The red sky of Israel

by Silvia Demita (Italy)

A leap into the unknown Israel

When you go to Israel for the first time you feel scared. It’s a fear you don’t talk about neither to others, not to yourself. — It’s the silent fear of the unknown — you tell yourself. Everybody knows, that fear becomes adrenaline and desire for knowledge; it eventually disappears. This is a story about humanity and violence. In a place where time flows slowly and intensely, where everything seems contradictory, where a Country splits in two and becomes struggle, tension, and resistance. You don’t know who is right and who is wrong. Jerusalem is full of kids, rifles, and sounds. I can feel time marked by prayers, background-noise like a persistent lamentation. But these sounds are symbols of life and freedom. The soldier sits in front of me. His rifle rests on his legs, it seems to point at me. His phone in one hand, a pita in the other. I look at him, then at the gun. My astonishment and his indifference are sitting at the same table. I’m impressed but he doesn’t know, he will never look back at me. In every corner of the old town kids are playing and running. — Who knows where they are going, toward which planets… —. In a square some kids play with garbage bags, they float the bags in the air; then they throw them against each other. Passing by them, one of the youngest kids hits me. He is a little Muhammad Ali, age 5. He keeps his punches up, waiting for me to react. He looks right into my eyes with a fighting attitude — he doesn’t seem a kid, he’s a man —. To continue our journey, we have to cross one of the many check points. You have to show them your ID and they can either let you go in or deprive your freedom of movement. Our smiles are convincing; we are free to go, no questions asked. Everything changes when we arrive in Palestine. On the bus to Bethlehem, we immediately understand that we can’t make any noise; it seems that noise scares them. People look different here, their eyes are full of something I never saw before. In Bethlehem my feelings follow the streets, set of ascents and descends. My emotions go up and down, swinging between joy and sorrow. The hostel is at the top of the hill. The hospitality is impressive. Nadal cooks for us a special chicken with rice and potato, we eat all together on the floor. The fifties stove keeps us warm; we sleep at night in the kitchen all together. It’s fun. Nadal is the same guy who later show us some videos of war. He tells us that some soldiers destroyed his house. Just a month ago. In telling this, he is calm, he smiles. I have a stomachache. It usually happens when I get absorbed into things. He doesn’t want to impress us, he just wants to tell his story. It’s hard. The day after, we decide to go to the separation wall; artists’ souls live here. In the streets, shopkeepers tell us that there were some protests in Jerusalem not long ago, and two young guys were killed in Hebron. All it happened in a very short time. They just want to warn us, they don’t seem worried. I can read in their eyes that it is nothing new to them. — It’s enough —. We want to go back to the hostel, we look for the bus stop. We soon discover that the street on Google maps no longer exists. To replace it, there’s the separation wall. Since 2002. Google maps doesn’t know it. Instead of that street, on the wall we read “Make hummus - not walls”. It’s getting dark. The sky of Israel is red, a kind I’ve never seen before. I look at it, I close my eyes — We don’t know —. None of us knows… A narrated war is not a war, imagined violence is not violence. You arrive in Israel, you feel scared but you don’t tell it yourself , not to others. You get out from Israel, you feel scared and you don’t tell it, again. You are away now, you are safe… and you forget.