"When I was released, the doctors recommended
a monthly visit to the airport," wrote the late Meir Ariel, and he was right - oh, how right he was, it really does good to see a big plane take off through a transparent tear. Especially if I'm inside.
But the Quickie era for Rome or Paris passed with the Corona coughs and the airport crisis.
The delightful and cradling experience of the airport vanishes into a bureaucratic, exhausting and insane nightmare.
This is the turn before the turn, standing in the blazing sun, and sir, you know what Sartre said, "Hell is the other," and this dried Frenchman did not recognize Israelis in line.
An Englishman, even alone, creates an orderly queue of one.
Israelis in this line are a monster that twists recklessly and disorderly, the tail seeks to bypass the head.
And everyone is sweating.
Because it's hot.
And it's not for my nerves.
"The Lonely Hearts Club of Ben Gurion Airport" was an amazing phenomenon. I once wanted to make a film about them. These were people who came to the reception hall at Ben Gurion Airport to watch the landers meet their recipients.
More barren types than a coyote that is forgotten on the moon and howls at the earth from a distance.
And this is roughly what my relationship with abroad and the duty free looks like at the moment. Howling at a plane passing in the sky.
But a person needs to rest.
Where do we dispel the noises of everyday life in the heavenly serenity of a vacation?
Let me be quiet.
And where is quiet?
In the desert.
And on the recommendation of our prophet Jeremiah, I asked, "Who will give me a guest hotel in the desert?"
But which desert - Judah?
Chinese?
For?
Then it hit me.
Eureka!
Ben Gurion Airport, Ben-Gurion Airport. Everything is clear. "In the Negev, the people will be examined." So a vacation in the Negev at the request of the "old man."
In May 1953, Ben-Gurion returned from an IDF exercise in the Negev, on today's Route 40, and saw a hut and some tents. He stopped to talk to them. A few days later, a letter was received from Sde Boker from the Prime Minister: "I have never seen a pioneering enterprise like Sde Boker ... I have never envied anyone or a group of people ... but during my visit to you it was difficult for me to suppress in my heart a kind of feeling of envy: why did I not get to participate in such an act."
In the 1990s, the wonderful program of the lone farms in the Negev, Nahalat Shevet Shimon, was launched.
For a decade they were made to die.
The Society for the Protection of Nature and green organizations have tried to prevent the program in any way possible.
It was an unnecessary and pointless delay.
I wish they had invested hundreds of their time in resisting the savage spread of the illegal construction of the Bedouin.
But the Bedouin have no parchment, nor do they have a will in my opinion, so they were taken care of by the Hersh sheep.
At the end of the day, the High Court rejected the petitions. And the area is amazing.
We took a B&B at Nahal Haroeh Farm.
I am not a tourism expert and did not receive a discount, was great.
Exactly what we were looking for.
Isolated desert silence.
With a small pool overlooking the wadi.
Sometimes I'm such a pit that it drives me crazy.
I was convinced it was the shepherd's stream, in the male.
Mistake.
The name Nahal Haroeh is in memory of Barbara Proper who was born in Germany, immigrated to Israel, grew up as an adopted daughter in Jerusalem and was one of the founders of Kibbutz Sde Boker.
The shepherd of the settlement.
In September 1952, Bedouins murdered her.
22 years old at her death.
I'm lying in the pool, looking at the wadi named after her and reading about Barbara on my smartphone.
Danny Hillel, one of the founders of the kibbutz, who met her two hours before the murder, wrote (from an article by Nurit Govrin): Literary in Europe than the difficult front of the Negev, but she fulfilled her role with courage and determination, blended with her mocking sense of humor.
"We waved to Barbara, and she waved us back and smiled. That mischievous, great smile, which somehow blended innocence and sophistication, faith and disbelief, youth and maturity, age and irony; the smile of a woman-girl, who knows the absurdity of what we do, the anachronism of our inexperienced attempts Realistic to revive the Bible in the middle of the twentieth century - she knew all this and laughed at it, loved it, and gave herself to it unconditionally. She waved her hand and smiled ... "The roots of some bushes stand out, we heard a shot, followed by another, from the direction of the path ... We found Barbara lying in the dry grass, shot to death in broad daylight, she probably did not see her Bedouin killers lurking for her."
Evening is falling, the air is dry, almost cool.
This is an amazing land area.
And the wine from here is fine.
In the wadi the animals go out into the night, the sky is starry and I find a song by Nathan Alterman that I did not know how to console.
"The Girl from Sde Boker", "The Seventh Column" in "Davar", 1952. The Voice of the National Poet.
And maybe, who knows, Barbara and the song were also part of Ben-Gurion's decision to move to Sde Boker in 1953.
"The girl from Sde Boker," read the words carefully.
They are true even today.
"… And suddenly from afar, from a remote valley. From there an anonymous girl to God, through the day, through the busy and reckless backbone that darkens our eyes from dawn to dusk, through a valley, through a mountain, through night and dawn, bursting, rising, Eretz Yisrael…
"The true land of Israel, the glorious land of Israel, the perpetual land of Israel, the land of the girl Israel, the heavy and rebellious land of Israel, which will not contain four walls, which the storm of the market does not oppress, which is still mistaken in vain?"
"A land of Israel that has no remedy, but to always be in the place of danger.
"Here, in the word of the receding street, in the mono and aura of a day, she is standing with a girl from the morning field - blood is passing over our faces.
"And we do not suddenly hear the voice of the wayfarers with the worldless, and of the riches of wealth and of the pursuers of honor, who have made the earth a desolation."
"The shepherd of the flock passes by us, like another world, which is still here. Like another world, and it is a world of vow, a world of giving and sacrifice.
"And so suddenly shines, dumb and non-demanding, but a firm gift of rest and concealment, the faithful and pure side of the coin, the noble and pure side.
"And afterward Gal-ad and Zion-Shem rise up, as a sign and in remembrance of the dust of the earth. And the people of this people, if they are not yet blind, see the foundation and the barren."
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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