Hunters

He rode his beautiful dirty black mountain bike over to "old" student street in Utopia for a 60 cent dumpling lunch. Delicious.

He prefers the "old" to the boring "new" commercial student campus street. He enjoys mature green leafy trees filled with small wild sparrows darting down to feed in garden patches. He savors a wide blue sky and orphaned clouds.

He always sits outside swallowing sky, well removed from blaring omnipresent bland TV soap operas and cell phone addicted youth.

"Text me baby! Reveal your passion in 5,000 characters. Say things with electronic letters and symbols you'd never find the courage to speak out loud. Your silence is deafening! Hold my hand.

"Better yet, when we walk covered in our innocent adolescent shyness, slowly rub your elbow against my skin so I know you care, reveal your shy desire with deference and longing. Our skin pours hormonal activity into the possibility we may eventually dance. Text me baby!"

A boy approached the table.

"May I sit here?"
"Sure."
"May I talk with you?"
"Sure. You talk and I listen."
"I don't know what to say."
"You will think of something. You are developing an English mind."
"Yes, maybe."

"What's your name?"
"Francis."
"That's a great name."
"All the good English names were taken by my classmates. I found it in the dictionary."
"I see. It's a fine and strong name. My name is Nature."

"Oh. What's that for?" he said, gesturing at my worn Moleskine notebook.
"I am a writer. I make notes when I travel."
"Where are you going?"
"Here."
"I like to travel," he said. "I am a hunter of foreign teachers."

I smelled raw instinct. "Interesting. How do you hunt?" 
"Do you know the gate near the teachers' apartments?"

This place was surrounded by walls, sleeping guards and gates.

"Yes."
"Well, I go there and wait. When a teacher comes out I talk to them while we walk. Then, when they say good-bye I return to the gate and wait for another teacher."
"You are a clever hunter."
"Maybe. But I don't know what to say."

"Talk about the weather."
"We don't talk about the weather here. We ask people if they have eaten."
"I know," I said, pointing at his noodles and sliced vegetables. "Your delicious food is getting cold."

Silence welcomed two hunters.

A Little Zen Tale

Only the dead know the end of war. - Plato

*

“We storytellers, enchanters and teachers,” said Omar, “know the world is made of stories and not atoms. Here’s one for your history. Or is that hiss-tree said the snake?”

Somebody told a story about somebody telling a story in a story.

“It came to pass an old woman seer who shared the beauty, magic and mystery of life with friends and strangers took a pencil in her bone white hand on a cold, snowy evening and looked into flames of creation. Embers smoldered in front of her crystal glass. She dreamed she loved a blind stranger. Her friend and lover were spirit guides, blind shooting stars. They flew away from their village with a tribe of survivors.

“They left behind skeptics, cynics, frauds, charlatans, liars, cheats, fools, scoundrels, knaves, demons, and ghost shadows. They dissolved taxicab drivers, beauticians, janitors, doctors, and lawyers, Indian chiefs, cooks, nurses, busboys, lackeys of every sort of makeup and verifiable description including animal trainers and circus performers.

“They moved through the wilderness of their youth, following Raven, their spirit guardian. They carried provisions to satisfy hunger, thirst and desire. They never knew, appreciated or realized desire until they were tricked into eating a piece of fruit. They scattered seeds at an oasis in the desert.”

“What happens next Omar?” said a kid.

“It was raining in the desert before Christmas as Gulf Air Flight 212 departed Kuwait. We encountered gray turbulence in neutral airspace where Islamic law against the consumption of alcoholic beverages had no influence. I savored a cold Carlsberg. By Carlsberg numero dos we were at 25,000 feet in blue sky and white thunderheads. Airmobile again.

"In Bahrain I collected a visa stamp, took a cab to the Diplomat Hotel and room 621 with an excellent view of the aquamarine Gulf and new civic center construction project. I opened windows, an ice cold beer, calibrated rock and roll music on the radio and ordered a three-egg omelet with hash browns, whole-wheat toast complimented by thick Turkish coffee. A Filipino waitress in pink room service motif brought it up.

"The next afternoon I took Taxi #1 into Bubba Bahrain, a maze of haphazard streets. I bought vitamins at a pharmacy and escaped expensive shopping zones entering the old suq lined with herbs, spices, textiles, fruits, vegetables, secondhand watches, goats, sheep, brooms, tea and ancient emulations.

"From an inside secret pocket of a worn olive drab photographer’s vest, I pulled out a very small, simple and technically precise European designed 35mm rangefinder camera loaded with 125 ASA black and white film. A gift from gods of optical ingenuity. A well-designed tool. A work of art.

"I started with an image of a donkey’s head covered by a burlap feed bag to prevent attacks on unsuspecting humans. Down twisted alleys I wandered, shooting old men and women, trapping their spirits on negatives. Children’s faces wearing cartoon character masks with innocence preserved behind wide glowing eyes were captured forever. Delicate eroding architecture, thatched reeds on woven bamboo poles embedded in mud, iron grated windows and intricately carved balconies made of blue and white mosaics were threaded into a black canister.

"In early evening out of curiosity I stopped at a Persian carpet retailer to learn about his business. Over endless cups of tea he shared these facts.”

1. There is a difference between “expert” and “well knowledged (sic).”

2. Carpet making is based on tradition, history, quality and time. Takes 14 months for some carpets.

3. Design and a particular technique is required to produce a good quality carpet.

4. His carpets were woven and stored in a warehouse in Iran before being smuggled by dhow to a Dubai wholesaler. A buyer in Bahrain purchases them by the bundle paying a single price for the lot before shipping them to the shop.

5. Cotton costs BD (Bahraini dinar) 2/lb.

   Neck wool BD 7/lb.

   Silk BD 9/lb.

6. Good prices were available now with the recent devaluation of the Iranian Real.

7. One needs to be aware of specifics. Is it pure silk or combed wool? What is the precise number of knots per square inch?

“I thanked him and walked to the Dolmen Hotel, an old foreign oasis constructed for air crews. Interior pseudo classic Arabic architecture featured vaulted windows, wattle thatch and poles on low ceilings. Dave, from the Twin Cities, sat at the bar complaining about needing a third operation to correct poor metatarsal bones in his left foot. He said Saudi doctors messed him up twice so he came to Bahrain for, hopefully, a final operation.

“I saw three Filipino males have their right hands cut off in Riyadh for stealing,” he said, meaning Sharia law. “Justice is served every Friday at high noon in the town square. Authorities tied their arms down on boards to support the wrists.”

 “Amazing,” I said.

“Yes,” Dave said. “The multawa, an official, approached one man, flashed his sword into the air and severed his right hand off. He screamed. The multawa moved down the line doing his job. Another man carrying a blazing torch applied fire to the stump to cauterize the wound.”

“Lynnette, a 31-year old Filipino waitress at the Dolmen was pleasant, lonely and bored. After five years doing cashier work in Manila she found a job in Bahrain.

“My dream is to save money and buy a house back home.”

“Do you like it here?”

“Not really. The wages are poor, they give us lousy Indian food and there’s no social life.”

“Why’s that?”

“Hotel management locks us in at 7 p.m.”

“Sounds like slave labor. Been going on in the Gulf for a long time.”

“Well," she sighed, “it’s just a job. It's not forever.”

I wandered away.

“At happy hour, the Intercontinental Hotel was jammed with Arabs, English investment suits and punkers. I ordered a beer at the bar. A small Bahraini man crowded next to me started asking questions.

“Where are you from?”

“Everywhere. I am the mother of all grasshoppers.”

“What do you do?”

“I kill people. I'm a mercenary.”

“I don't believe you,” said his eyes. 

“Yes. I kill people with kindness. It’s a living. I am busy 24/7. It’s a job. It passes time. People pay good money for me to take care of their problem. I’m paid to clean up other people’s messes. No women or children.”

He wanted to know something about his life. I predicted his age, family history, occupation and future. He left me alone.

“Outside the Kuwait suq battered red and white rusting water trucks with chipped paint stood idle inside a wire compound leaking their loads into dust. Two solitary Bedouins sat on metal folding chairs with crushed plastic buckets and sacrosanct rags collecting dust near the Fifth Ring Road waiting for drivers needing a car wash. Waiting was their patient life in the desert, waiting for dusty cars, waiting for oil to be discovered below sand, waiting inside an omnipresent yellow haze swallowing everything.”

Weaving A Life, V1

Hagoshrim Kibbutz

We flew to Israel and tight security at Ben Gurion airport. Arrived at dawn, walked down stairs past soldiers, across the tarmac to a black van with open doors flanked by soldiers with machine guns. A man sat with his pistol on a desk. We showed him our passports. He checked for Arabic visas. He scrutinized our faces.

“Why are you coming to Israel?”

“To work in a kibbutz.”

“How much money do you have?”

“A couple of hundred dollars.”

“Do you have a return ticket?”

“Yes,” I said pulling out a ragged open ticket from Air Icelandic marked Chicago. He looked over our papers, opened an inkpad, hammered a stamp on a page, placed an entry visa in our passports and handed them back.

“Ok. You may go.”

We walked cross the tarmac, placed packs on a conveyor belt and followed a maze of chest high metal anti-bomb partitions. A female soldier scanned our luggage for explosives. She marked them with chalk, checked our papers, peered into my typewriter and waved us through.

We grabbed a bus into town past fields and industrial zones. We had an address for a kibbutz office.

“Welcome, or Shalom as we say here. My name is Sharim. We are pleased to have you come to Israel and volunteer to experience the beauty, joy and culture of living and working on a kibbutz.”

Bleary eyes looked at a map with colored pins showing settlements. “What are the pins for?” I asked.

“They designate types of kibbutz and locations.” Red, blue, yellow and green pins pricked a weathered map with a heavy concentration in the north.

“The red pins are religious kibitzes, the blue ones are agricultural farms, the green ones are primarily factories. Yellow pins designate combination farms near the border with Lebanon.”

“What kind of farms?” asked Joan.

”Oh, all kinds. Most produce their own food. They grow fruit and vegetables and have fish farms with a combined industrial production kibbutz operation.”

I pointed at a red pin up north. “What’s this one?”

“That’s Hagoshrim. It’s an old kibbutz. There are about 200 families, ten kilometers from the Lebanese border and twenty east of Syria.”

“How is the life on the kibbutz?” Joan asked.

“It’s straightforward,” he said. “Volunteers usually stay for six months. They are given a place to stay, meals and encouraged to join in the daily activities. They have duties on the kibbutz, usually from early morning to noon and then for a few hours in the afternoon. We organize cultural tours to parts of the country for volunteers. They meet many people from other countries while also gaining a deeper understanding of the Jewish faith. The experience makes a deep impact on many people’s lives.”

“Can we work on more than one kibbutz?”

“Yes. That’s possible after you stay and work the minimum of six months in one location.”

We chose Hagoshrim. He called the kibbutz and gave us bus fare and directions. We thanked him and went to the crowded central Egged national bus station. 

The bus skirted brown fields, lush green agriculture and desert wasteland. Fatigued soldiers with grease guns and collapsible stocks napped.

We passed tilled soil, fruit trees and villages. We bounced along awkward roads past the Sea of Galilee. A nervous girl, 23, twirled a yellow Kleenex into a knot with long red fingernails.

We rolled into Kiryat Shimona, a town of 20,000 in the north tucked into a corner near Lebanon and Syria. Famous for rocket attacks at night. Sounds familiar.

We hitched a ride on a fruit truck full of soldiers doing their two-year compulsory service passing ochre colored fields of fruit trees and olive orchards.

At Hagoshrim we registered, heard pre-induction volunteer procedures and were assigned separate sleeping quarters in basic army barracks from 1948. We sat in a well-manicured garden with flowers and fruit trees.

A thin gray haired man explained how their society worked.

“Welcome. Shalom. This is one of the oldest kibbutz in Israel. You will be assigned daily and weekly jobs by the volunteer coordinator. We are a multi-purpose kibbutz. Everything you see around you has been planted, grown, built and developed over the last twenty years. When my parents came here there was only desert and we were fighting wars against our enemies. We stayed. We dug the ground. We planted. Our parents had children and they built schools and bomb shelters.

"We are always ready to defend our land. Our families converted the desert into productive land. We grow fruits and vegetables, harvest them, keep some for our own consumption and sell in the market. We have fish farms providing a source of income. Everyone takes meals in the cafeteria, volunteers and families. It’s good food and you will not be hungry here. Work starts at 5:30 a.m. when it is cool. We take a midmorning break with lunch at 12:30. The afternoons are for personal activities although there are some afternoon assignments.

"Saturday is the Sabbath when no work is done. This is not a religious kibbutz, which means you have the choice of taking part in our ceremonies from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. In exchange for your labor you receive accommodations, clothing, food, free international postage and a small amount of payment in the form of a card which is used in the small store for essentials like toilet paper.”

“What kind of jobs do you have?” Joan asked.

“We are totally self sufficient. Volunteers work everywhere and do everything but pull guard duty. We take care of the children, staff the nursery, kitchens, and tend gardens and farms. It’s comprehensive.”

The kibbutz segregated children from parents and allowed visitation rights one night a week.

“Hey this is great,” I said to Joan walking to an old wooden building.

Joan was enthusiastic. “It’s not bad, plenty of sun. That’s probably why we start work so early in the morning. It must get pretty hot here in the afternoon."

Weaving A Life, Volume 2