep asking so he looks at the pictures and chooses the one that has two soldiers helping a woman nurse her baby. One soldier holds his canteen to her mouth and the other soldier helps her hold up the baby. She was probably dying but the soldiers saved her.26
I like canteens. My brother David has one. The water inside it tastes like metal. When I’m a soldier I’ll carry a canteen wherever I go.
Our First Year
19 January 1949. The mosque was blown up today. Cloudy, drab day with bitter wind but no rain. A small group of us stood off to one side, way out of danger, with a beautiful view of the western wadi behind us, and this looming, softly curved and mysterious monument of a culture which none of us even begins to understand rising before us, its fate doomed within a matter of seconds.
There was a shattering explosion which shot a bolt of shock through each of us, wrenching our bodies with tension, and then the dome seemed to rise slowly into the grey sky, like a giant eggshell, with the steel reinforcing rods mangled and twisting out from the sides; it fell in pieces into the mass of earth and rubble and flying stone which was once the prince of Eldar’s skyline.
Dori
Mummy takes my sister Sara to the Children’s House. Then she comes back and we sing songs from a book I like. It’s called Uga Uga. I know all the songs except for the train song which doesn’t have a tune.
The pictures in the book are pretty but there’s one I don’t understand. It’s for I’ve Been to Yemen—
I’ve been to Yemen
And very soon
The little black boy I met there
Will be Ruthie’s groom
In the picture a little black boy in red and white shorts and a Yemenite hat is handing flowers to a much bigger girl in a wedding dress. It’s only pretend so why is the boy dressed like someone from Yemen and why is he so little and why is Ruthie wearing a wedding dress and why is there a mosque like in Yemen and why is he black? I asked Mummy but she didn’t understand the problem.27
We sing all the songs in the book and then Mummy takes me back to the Children’s House. I don’t beg for more time because with Mummy when it’s time it’s time and if you beg for more songs she only says next time.
At least she doesn’t laugh with Shoshana the way Daddy does.
Baby Diary
July 7
She gets a bottle at night every second night. Today she followed Naftali’s finger. And the next day [sic] she looked at a toy. I now have to rock her bed after almost every feeding. She moans, kvetches, lifts her head—after light rocking she falls asleep. Between the third and fourth feeding she wakes up and cries and gets water and she falls asleep again. That happens every day at 5:00. Her bellybutton is already dry and perfectly fine.
During the day, at almost every feeding, Naftali comes to visit. She still eats every four hours and sleeps well during the day and is gaining nicely.
Dori
Shoshana is in a very bad mood today. For supper we have leben and cold beet soup and rice with carrots and cheese triangles. I can’t decide if I like the cheese triangles or not. I like unwrapping them but I don’t know if I like eating them.
We decide to have a contest to see who can have the pinkest pee. The more beet soup you drink, the pinker your pee is. We’re going to check everyone’s pee tonight to see who wins.
Dessert is apple sauce with cinnamon but everyone’s too full from all the beet soup.
Shoshana gets angry that no one’s eating their apple sauce. We can tell there’s trouble coming but we don’t know what it is.
Letter to the Editor