Aug. 15: Truth from a timeless land

By Larry Berteau

In my salad days I found myself with the equivalent of about three dollars American, standing on a street corner in the youthless city of Brussels, Belgium, staring down an impossible road to Israel.

The proof was in my youth. Thirty-eight days later, I disembarked a tired, long-past-its-prime cruise ship onto the dock in Haifa.

There was time spent in the desert, time that had no story (it's the way of deserts), but a stint on an Israeli kibbutz called Ramat Yochanan proved lasting and rewarding.

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Due to my dedicated lack of interest in manual labor, I rotated from job to job on the kibbutz, a practice that introduced me to three men who provided a look behind the shadow of the unrest in this amazing country.

I started out in the barn injecting chickens with a hypodermic needle against some disease I no longer remember. After that, I wrangled a transfer to the cotton fields where I stood in a bin and stomped the cotton down so more cotton would fit in the bin. Next came scraping varnish off the daycare center floor, picking bananas in the tropical orchard, you get the picture.

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The chap in charge of volunteer labor (kibbutzhim called us tourists, we called ourselves volunteers), responding to complaints about my constant changing (and complaining about) work assignments, summoned me to his room.

His name was Shalom Worm (pronounced VOME, rhyming with HOME). He had been a member of the kibbutz for six years, having migrated from Germany and his international publishing empire: Worm Publishing Inc.

His room was only slightly larger than mine, but included the cozy "I live here" things: family pictures, paintings, books, a small hotplate, and such. My room had a napsack and maps pinned on the wall.

Shalom made tea and inquired of my reasons for being there. His questions were simple and direct, and they issued from a 70-year-old face that was at the same time brimming with humor and melancholy. The six-day war was still a recent memory, his publishing company a little more distant, yet the overriding emotion pooling in his lake-blue eyes was best described as graceful wit.

Shalom knew how to laugh. He was not afraid to laugh AT me, but making me laugh was his highest goal.

So what happened with the chicken job, he asked, his eyes peering through the steam of an uplifted cup of tea.

Well, you're in a stupid stall in a smelly barn and you're up to your manure boots in squawking chickens. You have to grab them by both legs - miss one leg and you get pecked - invert them, then jab a needle into an area covered with flopping feathers that the guy in charge calls their "ass end." It's awful, I exclaim.

It's probably not all that pleasant for the chickens either, he responds, a grin etching a line in the corner of his eyes.

We went on discussing the demerits of my other jobs when he stood up abruptly.

I've got it, he said. You'll work with Ali and Ali.

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They were Bedouin, both of Syrian families living in Israel. They worked for the kibbutz, but were not allowed to belong to it. I shared the latter sentiment, but those are the only things any of the three of us had in common.

Ali and Ali were the irrigation engineers of the kibbutz. They brought water to the entire complex. Their jobs took them over rough terrain. They didn't wear shoes.

The first Ali (let's call him Ali One) was jovial, outgoing, curious and without resentment. Ali Two was militant, defensive and not the least bit taken to getting to know me.

We lugged great long pipes through fields, providing springs of life for the multitude of crops that grew in this sacred soil. How they did this without my help - prior to my Worm assignment - had to have been virtually impossible. The odds weren't much better with me in attendance, clomping through corn as high as a camel's eye in ill-fitting borrowed boots, huffing like an overworked American, which I certainly was.

When we stopped for lunch, Ali One and I would have great conversations, though we shared not a single word of spoken language. He drew family pictures in the dirt with a stick. I did as well.

Ali Two watched with little interest - casting a wary glance toward me from time to time, assessing what I was made of (or, perhaps, wondering where the missing bits were).

They worked relentlessly, although well out of view of any sort of supervision. Ali One would smile encouragingly to the struggling American co-worker. Ali Two would hiss occasionally.

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I found out from Shalom that Ali Two had been in the Israeli military. His job was walking down roads ahead of tank columns. It seems this barefooted Bedouin could tell if soil had been broken under his step before putting his entire weight down. This was handy in mine fields. What amazed me was that he survived to become an irrigator.

After a month or so, Ali One invited me to his house, a few miles from the kibbutz. We ate a fantastic meal of a bean-like rice with what looked like green and red peppers, all swimming in a broth that made rainbows on the side of wooden bowls. The entire meal was served by an arm extended from behind a curtain. (According to Sha-lom, this would have been Ali One's wife's arm.)

After dinner he took me outside, put me on his donkey, and led me around his house at least a dozen times, laughing (Ali One, not the donkey, I think) and keeping him at a manageable pace for a non-rider-of-donkeys.

Shalom told me I had been afforded a great honor.

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The rest of my days at Ramat were spent working with the Ali's - I got better at getting the water to market, holding up my end of the pipe and non-verbal conversation - talking about books with Shalom, and, on the Sabbath, standing on a hill next to a 2,000-year-old olive tree, hearing the wind sighing across the land long before it actually arrived, believing I was touching in some impalpable way the heart of this singular, everlasting country.

The truth was imbedded somewhere between Shalom's wisdom, Ali One's graciousness, and Ali Two's distrust.

There was no one to congratulate. No one to blame.

Larry Berteau is the editor of The Tidings.