On these late winter mornings, surveying each new day I feel like I am living in paradise. The weather is so temperate, the landscape lush and forthcoming, the wheat fields exude vitality. Back west, my family and friends are hunkered down in the cold and snow as I gratefully soak up the winter sun. The flip side of the coin, of course, is the troubling absence of rain, casting its shadow from an ineffectual gray cloud over the pleasure of a clear blue sky.
This weekend we hosted Abu Malek and Um Malek for an afternoon visit – because they are not mobile on their own, their son brought them, accompanied by his wife and two young sons. We sat out in the yard and chatted while Um Malek collected pecans under the tree and picked luf, and the boys played on the rope swing. In the relaxed pastoral mood, Abu Malek declared expansively. “this is paradise”.
Our village used to be like this too – he continued – but now that it has grown so big, there is never any quiet – the traffic is noisy on the narrow streets – the houses are densely built and there is no green landscape. Butheina, the boys’ mother, told me that in their school, there is no playground, and barely even a yard for the children to play in during recess.
Her quiet, personal testament to the discrimination experienced in Israeli Arab communities passed opaquely between us and the warm afternoon sun. And even now, the chill of that moment sits in my bones – a rumbling reminder of how far from paradise we really are.
Very nicely put!!!!