A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [29]
tions in the case of illness or special situations.
Shoshana:
I’m wondering whether parents alone decide on the
special situations or whether the committee decides?
Amos:
We can’t call a meeting every time a child has a fever.
Shoshana:
I’m thinking of the special cases that are ongoing.
Martin:
I’m sure no one here would take advantage. We have
extraordinary moral fibre in this kibbutz.
Coco:
If there is a specific problem, we can discuss it.
Shoshana:
Everyone knows I’m referring to Dori. It’s been five
months now, I’m sure she’s adjusted.
Coco:
Varda, any comments?
Varda:
Dori spent a year and a half in Canada. She’s still hav-
ing a hard time separating in the evenings.
Amos:
We have to consider how it makes the other children
feel. What message it sends out.
Coco:
I don’t want to rush things, but the yawns in this room
are starting to remind me of “The Lotus Eaters.”
Martin:
“There is sweet music here …”
Varda:
“That softer falls than petals …”
Coco:
Sorry to move from the sublime to the mundane,
but let’s vote: Should Varda be allowed to give Dori a
goodnight kiss?
Vote:
For = 1 Against = 2 Abstentions = 4
Dori
It’s Independence Day. We join a big parade of everyone in Eldar. We hold little Israeli flags that we made and we sit in a gigantic circle and sing songs. Hundreds of songs.
The older children play hide-and-go-seek. I hide behind the barn but no one finds me and when I come back the game is over. Did I win because no one found me or did I lose because I didn’t run back without being caught?
The older children go to the clubhouse to dance. We run after them. There’s a record of Let’s Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer39 and everyone dances the twist. My brother David is very good at twisting. I love that song. They play it a hundred times. The bigger children don’t like the little children getting in the way but we don’t care. They keep complaining and we keep getting in their way. They’re happy when it’s time for us to go back to the Children’s House.
I can’t wait to be bigger.
Our First Year
14 February 1949. Thirty of us have arrived from the interim kibbutz. It’s a cold, rainy, misty drive around the Kinneret, through Safed; the poppies are beautiful, but it was a lousy trip. One has to be in a certain heroic mood to appreciate the transient, vagrant beauties of this country from the back of a truck, in the rain, with inadequate clothing on one’s back.
Five of us are housed in a high-ceilinged, stone wall, unplastered room; it leaks, it’s damp and oppressive; no windows; a dim lantern provides meagre light; and it’s so crowded we’ll have to demand that one person move out; there are also a few mice in my corner, but otherwise it’s quite comfortable.
In the evening two young Arabs from Jish dropped by and wanted to discuss the political program of the United Workers Party with us. Just like that. They look like intelligent chaps, but it’s been very difficult for us to be genuinely interested in politics these past few days.
Dori
My brother David is teaching me how to embroider. The cloth is in a metal circle with a picture in light blue that you follow. Mine is a bird.
David showed me how to do three different stitches. He’s very good at embroidering.
In Camp Bilu’im I went to the arts and crafts room every day. The counsellor in that room was very nice. She gave me popsicle sticks and glue and paint and pieces of coloured paper and scissors.
Most scissors don’t cut very well it seems. Some don’t cut at all. My grandfather in Canada had scissors that were very good at cutting. Why doesn’t everyone get that kind?
My grandfather also had a glue bottle with a red rubber top and a crack for the glue to come out. If you squeeze the crack it looks like a mouth opening.
I liked that glue bottle so much that Daddy brought it with him from Canada. Or maybe he found one like it in the city.
At Camp Bilu’im at first I ate with everyone else in the Dining Hall. But then my mother