YD6~35 From Kruger National Park to the Knesset: A Wanderer's Tale of Two Lands"

In "YD6~35: Israel Sojourn," embark on a journey of reflection and revelation as our protagonist embarks on a solo adventure to Israel. From the vibrant savannas of South Africa to the bustling streets of Tel Aviv, their path is marked by poignant encounters, cultural immersion, and the lingering echoes of the past.

Beyond the tip of the aircraft’s silver wing, high in the dome of white skies, porthole became a portal to the past, gazing down, Aetheria’s unconscious call upon the zoological gardens of the clouds, her beautiful lair. my mind, a marionette of memories, of Earth below a living tapestry whirring like a GIF, processing the kaleidoscope of my South African sojourn.

Hazyview, an outpost at the gates of the Kruger National Park, beckoned two gazelle-like boys, Lionel and Gavin, nearing the cusp of adolescence. Embarked on an adventure with wide eyes and eager hearts. We hit the country road. An asphaltic stretch, reminded to turn off. Behind a run of barbed wire fence, raised a Sabi-Sabi estate sign to a wide dirt road apron. A dust cloud swirling in the car’s wake, leading us deeper into the heart of the bushland. 

At Sabi-Sabi’s scattered several rondavels, we step out the car. In one of them, behind a reception counter, and in a blue-gray uniform, my sister, Ilona, steps out of a rear office, smiles a welcome respite. She exchanges a few words with a black woman, booking us in, a gift from our stay, handing over a key. We follow a “slasto” crazy path into a rondavel, lay down our luggage, to re-loop out exploring the main rustic community rondavel, sit down at a table for a drink, and a snack, meddling with a few people into an evening around a bonfire for dinner.

Before dawn’s gentle caress, Ilona joined us to venture into the veld, our safari an exhilarating ballet with lions’ pride, elephants angered at the trees, and hippos gracing the river’s stage. A few days passed, filled with laughter, camaraderie, the raw beauty of daylight reeling in over on the horizon. 

We backtrack to the rondavels. Venture on the dust whirling road, to asphalt, leading us to the crossroads of Hazyview. With breaks before Lionel and Gavin exchanging farewell greetings with their “Bon’ma” and “Bon’pa” to hit the road for the morning sun reflecting off the distant escarpment wall, our journey as far as the eyes could see. With a pit stop at piedmont for a drink at Sabi’s pancake place. Drove off, reached the Highveld savanna riding waving hills, hypnotized by the asphalt lane, at length rolling out a second ribbon leading to skirt Pretoria. by afternoon, we pull up at the gate in kelvin, Lionel and Gavin stepping out, their eyes saddening, as they close the gate behind at the end of the panhandle driveway their figures vanish in the shadows of the closing door join their mother, Jean. 

My heart, heavy as a water pouch, accompanied me on the solitary stretches of road weaving out the Kelvin, suburb. Thoughts swirled like the dust in my wake, the asphalt a canvas for my musings. Weaving through the Johannesburg-Pretoria highway underpass, I crossed the build-up valley, toward the distant Sandton Tower. 

Amid Sandton City’s concrete forest glimmering with parked cars, I step away from my brother Igor’s Audi, toward the tunnel filtering a distant fluorescent light. Rode the escalator down to the lower mall, the familiarity transformed with each passing year. I’m amidst a flurry of parents with children on the last days of back-to-school purchases. I entered Sandown Travel Agency. There I booked a flight, the return date left open-ended.

I’m approaching the international marches to an officer amid a labyrinth of glaze of a barrier of booths handing over my passport. The officer’s fingers dance — a flip of the stiff cover. His other finger reaches offside, slipping a sheet of paper glide to the surface in front of himself. His hand clutches and stamped. Slip the sheet and seals to return my passport. I sidestep light-hearted through the gateway, stepping Israeli soil, finding my way to the luggage retrieval hall. my fingers flip my passport cover page for a glance at the loose paper — ‘_A mere stamp! What’s the riddle? There must be a reason?_’

I’m drawn into a flock of passengers circling Johannesburg’s flight luggage carousel, fixated on random couchant bags driven by caterpillar pallets. As I’m lagging as passengers step forth, tugs a baggage or two off to a trolley trundling away. Fear at me, missing my darkish beige parachute canvas, until I tub my suitcase in the sweep carried to my stepping away.

I step out of Ben Gurion International Airport terminal into a mid-morning glow. Withdrawing my eyesight from the horizon. I’m reeling in the arid Highveld savanna brought over to the rocky hue.

On the sleek asphaltic traversing driveway, a lone train of taxis stand poised. I stride toward the head car. An eager man jumps, anticipation etched on his face, glancing across the gleaming rooftop, then darting toward the rear fender. Greeting the stumpy Arab, raising the trunk lid. Obliging, hoists my weighty suitcase stow into the trunk, and turning, pressing down the lid. 

As he slides into the driver’s seat, I meet his questioning eyes once more. “Do you know of a nice hotel?” I ask from behind. With a guide’s pride, the Arab driver replies. “Yes,” he mutters, seasoned with a broken English accent. He uncoiling in his seat, a hand on the steering wheel, another turning the ignition, the engine purr, pulling away with a guide’s pride. ‘_welcome!_’ he pulls away, our conversation filling the car as we cruise through the countryside.

We entered the outskirts of Tel Aviv, the city’s, skyline a distant haze of skyscrapers huddled against the sky, over huddling smaller towers. Sinking. We’re weaving through a tapestry of intermingling frayed asphaltic rows of houses vanishing at unexpected angles. In a vanishing straight, he pulls up alongside a rusticated dwelling, nestled among its neighbors on a quiet residential street. 

With a grateful nod and a heartfelt “thank you,” the Arab driver retrieves, handing me the grip of my suitcase. I head for the weathered doorstep of the rusticated dwelling. in contrast to sleek modern doors, I press the stumpy door, swings back trailing my calf-suitcase past, to hold my pace for the homely lobby to jump alive welcoming me.

A babushka steps out a back door, hands flicking an apron she no longer dons. she slips behind the boxed counter in the far corner. After an exchange of formalities, checked-in, she hands me a tagged key. eager to shed my arm tugging suitcase, I’m turning right, toward the depth scale a flight of stairs, in my mind leapfrog the sequel to my stopover week.

In a quick loop around the room, depositing my suitcase, light-weight on my feet, to rhythmic descend the stair, cross the lobby and out in the sunny street. Turning left, I scan the savanna-hued facades, sniffle shaded nooks. Another corner after a few street stretches, to a welcoming clearing and hearty bluestone square — deserted.

Lone figures, the like of me, along dappled shades to stalky young trees. In the distance adorned by a medley of encircling strip malls to shaded storefronts, their signs reflecting bright, the boutiques, a hair saloon, a bakery. Catching a figure in slacks at the end of the undercover walkway, a storekeeper emerging from the store’s shadows. She lingers by the doorway, a wandering hand reaching the folded back door.

Behind the illuminating woman, her demeanor signaling the end of the business day. A contrasting architecture raised a gray pillar from the storefront. By dint of gazing at the woman, bold embossed the sleek light, blueish proclaiming, “Leumi Bank!” 

In my approach, I squint through the plate-glass door’s still street refection, and press the grip of the glaze swings clearing in the cool shadows of a deserted lobby. I step toward the cashier, considering exchanging a few hundred-dollar bills, reaching in my back pocket to flip-flap my wallet open to my purse. Slip the banknotes in my passport back cover page, and slip up to the dry humored cashier, with greetings. Her eyes flickered across the banknote’s serial numbers to those stamped in my passport by the Standard Bank. She speaks out loud, returning crisp Shekel banknotes, and some change with my passport, slipping underneath the teller’s window. “Thanks” I sighed, turning away, tucking the Israeli currency into my purse and returning to my back-pocket, walking out.

Stepping out at leisure and away from the tranquil square atmosphere, suscitating an adolescent flashback — suscitated the heart of Pretoria on Saturday at noon, Indian merchants closing their market stalls and the city drained, foreshadowing the eerie stillness of Sundays, 

“Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk” (Dutch Reformed Church) on the edge of Randburg comes to mind. Eloquent, not solely, but far scattered cars huddling in glitters Protestant churches. Afrikaners emerged from their cars, Old folks and young with small children on a catwalk toward the church door, disappearing into the darkness within.

The atmospheric memory faded, dawning on me a blanketed a bustling city murmur sunk into the ground, alone through the still houses, until cracks reveal glimpses of the turquoise blues, to stroll along the Mediterranean Sea’s seafront promenade, skirting downtown Tel Aviv. 

Returning to the hotel, I weaseled my way through unfamiliar street, peer foreign windows, through lampposts’ gentle glows. I found myself pressing open the door to the hotel lobby. I ascend the flight of stairs, flop on the bed, ready to embrace a night in the arms of Morpheus.

I descend the stairway to the doorway’s crack of light, to crisp white tablecloth scattered offside at the encounter of a lone figure far offside, in a black suit and tie — ‘_some salesman?_’ breezes through my mind. I sit short around the open door-leaf into the room. While in the middle, a father and mother stooped, coaxing a six-year-old girl to breakfast, before taking their seats. An elderly man in wavering dark pants, a white shirt, urged from my distraction, from the extreme corner. Approaches in a diagonal path past the little family. Palpable, the owner-waiter posing in front of me, greeting. ‘_What will you have for breakfast?_’ His gaze asking.

The elderly man retracts, nurturing an order in mind, stepping toward the embossed doorjamb in the flank wall. Content to let him figure out their menu. I waited, with a wandering mind. My mind doodle the babushka bustling in the kitchen, of a couple preparing breakfast in tandem, and the run of their cozy hotel. 

By magic, he materialized in front of the wall, with a leading plate. Places a plate laden with a colorful feast in front of me. ‘_Wow! Is this an Israeli breakfast?_’ I marveled in mind. I thanked him, my gaze on a pool of glistening egg white, poked by a bright yellow yolk. ‘_That a healthy breakfast,_’ I thought, a wishful start every day.

The owner-waiter reappears with a cup of coffee, taking away my plate. After a few sips, I rise from my chair, regretful I finished my treat of a nested medley of fruits and raw vegetables. I step out into the street. 

I find myself back, back in the middle of the eerie tranquil cloaked square, dawning on me: ‘_Shabbat!_’ a family of five dressed in black and white, skirting in the distance the still storefronts in darkness. The father’s hat tipped side curls, with his boys, the mother’s wig and modest skirt flowed. ‘_they’re heading for Shule (Synagogue,)_’ I realized, with a sense of reverence.

Like desert flowers sprouting and flourishing after a rain, Sunday dawned, transforming yesterday’s deserted square into a buoyant marketplace. In the mood of the distant hum of traffic rolling up and shoppers bustling about, eager to rejuvenate a lost day. I turn to a payphone, and dialed the Weitzman’s number. Silvia’s familiar voice answered. 

“I’m in Tel Aviv!” I announced hearty. 

As I’m thinking of the extended invitation, seated in a taxi spelling out from behind to the driver, the scribbled notes on a page of my seven-star diary.

Retracing my steps back to the hotel, the deserted reception desk offering a tempting array of pamphlets. I grabbed a few, glancing over them ascending to my room, Leaving them on the bed to return downstairs with my trusty suitcase at hand. Taxi I summoned from the payphone, pulled up. Meeting the gruff-looking driver by the trunk, with a collaborative heave, my suitcase vanishing with the shutting trunk lid. Sliding into the backseat, I ripped the page with the address from my diary and handed it over the driver’s shoulder.

The taxi weaves through the suburbs, merging onto the highway. Traffic thins,foresseing a monotony the driver steers off to a countryside march, raising afield boxy houses perched on stark concrete stilts. With the curiosity, we descend into a suburban complex’s maze of streets, pulling up. Nurturing to mind the unlikness of low ceiling carports, noon’s cast shade bizarre twice the height — ‘_Alike underground bunkers,_’ My mind processes. ‘_a security measure against ground assault?_’  

Stepping out, I collect my suitcase. stunned as I’m left standing by the taxi pulls away, a breeze stroking past my body, to glance back at a breezeway, catching up to a landing into a concrete-wrapped up stairwell, Silvia’s gazing down eyes. “Come up!” Echoing her calls. I trudged up a flight of stairs. Entering the dining room, facing the three cousins, as children blossomed into young women, with welcoming smiles.

In the whirlwind after my engagement to Jean, Percy’s brood, the jovial Aries, with his three girls capering a maze of hallways and doorways. Meanwhile, Silvia, framed in the light of an opening, in the lounge on a couch, recovering from a hip surgery. All those mornings, I’d drive up into shadows across the driveway. Pulling up to the garage doors. I’d step out into the lingering chill of the night. While, a few black helping hands climbing down from my Volkswagen pickup’s bed. Percy welcomed us into the hallway, where we’d transform the space into a cozy room for their youngest daughter, Barbara. 

The roles had shifted. Silvia, now active, gestured to a backrest besides beside her sitting down. I pose my suitcase, with a sweeping gaze, and duck, as Elain, the last and eldest, emerges from a distant door. Entering the efflorescent windowless dining room, onto overbearing on Sharon, the trio by their mother. 

Underneath initial gazes. ‘_What have you become?_’ I rummage through my suitcase for the first out of three folders. Straighten up, placing an arch-lever file on the table in front of Silvia. I flipped the cover, to revealing a grid of four photographs. stiff carton pages flip under flitting gaze — ‘_(…) Bragging about your good life!_’ Until the four sets of eyes sparkled curiosity. the girls huddled closer over their mother’s shoulder, captivating Lionel and Gavin, chapters from my life after my divorce from Jean. 

As if flipping to the back cover, Percy’s eyes sigh. ‘_Oomph,_’ he sags further into his chair, legs and arms crossed. My mind suscitating regret for emigrating from South Africa. 

I duck down, retrieving the next file, turn the pages, explaining as Silvia, and her girls’ attention drifting. After opening the last of my file, I’m growing to regret, the girls backing a pace. With a lingering glance, Silvia rose, and I accelerated, flipping pages to slap the back cover shut with a clump of unseen pages. 

Silvia’s bidding me farewells, as I tuck the photo album into my suitcase. The little family on stand by. I lead myself to the exit door. Step on the landing, when flickers in the stairwell's crack, the taxi pulling up. I tread down the stairs, to the waiting taxi driver. He heaves my suitcase to the trunk. As I slip down to the back seat, I hand the driver my Tel Aviv hotel pamphlet.

My Johannesburg layover, a fleeting pause on the way to New York, reached its end. As we cruise the arid countryside, from the distant blur raises the concrete and glass sleek silhouette of Ben Gurion International Airport. the driver pulls up in front of the departure terminal. I wrestle my suitcase out of the trunk. Stepping onto the curb, I push past the plate-glass door. 

A wash of morning light gleams across the concourse, devoid of shadows. Until, in stark contrast, a figure materialized from the light over my right shoulder. ‘_Off all people, why me?_’ I thought. As the man asks in a soft, amicable tone. “Are you willing to answer a few questions?” 

“Yes,” I replied, my curiosity piqued by his unexpected presence as I sized him up. He was dressed neatly in casual attire.

“who packed your bags?” he inquired.

“I did,” I answered, with a growing intrigue.

“Who did you visit while in Israel?” His question, once innocuous, now felt pointed — ‘Is he security?’ I thought, before his eyes nods accompanying a hand wave toward the crowd at the check-in counters.

Glade over the security, with a reassuring step toward bustling crowd thinning guided beneath my flight’s fascia insignia. I heaved my suitcase onto the conveyor belt, by the ground hostess behind the check-in counters. I’m walking away with my suitcase creeping behind the hostess. 

I’m straggling across the lobby, leading with my passport toward the controller ensconced within the glass cubicle, slipping my passport across the counter. He pulls out the loose annexed page, with a nod, hands back my travel documents, leaving me to walk around the booth, seeking the maze of signs. My boarding pass’ digits dropped from the ceiling to the gateway for my flight.

I walk down the corridor toward a throng of travelers. ‘_How ironic,_’ I mused, ‘_not a trace of my visit to the Jewish state!_’ a tale of Aetheria’s zodiacal lair, as absent-minded I greet the gateway ground crew. At the aircraft door, the aircrew points me in the aisle. My eyes scan the tagged overhead bin, counting as I weave past passengers stowing their carry-on luggage. Reaching my designated seat, I tucked my bag away, leaning over my neighbor’s seat, lift the seatbelt buckles, to sit, joining the symphony of clicks. I buckle up.

My eyes rambling around the bustling cabin, settling on the view through the porthole, the terminal rotating past the landing strip; the ground slipping past as we taxied from the distancing terminal. the high pitch whine slipping behind, the cabin shaking like a frightened dog, until a thrust pressed me deep into my seat, to a smooth airlift. I’m holding my breath, bracing for the phantom of an endless turbulence when landing a week earlier.

Gazing out at the quagmire of life, flattening and distancing an arid tapestry. Fading into the horizon. The cabin levels out with a chorus of clickety-clicks as the seatbelt sign dinging off, releasing restless passengers from their seats. I turn away from the continuing bustling as we cruise, to the porthole, eye empty. The whiteness hazing into the depth of space, hypnotized by an empty mind. Sunlight streaming from behind, casting an eyelid-shade shadowing the porthole’s deep edges — time on pause. 

I’m seeking to ground myself, dropping glances into the tangible cabin, to reaffirm my being — staring at the aircrews emerging into the aisles. Bending and weaving through the rows of head scalps, trundling ahead their food trolley. In anticipation of a lost regard, and the air hostess, asking. ‘_Would you like breakfast?_’ 

I nod, “Thanks.” she stretches a wrapped breakfast platter and juice cup a drink, and heads on.

The cabin’s bustle subsided, and I turned my gaze away from the restless figures scattered through the wide-body cabin, to the eye of the sky — Percy’s face flickers in my mind’s eye, etching with a Stoic expression. A question arose. ‘_Was leaving Johannesburg for the harsh life in Israel, with a family in tow, a decision he regretted?_’

Suscitating a vivid pointillist painting the white canvas of my mind, my bricklaying apprentice years swirling memory, I growl at the loss. flashback driving up Weitzman’s family driveway. I’m stepping out of my Volkswagen pickup. Percy opens the front door to the hallway. Out of the norm, my mind on the redecoration’s undercoats, and finishes paints, lacquers and accessories and putting my workforce on the job, catching me off guard. “Don’t you have a tuxedo?” he calls out, breaking my reverie.

Lost in thoughts eager to put my workforce, on the undercoats, finishes, lacquers, and accessories, Percy’s question caught me off guard. “Don’t you have a tuxedo?” his voice cutting through my finishing the building site reverie.

The next day, I unhooked my treasured mothballed tuxedo from my wardrobe’s hanging rail, breaking my anticipation of that next grand ballroom. A testament to its dormancy since the night the pants danced, the arms butterfly, gliding across the dance floor, debuting a Strauss waltz, ending to the staccato rhythm of a tango, sweeping ladies in flourishing dresses. sad, I sought for months, until I realized the tuxedo Percy had borrowed never returned.

My dreamy gaze shifted from the porthole’s shaded stillness to the cabin crew moving through the aisle, offering drinks to the passengers. The air hostess placed a small bottle of wine in my hand. With a twist-off cap - click - to pour the ruby liquid in the plastic cup, savoring each sip until the hostess made her collection rounds. My gaze drifted back to the white sky ahead, and my mind regurgitates my boarding a bus, and the drive trekking across the arid desert landscape.

With fellow tourists, I ascended to the peak of Masada, a haunting testament to ancient resistance against the Roman army. The Dead Sea shimmered in the distance, an expanse of blue. Driven to the shores, I joined the flurry of people smearing myself with the black mud. Stepping into the water, my body bobbed, buoyed by the water, until I tilted to lie in the water. Indulging in the tingling of my skin, raising an earlier warning, with a mounting restlessness from my inactivity. As I emerge, rinsing off the residue, stepping out invigorated. 

Showered and dressed, I rejoined the bus, pulling away, hit the asphalt through the arid landscape circles back. Taken into a biblical villagey Jericho. without a grass blade, a couchant camel, jaws chewing. the arid shades a trundler’s jute sack of fodder, to flare a juxtaposed car, my mind back to the present.

The bus pulled into a natural park. I disembarked with the crowd. Entering a cave greetings by an Alibaba’s chamber of rainbow-hued stalactites, nature’s beauty. Which I longed to capture, carry with me to wonder, but alas, I return to the bus, watching as we pulled away.

I roamed the streets, to pass the Knesset nestled square and cubic in the rocky hillside. Strolled the market’s narrow streets, to a stall overflowing with an enticing array of leather bags. Engaging in conversation with the Arab vendor, I doubted the worth of my need, leading to walk away.. The Arab calls me back, The Gemini in me, always ready to engage in a chat. Until, I’m sold on the ideal for my excess luggage. After a haggle, clutching my bag, a soft leather grip, acquired for half the original asking price. I wandered away from the narrow passageways.

Expanding the dome of well-being, crossing Orthodox Jews in traditional garb, cross my path like showing the stepping stones as I wander the streets of Old Jerusalem at noon, a massive tree trunk sealed off a sidewalk passage again a wall, and stump into the street, some driver found parking for his van, protected from a string of passing car. 

I venture past Greek ruins, hewn stone arches. Until. The Orthodox Jews roamed the Western Wall, like a calling card. I approached, meddling in the crowds dispersed in the courtyard. I’m not at my best, feeling exposure, to glance around, but I seem invisible to the crowds. I joined alongside the nodding and reciting prayers. 

With the sun, Helios, bathing the courtyard behind me, my eyes wide open at the joint between those ancient blocks, giant hands had to embed without mortar. Baffled, and nervous, from my seven star diary, I brought to light Yael’s piece of fold paper — ‘_her secret not for me to rear._’ I fold, and fold, until small as a pencil, stiff as carton and slipped into the joint, caulking a void among other prayers already tucked away. 

From my vantage point, my body a nest of ants, my eyes shifting, I slink away, aware of my exterior appearance calm as the soft breeze, letting myself out of the courtyard.

Floating in my seat, a message triggered in mind: ‘_our flight has initiated its descent.'_’ interrupting the persistent doodling in my mind, resurfacing the courteous Israeli security officer that I was being interrogated with, “Who have you visited?” His voice echoed in my head. 

The Weitzman women had slipped from mind. By now I stretched and wiggled in my seat, glancing out the porthole, at the blues of the Atlantic Ocean. Surfs drew the coastal contours. The captain’s voice filled the cabin: “We’re about to land at JFK international airport.”