Laying with Cleopatra
If I stood on the sand and looked to the west, the full length of the Mediterranean was before me, and the sun, after our work, would drop into the sea. I walked the beach alone in the evenings and to the south, as it got dark, I could see the lights of Tel Aviv and I felt I could walk there if I just kept going. But I would turn back towards the kibbutz. Dinner was being served in the community dining hall. Now, walking north, to the northwest, across the water, the closest land was Cyprus, and somewhat south of that, almost due west, would be Minoan Crete. And directly ahead of me, up the coastline, was Lebanon and I felt I could walk there too, just not today, as time-to-time, Israeli jets flew low overhead and I knew they would be on a bombing mission to some poor, stony village above the Bekaa Valley, or some other target, which tomorrow would be poorer still, for it was just two years after the ’73 War and tensions were high and the Golan Heights a short drive away. Israel is a tiny place no matter what name you give it. Whenever I heard, and felt, the jets fly, I was most often given over to a sad withdrawal, as I could feel the damage they were about to inflict on women and children, in their small white stone houses, in sun drenched hillsides, olive green shade -- as bombing is an indiscriminate punishment. As much as I admired and supported my new Jewish friends on the kibbutz, I wanted their government to stop the bombing and, being 24 at the time, and being a knowing and studied student of the world, I had my own fully articulated plan for international peace!
By the time I got back to the dining hall it would be completely dark and I would be late. One evening, Chana, in charge of the visiting volunteers, came over to me as I ate and said, “Reechard, we know you like to walk on the beach, but we don’t think you should.” “Why not?” I asked. “Because sometimes Palestinians come by boat and attack villages or schools. They come by sea.” “I have read of such things,” I said. “You shouldn’t walk on the beach,” she said. My firm, anti-authoritarian streak can be sparked by the slightest thing and I asked, “Are you forbidding me to walk the beach?” “No,” she said, “we are not forbidding it, but our security team says it is not safe.” “Chana,” I said, “You don’t understand. I went to school in the Bronx. They called it Fort Apache. This is the safest place on earth.” She smiled, shook her head and left me to my thin schnitzel.
Around the kibbutz, at critical positions, to provide security for the community, guards were posted at night, or German shepherds were hidden in the banana fields, staked to rebar with a water dish within reach. The guards had military uniforms which they wore loosely, but they were members of the kibbutz, just like all the rest, and they were assigned their positions because they had the training, or were also part of the army. The evening after Chana spoke to me about the dangers of the beach, I was, of course, walking the beach when I heard a very high pitched whistle. Being a farm boy, and having grown up in the midst of the profound quietude of the farm, I had exceptional hearing. I know this because when President Nixon tried to draft me, and I was taking my physical at Whitehall Street, the doctor conducting the hearing tests of me in a soundproof room, kept calling over other doctors to show them what a specimen they had found in me, as I could hear a range of sounds usually off the human charts. They wanted my hearing skills for the jungles of Vietnam. No freaking way!
I was walking north. It was dark. The last trailing light from the sunset in the sea left a dark purple illumination. I heard the whistle behind me. I turned sharply on my heel and faced the south. I saw the German shepherd coming up the hard packed sand, running straight at me. I spread my feet and braced myself. There was a second whistle. The attacking dog stopped in its tracks. It froze. I looked at it for moment and scanned what I could of the sand dunes for its officer. Nothing. I turned and walked as calmly as I could back towards the main portion of the kibbutz. I looked behind me once more and the dog was gone. I felt a small triumph for my freedom: after all, to get to Israel, I had walked across the Jordanian desert, and crossed the Allenby Bridge, across the Jordan River, without incident, when I had been told it couldn’t be done by an American. Why should I feel threatened on a beach when I was there as a friend? After that night, no-one told me not to walk on the beach again and the army members became friendly towards me and began to show me the ropes and their school’s security bunker.
Sdot Yam was built on the ruins of previous civilizations. When I saw photos of what the area looked like in the 1930’s, I was shocked to realize how much of the ancient Roman port city known as Caesarea had been bulldozed by the kibbutzniks. Whole streets of Roman buildings had been knocked down to make way for the new farm fields. Being an historian by training, and of that political school of history believing the Elgin Marbles, hanging in the British Museum, should most-likely be returned to the Parthenon in the Athens Acropolis from where they were stolen by the British, I had trouble with the total disregard for, and destruction of, the ancient city. This explained how crazy Albert, with his machete, could uncover so many bits and pieces of the Roman occupation without effort. Artifacts and buildings which were either not Jewish, or did not somehow justify the historical existence of the State of Israel, were un-prized and swept aside. “Chana,” I said, “how can you have so little regard for the archeological wealth around you?” “Ruins are for the dead,” she said, “we had to build something for the living.”
To some degree, this attitude as has changed. When I sweep across the area from my armchair at my writing desk and view the world from Google Earth, I notice a new park and a museum at the ancient harbor. A number of important excavations have been done since my time in the field.
Back then, if you walked north out of the kibbutz, you could soon see the remnants of a Roman aqueduct arching away towards Lebanon. It once supplied the ancient capital city with fresh water. The kibbutzniks weren’t the only people trying to make the desert bloom. And then, if you swing back to the sea, and walk out a short promontory, you came to a very odd feature. If it was high tide, you would see nothing, but, if it was low tide, you could swim in a large square swimming pool carved into the bedrock by Herod the Great, some say as a swimming pool for the visiting Cleopatra, and back then, with no-one around, in the sun, you could lie down on the stone with Cleopatra, or maybe one of those Dutch girls from the neighboring bunkhouse. You know, just for the sun. Now that IS ancient history!
© 2014 Richard L Phelps
