The Last Rain (24 page)

I’m worried about Gilead. Who knows what Shoshana did to him? She must have hit him even harder than Lulu.

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 Israel when I grow up. After he left I asked Daddy what Miss Israel was and he said
zift
.

The only other time he said
zift
was when two men rolled on stage in Camp Bilu’im. It was an evening of plays. I was in the play that Daddy and Mummy put on. My brother David and I were supposed to sit at a table and run off when Daddy yelled at us and look scared but David laughed and that made me laugh.

After our play the curtain went up and there were two men wearing long robes lying on the stage hugging and rolling and making loud sounds and then the curtain went down. Everyone laughed. I asked Daddy why it was funny but he only said it was
zift.

I don’t care if Miss Israel is
zift
because I won’t be Miss Israel anyway. Miss Israel sounds like something people in cities do. And Daddy says I won’t be pretty because I’m ruining my teeth sucking my finger.

I don’t know why the hugging men was
zift
.

Our First Year

2 December 1949.
Surprising international incident occurred today. It seems that a U.N. committee is functioning on the border to straighten out some frontier questions between Israel and Lebanon. Attached to this committee were a number of Lebanese soldiers who apparently got lost and wandered onto our territory, whereupon they were immediately captured by Martin and brought to Eldar.

After some polite conversation in French we got things straightened out and sent the rather threadbare fellows back to Lebanon.
⁶¹

Dori

We like the cabins a lot. Our beds are very close and we have those drawers. I don’t need a goodnight kiss any more because all I have to do is stretch out my hand and I can touch the person next to me. And the end part of my bed touches the end part of Lulu’s bed. We could touch each other’s feet if we wanted.

Diary of a Young Man

15 February 1923.
In a few months the number of our children will grow from one to four.

Among the soon-to-be mothers there are many discussions regarding childcare and education. It seems that there is some opposition to full collective childcare, especially handing over the washing of children to others.

These questions do not as yet have a place in the Meetings; it would surely be very strange if someone brought them to the Meeting. On the other hand, the opposition to collective child-care is also strange.

20 August 1923.
Our commune has two new members—two children were born, a boy and a girl. The boy has been named Eitan and the girl Amira.

The more children, the more worries. We don’t know how to look after four children at once. As long as we had only one child, no one was concerned. And now at every turn you meet worried mothers. The child isn’t nursing, the child is nursing too much, is this good, is this bad? Who knows?

Who would have imagined that we would have four children and face such problems?
⁶²

Dori

Shoshana does the Wake-Up today. We want to run out as soon as we finish our snack but Lulu opens the door of the cabin and screams
snakes!
and shuts the door fast.

We all run to the window. There are two huge snakes outside on the slope. Really huge—longer than a person. They’re twisted together like a braid.

We don’t know what to do. I go to the door to make sure it’s closed. Skye says the snakes are having sex but I don’t see how. They’re smooth all the way down.

So now we’re stuck. Shoshana is afraid too. Finally Skye decides to be brave even though she got bit by a dog the last time she was brave. She opens the door and walks sideways along the wall of the cabin just like she did with the dog. When she gets to the top of the slope she runs as fast as she can.

We wait for her to call an adult. We wait and wait. Finally an adult comes and looks at the snakes. She puts her hands on her waist and then she goes away! Why didn’t she save us?

One by one we do what Skye did. We slide next to the cabin and then run as fast as we can. I run all the way to the Room and I tell Daddy. I tell him the snakes are longer than the Room but he doesn’t believe me and he doesn’t want to come and see.

My brother David and No’am and Amnoni come with me to see the snakes. There are lots of children at the top of the slope now. Everyone is saying the snakes are rat snakes. Rat snakes aren’t poisonous so we don’t have to worry. Someone dares Amnoni to touch them. He runs down the slope and quickly touches one of them and then runs back up.

I could touch them too if I wanted. I’m not afraid because they’re not poisonous. But in the end I don’t.

Our First Year

4 December 1949.
The tourists and visitors have been so thick we could start an Eldar branch of ambulatory Brooklyn Jewry. A very difficult problem is handling our guests appropriately. They pop in, stay for a few moments or an hour, and then push off, and in the brief interlude we want to give them some sort of understanding of Eldar. We often feel the futility of the process.

Yesterday I spent a precious two hours showing the place to a young couple from Baltimore. They were, it must be said, very sophisticated and very uninformed.

I tried to answer all their frequently very impolite questions, but it was obvious that they were envisioning everything in terms of certain streets and department stores and factories in Baltimore. “Friends,” I wanted to shout at them, “you are touring a country which has been outside the stream of progressing civilisation for two thousand years, forget Baltimore!”

When they were standing near their 1949 Chrysler, ready to drive off, the young lady remembered a stock question that is asked in exams on Roman history, and sweetly inquired what “form of government” prevails here. This was the last straw. “Democratic anarchy,” I said and went back to digging our new latrine.

Dori

I’m playing cards with Simon on his bed and he’s losing. He looks so sad that I decide to give him the wild card. I put it face down on the bed so he can pick it up. He picks it up and he wins.

Then he starts boasting
I won I won!
He boasts to everyone.

Now I’m sorry I let him win.

It’s Passover next week. The children Mummy teaches are putting on a play about Moses and Pharaoh. My brother David is going to be a slave.

Diary of a Young Man

25 September 1923.
Departure! Today eleven members left at one go.

The unintelligent, as they proudly call themselves. They were constantly fuming, and in private discussions tried to prove that our commune was full of intellectual loafers, deluded dreamers, and that there’s no room here for simple, hale workers with a positive attitude to labour.