Wadi en Sharma
by Alex Ward
Electronic Adaptation by LesDenton.com
Copyright 2011 by Alex Ward
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without the expressed written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, locations, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Prologue
A Kibbutz
There are formal definitions of a kibbutz, which explain how an agricultural community comes together for the greater good. I thought my experiences could shed more light on the institution.
I was eighteen years old, backpacking around Europe, and somehow ended up in Israel in late 1988 early 1989.
My first experience of a kibbutz was arriving at a large group of buildings in the middle of what appeared to me as desert, and asking an armed guard in jeans and a blue smock where I should go, as I was a new volunteer. I was given the route to where all the volunteers lived in shared cabins. It was 2 p.m. and no one was about. So I simply went to No.1 and knocked on the door. It was opened by a beautiful girl in a bikini. Happy days.
The idea is that you volunteer your time to work on the kibbutz, mainly agricultural work. In my time, there was a large dairy, a fish farm, and fields growing fruit, cotton, and wheat. The atmosphere is of honest toil, and when you are not toiling, you are having fun. They provided cabins that were shared between two or three people, no air conditioning, but cheap booze and an endless supply of great times with people from all over the world. The young kibbutzniks join in as well, and as long as you do not disrespect the kibbutz you are welcomed into a hairy-scary world of many extremes and contradictions—from farm workers to committed soldiers, crazy heat to freezing cold, really chilled to preparing for a terrorist attack. I loved it and would encourage anyone looking for a gap year project to go work hard and have fun.
On the kibbutz where I stayed, there was a small factory making thermostats for air conditioners. This is where you were sent to work as a new volunteer, to acclimatise yourself. It was set up so the elderly members could still be useful in an indoor factory job, so they can extend their contribution to the kibbutz. Here a fresh-out-of-public-school boy asked an elderly man to pass him a screwdriver from across the bench. As the man stretched to give this privileged young man the tool, his sleeve receded and his arm became visible, and there were the concentration camp numbers still clearly tattooed. I hesitated, not really knowing what to say. I felt as if I had seen something I should not have. The old man, whose name I have forgotten, saw that I was looking, caught my eye, and went back to work. A simple humbling experience that was to be repeated a few times over the nine months I was in Israel.
Chapter 1
The annual school picnic to Wadi en Sharma had been a highlight in the school year of the Kibbutz Beit Alfa for twenty-five years, ever since the kibbutz first raised the agricultural community from the desert.
Wadi en Sharma was created over millions of years. A small waterfall chiselled a small valley out of the rock, then dried up, leaving a route that was a shaded cool thread through one of the hottest deserts in the world. People had been coming to the wadi for many years, to walk in the cool and marvel at the steep-sided cliffs that are in places no more than six feet across from each other. At the base of the waterfall was a small pool, an echo of its past. The pool was fed from a natural spring delivering pure clear water. Good enough to drink, it rises and tumbles around the edge of the pool before sinking back into the earth and leaving the rest of the river bed dry.
Peoples across the ages had been coming to the wadi. Crusaders had chiselled an altar that had then been smashed by the next group to walk in. Roman graffiti next to the love hearts from present-day love-struck teenagers adorned some of the walls.
Rory Gent looked up. Working at different jobs around the community he had made friends easily and somehow picked up a bit of Hebrew, though there was no need as it appeared that any child who knew of the Back Street Boys were could speak English, albeit with an American accent. Rory loved the freedom of the community and still marvelled at what to him was the unusual—snakes, the heat, and the girls. Public school gives many advantages, but experience with girls was not one of them. He found the Israeli women fascinating.
He could not believe his luck when one of the schoolteachers, called Orli, asked him to help at an annual picnic for the schoolchildren.
His anticipation dropped to zero, and his embarrassment sky rocketed, when he and Orli walked up to the bus and half the kibbutz were there. Fourteen children between 9 and 12 years old, all staring and giggling, would have been bad enough, but their parents all grinning was nearly too much. Rory could feel himself go red, which caused the mothers to all cluck and coo in Hebrew. One of the fathers he knew sidled up to him.
"I don’t think she like boys uncircumcised. When the time is right, I can do it for you." He laughed.
Rory just grimaced. This topic had come up with his friends on the kibbutz.
"Shall we go, before the food goes off?" he tried pathetically from his embarrassed position.
"Come, come, all in the bus. We GO!"
Avi, the other teacher, took command and separated children from parents, and herded them into the bus.
Rory and Orli sat in the front. Orli could not contain her laughter. This English boy was so cute, very different to the macho Israeli men that the boys she had known before all acted like. He showed his feelings and clearly enjoyed her company.
"Orli’s got a boyfriend, Orli’s got a boyfriend," came the excitable chant from the back of the bus.
Avi got in smiled a beautiful smile and then turned with great fury and addressed the children: "No more about Orli or Rory. Next bad word, that child goes home."
"Yala, lets go." Avi started the bus and zoomed off at a tremendous rate.
They parked, and Avi took the children down the wadi, with Rory and Orli following with the picnic. The children spilled down the wadi. Some had been before with their families and were excitedly trying to get their friends to the best bits. It was only a short walk to the pool, and soon the children delighted in the water, the rocks and boulders to clamber on. For Rory, it was a bit of an overload. He had never really been around children, and he found them exhausting. They wanted to be chased, to be lifted up dangerously high to the rocks, or simply to charge into him shrieking with joy. There was no time for him to really get to know Orli. He was really pleased when a little girl approached him with a skinned knee, a perfect excuse to find Orli.