Israel 1998
by
Lisa Alpine
We jounce along the crater floor in the pitch black of night. I am annoyed.
“Why won’t you tell me where we’re going?” My displeasure escapes like a hiss from a pressure cooker.
We’ve been driving in the dark for hours, and I have no idea where we are or why. It’s another one of Adir’s “adventures.” I had envisioned a romantic beachside getaway, and this was certainly not the beach.
He is so infuriating and such an Israeli! He was born a Sabra, which, literally translated, means “prickly pear”—a thorny desert plant with thick skin that conceals a sweet, softer interior. The term is used to describe a Jew born in Palestine or, after 1948, in Israel. Adir is the classic tough-yet-sensitive-and-very-stubborn man-child of the Promised Land.
Adir is also a pain in the ass. An attractive, sexy, twenty-years-younger-than-me pain in the ass.
He pays no attention to my irritable mood and leans forward over the steering wheel, careening through the dust clouds that veil the dirt road. Barely keeping us on the track, he grins like an Evel Knievel demon-driver.
How does he know of this place, this ancient crater in the Negev Desert, once the floor of a primordial sea, still sprinkled with a delicate layer of marine snail shells?
The word negev is derived from a Hebrew word meaning “dry.” Shadowy shapes of an occasional acacia tree rise from the arid soil, but other than that, the Negev is a desert with no sand, just rock and dirt. The rocks exposed are from the Triassic period, 250 million years ago. This place is the innards of the earth. And we are going to camp here.
Determined to surprise me with all the hidden quarters of Israel, Adir swept me up when I arrived in Tel Aviv for a two-week tryst and proceeded to whisk me into every recess of this enigmatic and tumultuous land. Forget Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Eilat, or Haifa. Instead, we traveled to remote, stark, and hostile places clothed in thorns and parched geography inhabited only by night creatures like wolves, owls, and voles—not any places a normal tourist would visit or humans would live.
“Whoa!” Adir yells as he slams on the brakes and we skid sideways.
Ridged, furry backs and low-slung hips on sinewy legs slalom in front of our weaving headlights. Crazy yellow eyes glinting, tongues hanging, it’s a pack of wild Arabian wolves. They lope ahead of us for a timeless moment, then veer off into the brush to hunt in the dark obscurity of a moonless night.
Adir parks and announces, “Here we will camp.”
A biting chill snaps at my skin. I had not packed for a camping trip. It’s hot in the Middle East. No jacket, no boots, no hat, no gloves. Just a floral sundress, big-eyed sunglasses, strappy sandals, and a polka dot bikini. At forty-five years old I can still pull this off—despite a sixteen-year-old son and a passion for pasta.
Thick carpets of stars glitter and spark, taunting me to stay awake and witness their pageantry. This is not difficult as I am freezing my butt off in the Negev.
Adir pulls a scratchy blanket out from the back of the truck and lays it down on the hard, cold ground. Our bedroll. No cover for warmth. No pillows for comfort. No tent to protect us from wolves running wild. They can smell warm blood; ours is still warm. Sort of.
Why worry—I am with the original lone wolf. He has a thick mane of glossy black hair that I love to pull, gleaming agate eyes that hold my gaze, and a huge appetite for meat—mine. He bites my neck, nips my thighs. Adir snarls at other men who look my way, and he protected me from Syrian landmines on the Golan Heights border on one of our many forays to the boundaries of this intense region. He feeds me spicy home-cooked meals and scrubs me down in his makeshift shower when we return late and dusty from hikes up the wadis in Ein Gedi where he resides. He is my protector, guide, and lover.
How did I meet this wiry-haired, reckless Sabra?
Six months earlier, kayaking on a spring runoff river in California, I was about to pull my boat onto the beach when he strode into the icy water, lifted me out of the kayak—to the astonishment of the other rafters—and carried me to shore. Not a drop of water touched my skin. His warm hands clasped me firmly to his bare, glistening chest.
I had scarcely given him a hello when I met him the day before, even though he never stopped staring at me, but now he forced me to acknowledge him as I reclined there, astonished, in his well-muscled arms.
He was the chef on a rafting expedition I was a guide for. I did not know his name on that incendiary day on the banks of the Kings River, yet he devoured me with his eyes and then with his mouth as he closed it against mine. His lips were hot, soft, and insistent.
His luscious kisses caused me to ignite and collide—irresistibly pressing my flesh against his. I wanted his flaming lips to brand me. This man was passion incarnate.
An eternity passed as heat waves shimmered off the scalding sand. It was 100 degrees midday. He was barefoot yet immune to the burning beach.
Suddenly aware that everyone around us seemed suspended in place by this seductive scene, my hands, which cupped his face, dropped. I pounded my fists against his chest, fell to the sand, and ran back out into the freezing snowmelt river to cool down.
I tried to ignore him the rest of the trip. His zeal and relentless ardor alarmed and confounded me. I’d be walking from my tent to the makeshift kitchen and he would reach from behind an oak tree and pull me toward him like a striking rattlesnake. Startled, I’d find myself bent backward in the throes of a Rhett Butler smooch, lip-locking until I caught my breath, and my senses, and then shoved him away. The third time he tried to steal a kiss, I slapped him. Hard. I was tired of his antics. I had a job to do teaching people how to run these big boat-eating rapids, and there was no energy or time left for romance.
He sure could cook, but his refreshing mint and cucumber tabouli salads didn’t cool his passions. His coal-black eyes burned into me as he flipped latkes or chopped onions. It’s amazing he didn’t slice off a finger with one of his razor-sharp chef knives.
I spent a lot of time in my kayak that Kings River trip. Just far enough offshore that he couldn’t nab me. The other rafting guides thought my avoidance of Romeo was funny, and would tease him till he blushed and waved knives in their faces.
I wasn’t going to get involved with some kid twenty years younger than me who lived in Israel and was in California on a working holiday. Who had no control over his libido or impulses. No way. Though he was kinda cute. Okay, downright gorgeous—and I already knew he could kiss like a devil on steroids.
After the river trip ended, he rented a room from a mutual friend in the same town where I lived, and he called me daily. I had not given him my phone number. He left abrupt messages asking me out on dinner dates, each one an iteration of, “You will go out to dinner with me!” pronounced more like a command than a question. He persisted for two weeks, even though I never called him back…until one night.
One night when I was really pissed off at the man I had been dating for the past year—let’s call him “Mr. Waffley.” This guy was a psychotherapist and afraid of commitment. I didn’t want commitment; I wanted roses, a lip lock, hot sex, and romance and let’s face it: it’s not romantic when you’re thick in an embrace and he pulls away and says, “Sometimes I love you, and sometimes I don’t.”
Enough of that. I called Adir in the wee morning hours of that one night. I knew he would answer, even though it was 3 a.m.
He must have driven at warp speed to arrive at my doorstep just 10 minutes after I hung up. And he never left. No waffling either—just you-know-what. Lots of it. For weeks, until he had to return to Israel.
We went to Burning Man and burned.
He cooked my mom a birthday feast.
He sold my son his beater car.
It delighted me when I heard noises in the kitchen in the middle of the night. It was not a burglar—it was Adir concocting shakshouka, a savory Israeli dish of saffron, paprika, and parsley flavoring tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, and fried eggs, all served with tahini sauce and pita bread.
This man had a beastly appetite and it was contagious. As he chopped, sautéed, and stirred we’d have sex against the butcher block table. The hanging skillets swayed and clanked. My moans reverberated against the plates quivering on the countertop. We’d wash it all down with bold red wine, then take a moonlit stroll, holding hands in the pre-dawn stillness.
But then he packed up his knives and flew back to Israel. We agreed not to continue our romance long-distance.
But I could not keep the agreement. Nor could he.
We called each other weekly. The phone lines crackled with desire despite the distance of continents and cultures.
A few months later, I traveled to his country. I had hitchhiked through Israel for three months in 1973, but it had changed dramatically since my last visit. There were roadblocks with soldiers sporting Uzis every few miles on our way south.
Our first night at his kibbutz in Ein Gedi, on the western edge of the Dead Sea, we had dinner with his family. They were yelling in Hebrew at each other across the dinner table. I whispered to Adir, “Why are they arguing?” Confused, he shook his head and responded, “They are just asking for someone to pass them the butter, or the bread, or the salt.”
I sat back in shock, my ears ringing from the commotion. My family spoke in soft, civilized tones while engaging in pleasant dinner conversation. The one time my mom raised her voice at my dad at the dinner table, I was convinced they were getting a divorce.
The next day Adir would not come with me to Jerusalem. He said, “You go by yourself. There are too many guns and soldiers.” I had no idea what he was talking about. I had lived in the Old City of Jerusalem for a month on that first adventure and found it a very friendly place, showcasing delicious chickpea hummus served with oven-hot puffy pita bread on rooftops of Palestinian hotels, and poppy-seed hamantash cookies, which I ate with old Jewish bank guards who’d befriend me on my way back to the hostel. Fat Hasidic women scrubbed my back in the hammam on the days women were allowed to go to the public bathhouse. After scalding steam baths, these girthy women lounged about, eating oranges and pastries while massaging each other. They had included the skinny California girl in their circle of sisterhood of snacking, rubbing, and gossiping.
This time I found Jerusalem a cold and fearful place. Soldiers carrying machine guns met me around every corner. Security barriers surrounded the Dome of the Rock mosque and the Wailing Wall, and the Arab merchants were twitchy and rude in the souk. The sidewalks were crowded with orthodox Hasidic settlers from America, their accents giving them away as I walked past. No one made eye contact or said hello to me. Adir was right. Jerusalem was no place to linger.
Returning from another one of our mystery tours, this one to the Golan Heights, we drove through the ultra-conservative Hasidic section of Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Brow furrowed, Adir raced through all the red lights. When I demanded to know why we were dangerously barrel-assing through Jerusalem, he said in a terrorized tone that I had never heard him speak in before, “They will stone us if they see us driving on the Sabbath!” That was when I noticed we were the only people in the sole moving vehicle on the street, even though it was the middle of the day.
He wouldn’t drive me to Jericho, either, claiming it was impossible to visit, which turned out to be true. Israel prohibited Jews from entering Jericho, as it is in Palestinian territory on the West Bank.
I thought I could walk in like I had in 1973 since I wasn’t Jewish, so the restriction might not apply to me. But Adir was horrified so I dropped the idea, though my heart ached at not being able to visit the oldest town on Earth populated by some of the most hospitable people I had ever encountered.
Surrounded by barbed-wire walls, police checkpoints, and a two-meter-wide trench, the ancient city of Jericho had the trappings of a prison camp doused in misery and rage. Not the peaceful, idyllic Palestinian village I had lingered in for two weeks twenty-six years ago, when orange groves and the banks of the Jordan River were the only boundaries surrounding it.
He did take me to the wild, unpopulated places. And it was in the wild, unpopulated, damned cold crater in the Negev, as I tried to get comfortable on our bedroll while wolves paced around us just beyond eyesight, that I truly began to witness the complicated and wounded side of Adir.
He was at peace in the solitude of nature. It wasn’t long before I began to realize, here in the stillness of life untouched, that Adir sought silence for healing while I sought dialog for understanding.
He was infuriating because he would suddenly stop talking in mid-sentence. It might be hours before a word passed his lips. No kisses, either. Instead of bridling with passion, he brooded, retreating to the lair in his mind.
What was going on in there? Was he a genius or a nut job?
His vast silences shut me out. I felt lonely. I’d go for walks by myself in the arid wilderness, wondering why I had traveled so far to spend time with a man who would not articulate his feelings except in bed.
After one particularly tortured mute sulk that made me consider getting on the next plane home, he started to speak. He sat smoking under a date palm, his back to me, gazing out over the hazy Dead Sea. Across the saline waters the shores of the Kingdom of Jordan were faintly outlined in the sunlight along the sea’s edge.
He said, “I fought in Lebanon. I was only eighteen years old. Horrible things happened there and I was part of it.”
I had no idea he’d been conscripted, and remained quiet while he blew smoke rings. He continued. “Being drafted into the military is considered a rite of passage in Israel. Men serve three years, women two years. Then we continue as reservists into our fifties, getting called for training and active duty for over a month annually.”
I stroked his hair as he muttered, “I must figure out a way to never fight again—to become a war resistor. Even if it means I claim insanity. I have been thinking long about it.” Adir wiped the back of his hand against his wet cheek and said, “This will be very difficult as I’ll be ostracized and the chances of getting a job will be slim. The officials will try to make my life unbearable.”
The tremor in his voice lessened and his back straightened as he told his story—one that I’d only gathered bits and pieces of until now. “I am a true Sabra—born in Israel. My parents are Yemenite Jews. They were airlifted here in 1949 to populate the new state of Israel in a mass migration program called Operation Magic Carpet. They were promised a kibbutz in a fertile region, but were posted to a tent camp on the Lebanese border in a barren area with no development funds. I grew up hungry, with bombs and landmines in the school playground. Going into the army was awful, too, because I was treated like a second-class citizen due to my darker skin.”
Now I understood his pained silences. He was serving a country that had made broken promises to his parents and treated him like dirt. The war had changed him. Killing people wounded him. Like many vets, he did not talk about it. Until he met me. I didn’t glorify military service and believed it is a soul-killer to hand a young person a gun and tell him or her to point it at “the enemy.” I was humbled that he knew me well enough to trust that I could listen without judgment of his mutiny and encourage him to follow his heart.
We talked past sunset into the darkness. His inconsolable sadness floated out across the moonlight shimmering on the still sea. No sex, just dialog on our last night together.
The next day I flew back to California, both of us knowing it was our final rendezvous. I would never relocate to Israel, or convert to Judaism, and he would never live far from his family. I did not want any more children; he did.
He never did take me to a beach resort. My sundress was torn, stained with mineraly earth as I boarded the plane back to San Francisco, my suitcase stuffed with spices—paprika, zatar, cumin, and saffron.
At the airport, before we parted, Adir gave me one last lingering kiss and then handed me a gift-wrapped package. I crammed it into my carry-on, only to have it confiscated minutes later at customs. The vigilant security officials ripped the wrapping off, and nestled in the box was a Henckels fully forged chef’s knife, which they promptly bagged, tagged, and addressed.
Surprisingly, it made it to San Francisco.
Over the next few months, he called frequently to talk about his plan to extricate himself from the mandatory military service imposed upon his people. I listened carefully, aware that I was the only person he could talk to about this.
“I’m going to claim insanity, but no one in my family can know I’m doing it intentionally. After all, my brother works for Mossad—the secret police—in Tel Aviv.”
“Adir, please don’t drive yourself over the edge. Take care of yourself. I’m worried about you,” I pleaded, pressing the phone against my ear with my shoulder as I stirred pinches of the Israeli spices into a lamb stew for my family’s dinner that night.
To instigate his plan, Adir did not eat. He did not bathe. He did not sleep for days on end. He drank gallons of acid-black coffee. He smoked unfiltered cigarettes. His chiseled face overgrew with a scraggly beard. He purposely journeyed to the blurry mindscape of mental illness. The psychiatrists had to be convinced. It took months.
In one of his many interviews with them, he said, “I do not know what I will do if you put a gun in my hand again. I do not know which way I will point it.” The psychiatric evaluators thought he meant shooting at his own troops, but when Adir told me of this, I knew he meant shooting himself to avoid fighting. The phone shook in my hand and tears welled, but all I could do was listen as he shared his troubled unraveling.
After yet another session in which the psychiatrist challenged Adir’s masculinity, Adir called me from his parents’ kibbutz on the Lebanese border. Laughing, his vocal chords strained like a tightrope, he said, “I might come to California.”
To distract him from his impulse to run away, I asked, “Are you working?”
“I got a chef job at a resort in Eilat but it didn’t work out,” he said in a monotone. “They didn’t appreciate my improvisational style…especially with spices.”
He laughed halfheartedly. “I do my best cooking in the middle of the night for sexy, wild women.”
Listening to the despair in his voice, I glanced upward at the silent skillets hanging above the stove, reminiscing with a twinge of longing Adir’s passionate way of combining sex and cooking, feeling his lips on my neck, my cheeks, my lips.
“You should be dating. Find a woman who wants to camp with you in the Negev. Who loves your cooking. Have a family. You will be a great dad.”
A long sigh came across the phone lines. “That won’t happen. These Israeli girls don’t like dark-skinned cowards.”
—
Fifteen years later, I use the Henckels knife to mince pungent herbs from my garden—marjoram, thyme, oregano, rosemary, chives, basil. I keep the blade razor sharp.
Sometimes, out of the corner of my vision, I see the hungry gleam of Adir’s eyes glinting in the carbon steel.
I hope his wounds are healed and there is laughter and joy in his crazy wolf eyes. I pray he has not been left howling alone in the Negev in the dark.
This true story is published in my book Wild Life: Travel Adventures of a Worldly Woman
Here is another story I wrote that takes place in Israel and Palestine: The Coptic Priest
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