--- -Selection from the book -- designed by Rina Vardi author artist and poet------ ---------------------------- - Poetry - -d |
||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
Buy from
| ||||||||||||
|
 |
|---|
--- an autobiography by Renate
---- It is 1933, and Eretz Israel, which the British call Palestine, is for the better part, a hot, dry and desolate place
----of desert and swamps. An inhospitable, neglected part of the world, harbouring amongst others things, several
----severe ailments such as malaria, dysentery, typhoid and trachoma: a land in waiting for-those who yearn to
----reclaim her.
----Scantily dispersed here and there, often bordered by fruit-bearing cactus and low stonewalls, are some small and
----poor Arab Falach villages. Their box-like houses, attached to each other, piled up or stuck to the side of a hill or -----------mountain,
as the terrain dictates, merge into their surroundings. Houses, no larger than a couple of rooms at
----most and accommodating man and beast alike, built from sun-dried bricks of local soil mixed with straw, glisten
----in the sun from the drying hay on their flat roof tops. They have neither kitchens nor conveniences, and water is
----carried in large clay vessels from the local well, or river, on the heads of their-beautiful, yet always pregnant
----women...
***
----Even-Yehuda is our home now, and it is one year old; a small settlement in the centre of the Israeli plains of
----Shfelat Hasharon not far from the Arab township of Tul-karem. Around us, and for as far as the eye can see,
----the land is reddish and virgin with not a tree in sight, yet alive with constantly flying sand, ants, flies,
----cockroaches and many other insects of the sub-tropical climate. Complementing these, and in the not so far
----distance, are the malaria-carrying mosquitoes that make their home in the many existing swamps.
------ 
---------------- - ------Our home -------------------- Dad's clinic in build - the only bulding...
----Like all our neighbours we live in a large converted wooden crate, normally used for transporting furniture and
----household goods around the world. Their wooden planks, covered in black-tarred sheathing to shield them from
----seawater, make our home hot like a furnace. We have one room, a floor consisting of one of the crate's walls, and
----a-kitchen which is just a designated corner in the room with no sink or water. There, our few saucepans and
----utensils -hang on nails hammered into the crate's wall, and Mum has a single-flame kerosene burner called a
----Primus to cook on. It consists of a brass container in the shape of a round bread loaf with a pump protruding
----from its side, and a hollow vertical tube from its centre. At the top of this tube is a lighting mechanism with a
----small metal saucer underneath. This is filled with methylated spirits, which is then fired and pumped to get the
----thing going. Over the lighting mechanism is a small, flat, rounded piece of metal on which the saucepans are
----precariously balanced. It is always hard to light, often clogs, and is liable to explode. And when we are all down
----with malaria and Mother has a sudden violent attack of it while boiling laundry on the Primus, she gets burnt,
-