A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [42]
The second fatality, Malka Granot, 29, of Eldar, was laid to rest today in the Mount Eldar cemetery. Malka Granot boarded the bus at Kibbutz Eldar and sat near the driver. She was born in Paris, came to Israel at age three and studied in Jerusalem to be a teacher. She leaves behind Danny, five, and Ruti, two and a half. Her husband Eliezer, a member of Eldar, is a writer with a forthcoming book of poems. Malka Granot fought in the battle for Jerusalem during the War of Independence.
—Davar, 25 September 1955
Dori
I ask Skye whether the earth is spinning so fast we can’t feel it or so slow we can’t feel it. My brother David said fast but someone else said slow. I asked Daddy but I didn’t understand his answer. He doesn’t like questions about the planet.
Skye says the earth is spinning very fast which gives us day and night and it moves even faster around the sun which gives us a year. She says you can’t feel it moving because everything else is moving too and the reason you don’t fall into space is gravity.
I already know about gravity—though I don’t understand why an apple gave Newton the idea. He saw things fall all the time.
William Tell is another person I don’t understand. Why would anyone take a chance like that?
III
The Last Rain
I will give you the rain of your land in its season, the First Rain and the Last Rain, that you may gather in your grain, your sweet wine, your pure oil.
—DEUTERONOMY 11:14
Dori
Oh no! Not another thorn! I don’t know how I get these thorns. I had a thorn in Camp Bilu’im and Daddy had to burn a needle to kill the germs. Then he used the needle to take it out and it hurt. We still have that black needle.
I tell Daddy I have a thorn but I don’t want him to take it out. He says he has to bring clothes to the laundry so we’ll do that first.
It’s fun in the laundry. There are holes in the floor and Daddy tells me what to throw in each one. The clothes get washed and ironed under the floor. Simon’s mother works down there. She comes up to say hello.
When we’re finished Daddy looks at the thorn and says it’s only half under the skin so maybe Dafna can pull it out and then it won’t hurt. The whole way to Dafna I’m hoping.
We get to the infirmary and Dafna says she thinks she can pull it out with tweezers. Tweezers. A very good thing those tweezers. Dafna pulls and out it comes!
I’m a very lucky girl today.
Our First Year
27 May 1949. For a number of weeks a crew has been working on the pipeline of three and a half kilometers which will bring us water from the wadi that lies to the south-west of the village. It won’t be a great deal, just enough to take care of our cooking and washing needs. Today the last section of the pipe was placed, and in the evening there was a party and a good old slapstick skit commemorating certain construction incidents.
The water problem still looms as one of our chief worries. We expect the experts, including Professor Picard, to make investigations in the area shortly.
Dori
Carmella tells us we’re going on a Hike. We all get happy. Shoshana takes us on Hikes but they’re very short. We visit the cows and the carpentry shop and then we go back. We hardly see nature at all.
This Hike is nice and long. It’s on a road with fields full of wildflowers and wheat-stalks. I love the wheat-stalks. I love to pull them out and feel them on my face. There’s the kind that feel like straw and the kind you can hold at the bottom and push up and all the pieces come off together.
This is the best Hike of my life. Everything is beautiful. There’s a whole field of red anemones! Shiny red with black in the middle. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll even see a cyclamen under a rock.
We stop at a waterfall. Carmella sits on a rock