Travel Log #39

The Jordan River on the Syrian/Lebanese Border

August 13-14, 2010

On many tours, we are taken atop, Ramot, "heights," mountains overlooking the landscape. From up there, the contours of the land are laid out and the patterns of settlement are easy to decipher.

"Wherever there are neighborhoods with red roofs, it's a Jewish town. Whenever they are flat and white and, usually, built along the natural contours of the land, it's an Arab town," the tour guides tell us. Jerusalem is the one exception--Jerusalem Stone and no red tile. When I first heard this, I filed it away as useful information.

View of the Galil over Yokneam

In retrospect, I can say that a lot of what goes on in the little space of land between the Mediterranean and the Jordan comes down to people yelling about a red roof. Some commission them, live under them. The red roof is their pride and glory, the realization of an impossible dream. It is the long-awaited reclamation of their long-lost land. Return.

Some wake up and look over the green and brown hills. They build the red roof. It is the symbol of their oppression, of what has been built atop land that once was theirs, over the plot where their home stood for generations. They still grasp the rusting key but it doesn't fit the door under the red roof.

Everyone yells for mercy--mercy for some space, some time, for a Homeland, for shelter from the political storm. Mercy for death and mercy for life. Souls bleed the summation of the human cocktail of emotion. Souls search for salvation, for a haven from genocide, for a Westernized democracy. Jewish souls, Muslim, Christian, Arab souls, souls of refugees and of foreign workers--all yell from under or above, looking in upon, or out from, for and against the red roof.

View of the Negev from Sde Boker

Climb a red roof: from the west, the sea. From the east, the mountains. From the desert, an empty landscape dotted with green kibbutzim--a vast vacuum of nothingness so full of dreams, anguish, God--gods--it's no wonder nothing else can fit.