chapter 9

chapter 9 – The shortest day of the year

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Suddenly, in a middle of a narrow snack bar in the Raanana industrial zone the king mentioned first time the tribe. Or at least it was the first time I noticed it. “Soon there is a meeting of the tribe.” He said out of his cider can “we need to go back visit the capitol.”

“We’re going back to Jerusalem?” I asked

“Sinai.”

There is a limit to some stuff I can manipulate without the salads dripping all over my clothes. I laid the Pita with some sorrow on the counter. “I’m listening” I said. He stared at me with a kind smile with no intention to add initially any word. We stood quietly for a while until the hard working Stewart cleaned my Pita into the garbage.

“Your royalty” I moaned “Can I have a journalist conference?”

“Go ahead”

“When you say the tribe you don’t mean Badulina?”

“No”

“Will it be too much to ask the name of the tribe?”

“No”

“What is the name of the tribe?”

“It doesn’t have a name.”

“Where is the tribe from?”

“It has a branch here like any other place in the word.”

“And the capitol of the Israeli branch is Sinai?”

“More or less”

“And the fact that Sinai is outside Israel borders?”

“In our map there is no border line.”

“Our? Are you and the queen members of the tribe?”

“You too of course we have an important meeting in the shortest day of the year that is coming soon. I want to get for the preparation, one week before the longest night.”

But when we arrived Sinai nothing happened and the tribe wasn’t mentioned all week. The king continued behaves like a king, the queen like a queen and everyone gave them royalty respect as usual.

Thanks to them I got to eat meals of plenty see-fruits and to see a Ramadan fist in a tent in the mountain. The shortest day came closer to an end and I still didn’t see any sight for any preparation of any tribe. Frankly I even didn’t see the king and queen all day. They went traveling in the morning and never came back. About 4 pm the sun was gone behind the mountains. Yuval, long tiny young person, played all day on the beach next to me with clay and send colors of Sinai and built spiral Cactus’s. Sima that won her the name “Mother Sima” asked me if I know when they will return. She arrived with us in the same cab from Tabba last week with Moran her daughter. All the way she wouldn’t say a word. In the first evenings she was the weirdest bird in Sinai, with high heels and make up, clanging to Moran like a body guard. Today Moran is not around and Sima seems to the new arrivals as if she was here a half year already. In the little Bedouin kitchen of the restaurant she managed to bake a cake “Cream Snit” she declare like a waiters in Kapulski . I inform her I don’t know where the royal couple is but if I know them they will arrive now at sunset.

“Riding horses” she accomplished my words.

“If there were any horses around” I laughed.

“There are” she says and point beyond my shoulder to the far south beach. They arrived out from the water riding two brown horses passing the big rocks. Behind them an Egyptian child was riding as well. They rode toward us and then departed the horses. “I feel like having sweets now” said the king and wrinkled her forehead “I feel like…”

“Let me guess” I said.

The queen didn’t hear me “Cream Snit - that’s what I want.”

The cream snit as for a Badulinian costume – which I learned to like so much- was the appetizer. Mother Sima made lots and in short time, from all direction, came almost whoever lives on the beach and some represents from the beach beyond the north hill. Adel a Bedouin Egyptian from El-Arish that was discovered as a natural born massage specialist light a fire. Yuval lighted candles in different curves of his Cactus. Once we finished licking our fingers inspired by the queen to do so there was a large group around the fire.

“Perhaps we can introduce our names?” asked Mother Sima.

Mother Sima owns a few social advantages because of her age and title.

No one expected her to be cool. The round went on with large breaks all night.

In the meantime there were food, music, chatting, and silence.

Kabir, a giant black gentle dog was sitting at her royalty laps when Tara introduces herself to anyone who didn’t meet her yet.

“I was born at the 60^th in Finland to a hippie 16 years old mother. At 3 year old I dream about Dolphin first time. At my seventh birthday I was swimming with Dolphins in Hawaii. Ever since, I swim and dance with Dolphins as same as I do with people and I love dancing. I travel the world cost to cost. Painting my experiences on silk and sell it to galleries in Scandinavia. Its wired but I know many people like me that their life are around Dolphins and they make a living from it easily; Group guides, music performers, movies, Dolphin ornaments, the rest of it. In my childhood my mother had to ask friends to look all over America for Dolphin dolls and suddenly they are everywhere; notepads, business cards, dishes. The world wants more and more Dolphins. Now I’m in Sinai wondering between the Dolphins of the Eilat’s Reef to the Abdalla’s Dolphin from Sinai.

“I heard you can’t swim with it now” said Yuval “that it had a baby few days ago.”

“That is right but this morning Mother Sima was swimming with it.

Mother Sima wore today a white Bedouin dress that Moran bought for her few days ago. A week ago you couldn’t even imagine her sitting like this peacefully when Moran isn’t around. More then that, the last time they saw each other today was before Moran went to travel with a companion who is older then her in eight years. “We drove together to see the Dolphin” continued Tara, “a little after Mother Sima arrived the Dolphin came close to cost and started noising. Abdalla said that she request Mother Sima to come toward her and the baby. They played together almost an hour. Mother Sima is the only person that touched the new infant and I set on the send and drew the three of them.”

“And who are you?” asked Mother Sima.

“I’m Yuval” He played with the fire “and I do attempt to live in Israel as an adult. I was raised in a Kibbutz, left few months ago and started working at Art therapy in a settlement at the north. Young people with down symptom or other limitations.”

“Can you live from it?” Mother Sima asked.

“Not only me. Them as well. We make plates and bowls; sell them in Shenkin Street and in Mishkenot Shaananim. 28 people, but its growing.”

Tara thought a song from Finland for Christmas. The Bedouins were sitting around a fire of their own breaking the daily fest with sweet hot tea.

Yuval lightened the Cactus with leftover from Hanukah candles. Someone asked the queen to present herself and she told only that her favorite color is Lilac.

Chief - a new groupie of the queen continued after her: “I was born with another name, Steve, In LA and until 2 years ago I had a minor business there. But I got to work a lot with Hollywood to give them professional services. One day I read in a science magazine something about an ancient shrine in Peru that his structure doesn’t similar to any other thing in the world. The walls are rounded filled with exists but it makes no sense. Part of the Archeologists assumes that there were moon rituals there, part of them claim spring celebrations. I watched the pictures. Something in that grabbed me as if I know the place and suddenly I new the solution to this riddle. I decided to do a journey movie. I don’t have a formal history of a producer but whoever lives in LA is already half movie person and I know all the right people, I know how it works from inside , I see a lot of movies and I didn’t miss money so I found producers and arranged a journey movie to Peru with a bunch of travelers . We had 2 weeks from the first full moon of the spring until the next one, to clime the shrine. Some of us by foot some on Lamas. Since you walk a lot every day the sleeping hour is really early, just a little after sunset. We star with energies of the full moon but two days later starts couple weeks of moonless nights. Everyone focus on the night we shall arrive the shrine with the new born moon. The track is harder then we expected and we reach there merely broken.

Part of the production was to fill all the space in the walls with glass. That was part of my guessing, what the archeologists missed that the wall survived but the glass didn’t. The second part was that this entire shrine was built for one night of the year the birth of the first spring’s moon. We all laid on carpets at the shrine watching the big elliptic window in the sealing waiting for the dark. The color of the sky changed from blue to purple, orange, red, Dark blue and then the magic happens. Suddenly into the transparent seal float a tiny white smile, the most encouraging smile you can imagin and when it arrives the center of the canopy there are couple of dots reflecting above it- eyes. And in all the glasses at all the halls the same painting is reflecting, reflects of reflects, uncountable perfect signs are projected all over the shrine on all of us, like a wild trip. It continued several minutes but the influence on all of us is like magic medicine. I didn’t forget it until today and I’m not the only one I am now in Christmas vacation in Sinai while my agent gather generous offers from the American TV. I put up a production company named: The cosmic smile.”

Mother Sima said: “Every one here knows me, for a while, I was kind of a mother all of you, but no one knows why I’m here today. Moran kidnapped me. Moran is my eyes. There was no single night I let her sleep outdoor, not even for the school annual trip. I am scared to death for her. Suddenly, a week ago, she came to me with her bag packed and bus ticket to Eilat and informed me she is going to Sinai. She is only 16 you know. The bus travels at midnight and if I want to come guarding her she has a bus ticket for me as well. It didn’t help to argue – I packed and went out with her. My husband, a taxi driver, was on the night shift. I didn’t tell him nothing, just left him a note; ‘I’m on vacation’. Sinai was the most abroad Moran could find for us but she didn’t do it for me. I don’t know if Moran told anybody here – my husband is biting me. I keep tell her that it’s not so horrible that this his way of loving me, that it’s the same way my father loved my mother and my grandfather with grandmother and all the sisters as well- that is the way it is. It doesn’t matter. There are two sides to this coin but I never let him raise his hands on Moran. When we left Moran announced me she is not coming back from Sinai unless I vow to her that no one hits me anymore. How can I swear on thing like that? I kept saying to her, but now I can. No one is touching me anymore. You can’t believe how someone can live all her life and know so little about universe. I see you. For you everything is possible; you do what you feel like, wear Kafiya on your heads, paint on your bodies, get nude tan, hanging half a year in India with a backpack. It wasn’t like that for me, everyone decided for me and for my husband, everyone. His father, the army, the boss, the government, the Rabbi, He had to bit me and I had to be silence. Everyone I knew lived like that without choosing. And all I needed was this one week in Sinai. I feel like 38 years someone else lived in my body, someone strange to me, someone that no one can hurt, someone the Dolphins wants to swim with. Moran saved my life and hers and the children that she will have. Its done.”

Later that night the king spoke. “Before there was Christmas or Chanukah or Ramadan, before someone turned faith into religion, before there were books, before electricity – the winters were much more black and cold then what we can imagine. Every day was darkened earlier, life synced into eternal darkness. People sat at their homes tried to get warm, try to believe that the sun will return, that it is not un-reversible.

And so, at all the continents, to all cultures, was this holiday of the shortest day of the year, the longest night. At that day people gathered, light many candles or fire, gave gifts, drunk and ate and sang together. The winter not yet finished but this is the day: starting today the days will be longer slowly and every day there will be more seconds of sun and the sunrise will come earlier and the sunset will delay a while and in this holiday communities met just to light fire and say: hang on! The light comes back to life; the deepest darkness is behind us.”

Out of his sleep Kabir moaned deeply. Her royalty pet his ear and the king continued: “We, the human being, passed a similar road; we are in the climate of a cold long winter. Lots of people are afraid that the end of the world is coming, a nuclear disaster, an ecologic holocaust, religious prophecies about distraction; the feeling in the main stream is that the winter that fell upon humanity is un-reversible. But it’s a mistake: the winter is a season as well – a short one considering our history and the shortest day is behind us. All over the world there is an new generation that is growing, the spring generation and meanwhile it’s hard to see it if you look at the old places. The clouds and the shadows are still hiding it and the winter doesn’t finish in one day but all over the planet more and more candles are lighting. All of us here around that fire belong to a tribe, the spring tribe. Every candle each one of you is lighting – with clay, painting of Dolphins, Moran and Mother Sima, A journalist, a movies man and hundred thousand people – you are lighting the first candles. Every day one more candle will light; there will be some more light. Now at that night all over the world people of our tribe are gathered around the fire and ovens and candles and strength each other. That is one of the important things right now: not to get confused and think that we are minority that gone nuts. We are making a new line. It doesn’t matter if when you are in the centre of the old society every one tells you are naïve or psychos; these are the old shadows, a snake skin, under it there is a new healthy skin. Next year you shall find yourself more and more in the center of the culture.”

Everyone listened silently accept the journalist that asked out of duty: “Your royalty, May I raise some doubts? Here in Sinai or India or even in Badulina, it’s very seductive to believe in what you tell but most of the world hasn’t changed: money, politics, power, pollution; business as usual.”

The king smiled: “Nothing is the same, that’s an illusion because the communication is always delayed few years. Old clouds and shadows. But look around: the war age, hot or cold one, is coming to an end.

America and Russia divided the entire Atlas to a war zone – that is finish. Almost all the dictators of South America and Africa became democrats, how many wars there are in the world today? Even at your place the most ancient field is war field, the wars are over but it takes you some time to feel it. And the environment? In the governments of the most industrial countries of the world there are ministers of environment’s quality. Recycle garbage. Every child learns at school about environment’s quality as they were teaching to prey in the old times. The winter is still here but the longest night is behind us and politics and governments will not seas to exist but their meaning in our life will shrink, as same as the Vatican and the Pope are still existing but their influence is much less and more symbolic.

“But your majesty,” continued the reporter “Why do you think that most people are going to change their life style?”

“Because they already do, they have no choice. The generation that develops now is very exceptional. The media call us the X generation, with contempt. They say we carry no ideals that we have no goal to fight for. But you should know – a generation with no goals to fight for is a generation that won’t fight. It isn’t so bad to begin with. The say we are spoiled, rotten, sits with remote controls or computers. An entire generation, from London Bombay is sitting in front of the TV with tenth channels from all over. There is no main information resource. Each one must choose what kind of reality he wishes to live in, what is the recipe: football? News? MTV? A Program about whales? Something funny? Something scary? There is no Mainstream like Mother Sima had. Once there was a pointing hand, one, two, three, many of them, and now so many that the individual gain the control back. I sit with my remote control or with the computer’s mouse across the internet. Each individual is a king; there is no collective passive consuming. There is no traditional way to do things, that the way it is. Yuval can play with clay all day, not to finish high school and become a teacher, change the life of many youngsters few hundred family parts and to change cultural perceptions about people that use to be a society burden. Chief might as well decide one day that he feel like going to Peru chasing the moon’s smile and TV channels will run after his story. Tara swims every day with Dolphins and the universe is generously finance her, since what she is doing is healing the people. And when you need, some journalist are popping up. So does the movies directors and the authors that will pass on this story. For Moran there is no “That’s it”. She belongs already to a generation that grew with plenty alternatives. She is aware that if any man bits her it not from lack of choice but from her selection and that changes everything.”

“Your royalty I have no more space on the page. What kind of change are you talking about?”

“You know me enough to guess. I’m talking about transaction from victim’s culture of passive creatures to king’s culture with limitless personal freedom of choice. During the winter we hide deeper behind walls, disconnected from the universe, from nature from ourselves. Now the days start to get longer and one after another people are going out, take of their uniforms, break walls, and ignore borders. By the end of that process we shall stand outdoor at light. You are asking what we shall see. I can answer – what you paint is what you shall see.”

I can’t remember myself falling asleep. I do remember waking up to the orange light of the sunrise above Saudi Arabia Mountains, curdles alone with Kabir on the beach.

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