A Wall of Light - Edeet Ravel [57]
Everyone is quiet in the Children’s House and I can tell it’s because something horrible happened. Even though Gilead didn’t do it on purpose. He thought it was safe.
Mummy and Daddy help me get into pyjamas. They kiss me goodnight and leave. No one says anything. It’s never been this quiet in the Children’s House.
The truth is it wasn’t such a bad day. My parents stayed with me the whole time. The stitches didn’t hurt and I like Dafna. My parents like her too. Everyone was nice to me.
I only feel bad about Gilead. And now he’ll think I don’t like him.
Our First Year
16 November 1949. The figs have dropped almost all their leaves; they are now a sooty grey network of reaching, pointing branches, the buds like sharpened little fingertips. The vines are almost barren, bent over the stakes, or spread out and exposed as if in defeat, seeming as old and angularly weather-beaten as the middle-aged Arab women.
Dori
It’s Purim. I didn’t want to be boring Queen Esther but that’s what I am. I have a dress and a crown and Mummy puts lipstick on my lips.
All I can think about the whole time is not licking my lips. I’m afraid the lipstick is poison. Mummy comes over and says do you want me to take the lipstick off? I nod and she wipes it off with a handkerchief.
How did she know?
Ethnography
After we left I dreamed about Eldar for almost a year.59
Dori
We’re seeing a play in Meron. Mummy came with her Group and I came with my Group but Mummy takes me to sit next to her so she can explain the play to me. It’s very noisy with everyone finding their seats.
A boy and his little brother come over and show us their tickets. They have brown skin like Gilead and they look poor and scared. They’re wearing shorts and they don’t even have shoes on their feet—only dirty old flipflops. The problem is that their tickets have the same number as our chairs. Mummy checks the numbers and says go tell the man at the door that there’s a mistake.
But the brothers are too scared. I want Mummy to go talk to the man at the door because they’re the children and she’s the adult but she keeps saying go—go to the man at the door.
The boy and his brother don’t move. Can’t Mummy see they’re scared? Now they’ll have to stand for the whole play. But then the play starts and it’s so funny and wonderful I forget about the brothers. It’s the best play I’ve seen in my life.
I don’t know what happened to the brothers. Mummy should have helped them.
Genesis
I created them in My image.
Dori
Edna the baby Minder calls me on my way to the Room. I go over to the gate of the yard and she asks me to keep an eye on the baby in the yard because she has to go inside for a minute.
I stand on one side of the gate and the baby sits on the other side. I decide to help him stand up. He only needs some help and then he’ll see it’s easy.
I reach through the gate and pull him up. He smiles and stands but as soon as I let go he falls down. I pull him up again but when I let go he falls again. Now he’s not so happy. He starts to cry. He doesn’t like being pulled up but I try one last time. I shouldn’t try but I do. It bothers me that he’s weak and can’t protect himself from me. And now I feel a strange boom boom boom in my jinnie.
I don’t know what’s going on.
Civilization and Its Discontents
Dori
Our Children’s House is getting rebuilt so we’re moving to cabins at the edge of Eldar. In the cabins we have little tables next to our beds with a little drawer for small things like marbles.
They’re also putting zift on the road today. It has a very strong smell and you mustn’t touch it until it dries. I don’t know if I like the smell or hate it. It’s the same with horse manure. Do I like it or is it disgusting? I can’t decide.
Actually I don’t know if the stuff on the road is called zift or zefet. I’m a little confused about those words. Zift is definitely for when you don’t think much of something.60 Long ago a man visited Eldar and Daddy showed him around. The man said I was so pretty I could be Miss