A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [33]
I made a promise to myself never ever to forget anything again. But I still forget things. Not things that happen but things that don’t happen. Like Lulu’s party.
Our First Year
16 March 1949. Last night when the bus was returning from Nahariya it was stopped a few kilometres down the road. The driver claims that a large group of armed Arabs demanded that he take them to Lebanon. He refused, warning them that in the event of abduction a party would be sent out immediately and there would be the devil to pay.
For the next few days an armed guard will accompany him on his trip from Nahariya.
Dori
A woman with a camera comes to take photographs of us in the shower.43 She talks with Shoshana and they both smile. Shoshana hides who she is with adults.
Everyone laughs and runs back and forth so the woman won’t be able to take the photograph. As a matter of fact I want to be in the photograph. But I don’t want anyone to know because no one else wants to be in it. I stand still and pretend to play with my fingers. It’s fun to be in a photograph.
Another new thing today is a lesson on brushing our teeth. Shoshana says a dentist came to Eldar to give a lecture and he told everyone to brush up and down not across.
One of my teeth is loose as a matter of fact. I like moving it with my tongue. Jonathan says his father eats blood on bread. Disgusting!
Cropped by the Subject c. 1967
Dori
I had a dream that I was a baby lying in my crib. My Minder Doreet was looking down at me and smiling. Doreet has a big face and glasses and blonde hair that flies everywhere. She has a very nice smile and Mummy loves her. Mummy thinks I called my doll Doreet because I like Doreet but really it was because my doll had red hair which is close to blonde. People say I have red hair but I don’t know why. It’s blonde like Doreet’s.
In the dream I looked up at Doreet from my crib and I was sure that my face looked like her face.
Now I’m awake but I still feel I have Doreet’s face. Doreet isn’t ugly but a little girl with a big loose face and big glasses is ugly. If I look in the mirror I can see that I don’t look like Doreet but the minute I look away I see myself from the ceiling and what I see is Doreet.
I wonder what happened to that doll. I don’t usually like dolls but in Canada I liked having something that was from Eldar. I gave us both a haircut and Mummy said Dori what have you done! She was a little angry but she also laughed though she tried not to.
Mummy said now your doll won’t have any hair. I said it’ll grow back and Mummy thought I really believed hair grows on dolls and she laughed very hard and told everyone. And now whenever she says it’ll grow back everyone laughs.
I tried to explain but she didn’t understand. Many things are hard to explain.
Me and My Doll
Dori
We’re still reading Alice in Wonderland. Daddy asks if I want to play cards but all I want to do is read Alice in Wonderland. This is the best book anyone ever wrote. A hundred times better than Pinocchio.
I like the pictures too. The only one I don’t like is when Alice only has a head and feet. That picture makes me feel a little sick. I try not to look at it.
When I grow up I want to write a book like Alice in Wonderland. I tell Daddy I’m going to be a writer. He laughs and says that’s wonderful dollie.
Our First Year
17 March 1949. A quiet day in which a few of us with our mentor, Dov, took an inspection trip through our orchards. One of those unique tone poems of Eldar weather, a day to conjure with: flurries of rain and then sunshine, and sunshine through the rain with all those ancient and hackneyed but magnificent images of nature’s spring beauty, huge drops of rain on broad green leaves, delicately coloured hyacinths, anemones, cyclamens appearing like flute obligatos from within the full orchestral rumble of rocks and weeds and trees, a straight and slimly formed apricot