NOT KEEPING SCORE

Freelancing abroad in the Holy Land for 18 days

After weeks of trying to get there, I finally made it to the lowest place on Earth (er, correction: lowest place on dry land. At 1, 378 feet below sea level, the Dead Sea is the world’s saltiest body of water (second to Lake Asal in Dijibouti… For the record, I don’t know where Dijibouti is.)
I convinced my friend from work, Lonnie, to go with me, which was nice as it made navigation simple (despite prevalence of English, it’s always nice to have a speaker of Hebrew around).

We took a sherut to Jerusalem and then – it being Shabbat, when no busses ran – a cab on to the dead sea.  

I’m not sure what I expected, but there was a distinct lack of anything – which made for a striking sight.

To get there, we drove through the Judea desert; dry, taupe hills with small herds of sheep dotting the surface; every now and again an enclave — nothing more than shacks — and women, with children or tending sheep, covered and dressed completely in black. These are the Bedowin– non-agriculture herd people, making homes of sheet metal and chain link fence that inhabit the land between Israel, the West Bank, and Jordan.

I have to remind myself that this is real.

“They make camel milk ice cream,” I hear Lonnie say. “it is nothing but grease and fat, but it’s ice cream!”

She makes a face and forms her hands into a ball, as if to mimic a big gob of fat.

“These hills have seen so much,” she continues, looking out the window, “They just know what they are. There is no anxiety in these hills.”

The land is old dust. It sits heavy, and slopes down past a sign that reads Sea Level, a long blue line scraping horizontally.  

Our taxi driver drives very carefully, a rarity in Israel, where people cross over 3 lanes of freeway traffic without even a blinker signal or glance over the shoulder.

b“Well, out here if you slam into a donkey going 120km/hr. it can mean big trouble!” reasoned Lonnie. Touché.

Past two check points and a license stop, we arrive. Our taxi driver drops us off in the dirt-dust-sand parking lot and says he will be willing to pick us up for a return trip. He hands over his mobile number and disappears with a hot dust cloud at his tires.

I take note of the wrapped barb wire around a sign that reads “Welcome! Kalia Beach!”  

We pay nearly three dollars for our two ounces of Nescafe coffee and walk down the stairs to the water’s edge.

There are a few large umbrella with colourful plastic chairs, a simple shower or two, and about 100 people populating the water and beach. I wave across to the other side, pretending to recognize someone on the opposite shore.

“Ummm… that’s Jordon over there,” I remark, my location still shocking. Lonnie laughs.

We decide to go for a… well… You don’t – as any Israeli is apt to tell you – swim in the dead sea; you float. And the slimy buoyant feeling of the saline water is so unusual that you begin to feel that Jesus is not the only one capable of walking on water.

Not only without effort but quite against your will, the water will pop to the surface any part of you defiant enough to try and stay deeply submerged under water.

While floating on my stomach (with head assuredly out of the water! Don’t put face in water! Eyes will burn with the vengeance of 100 burning bushes!) I try to swing my legs forward to bring myself upright. (I am unable to do so.) My stomach muscles: not strong enough. What is required is rolling over onto back and then balling legs in and then down.  

After a good float, Lonnie and I set out to invigorate our skin with the “therapeutic” qualities of the Dead Sea mud. Apparently people from all over the world come to the Dead Sea to slather mud on their skin in an effort to cure skin diseases, engage in a kind of fountain-of-youth mudbath, or just get free spa-quality results.

I do it ‘cause it’s just plain fun to play in mud.

We take a hummos break for lunch, but in the middle of a pita-dip, Lonnie gets a call that the father of one of her best friend’s has been killed in a car accident.

This horrible news invariably puts a different mood on the excursion, and I suggest perhaps it would be best if we head back. She tearfully agrees.  

The news makes me think of my own experience with sudden loss and car accidents. Neither topic readily consoling, I do what I can to help Lonnie with the news. I tell her of my own best friend who was killed in an accident 4 years ago, and the time-heals-all-wounds (but you-never-really-get-over-it-you-just-learn-acceptance) kind of stuff one says at impossible times like these.  

I don’t know that I do any good. Death is death, and we all experience it as we will.

Returning home, we go our separate ways, and I crawl into bed for a late afternoon nap as another loss, of sorts, snuggles up next to me– my time in Israel is coming to an end.