Finding Home

It was October 1968, (according to the Gregorian calendar) Claire sat on the edge of her bed preparing to write a letter to her parents in England. She ran her fingers through her newly cropped brown hair thinking.

Her room made of plywood with a wooden frame was part of a series of huts with wooden verandas where the international volunteers were housed, built round a central courtyard, a long way down the hill from the Kibbutz members stone bungalows. The uniform of a kibbutz woman. Her army boots were discarded on the floor and she now wore plastic flip flops, shorts, and an army shirt with rolled up sleeves.

These quarters were formerly used as army barracks, and had two communal showers, one for women and one for men on opposite sides of the block.

There were two beds on either side of the room, a long low wooden bench covered with a colourful blanket under the window. A candle in a bottle covered in cascading multi-coloured candle was stood on a small coffee table in the middle of the room.

There was a big table next to the door with a mirror above it and on two shelves were tins of coffee, tea and sugar. Mugs and an electrical element usually found in an electric kettle, on a wire with a plug that was resting in a metal jug.

In the corner of the room was a large bag full of multi-coloured stones that Claire had gathered in the mountains of Eilat.

The wall behind her was covered with posters ‘The Who’, ‘The Animals’, ‘The Yardbirds’, the cover of ‘Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’ LP and an article from a magazine showing George Harrison with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in India.

On a small box next to her bed sat a book on Hatha Yoga and a book entitled “How to Philosophise by E.R. Emmet. Claire had underlined on page 72, Concepts of Liberty: the notions of positive and negative freedom: The freedom which consists in being one’s own master and the freedom which consists in not being prevented from choosing as I do by other men.

Claire started writing leaning on the writing pad on her bare sun tanned legs.

Dear Mummy and Daddy, thank you for the polo mints and the two cotton dresses you sent in your parcel. I’m sorry I didn’t thank you four the pound note you sent me in your last letter. It came in very handy.

Winter is drawing near in Israel. The nights are getting cooler and the days not quite so hot, but we still have to go through many ‘humsings’ or hot winds that blow in from the desert leaving us unbearably hot and clammy. After this the rains begin.

She glanced at her mother’s last letter on the bed next to her, her stomach muscles tensing with irritation; and continued writing.

Mummy, please don‘t be concerned or worried about me getting seriously involved with a boy from a strange background. I can judge what is right for me and as I have said before, I don’t really want to get serious with anyone again during the last six months on the kibbutz.

Claire paused and gazed out of the window at the clear blue sky. It was ironic that her mother had not allowed her to leave home at eighteen and share a flat in London with some girlfriends (just 30 minutes away on the tube from home) but she had been quite happy for her daughter to go and live in Israel for a year. I had better put a cheerful note now, she thought.

Did I tell you that we had an agricultural sports afternoon. I joined in with Maureen and Ruth. We were divided into four teams. Three men’s teams and one girl’s team. We had to race across a field with very long irrigation pipes; lock them together in a line across the field and then unlock them and race them back to the huge hangar where they are stored.

One of the women tore her blouse right across her chest and had to retire behind a water tank.

Claire’s attention was distracted from her letter by her room mate bursting into the room.

“Four new Mexicans have just arrived!” Maureen told Claire with great excitement,
 as she sat on her bed unlacing her boots.

Maureen had a pale oval face, small eyes framed by short frizzy hair. She had harshly plucked her eyebrows and was wearing tight khaki trousers. As she talked she had the habit of moving her hands around , her fingers close together as if they were glued and rubbing her mouth nervously. Her eyes sparkled, “and one of them is really cute,” she giggled. Claire was not impressed. She knew Maureen tended to get excited about any new male who showed up.

“Well I will see them at supper tonight I guess,” she answered coolly.

Maureen stood up and hopped from one foot to another.

“Don’t you want to go to their room and meet them?”

“No, give them a chance to settle in! They have only just arrived. I’m going to have a shower. See you later.”

She tossed her towel over her shoulder picked up a bundle of clean clothes and crossed the withered grass to the shower block.

She felt empty and dull, and had no expectations for the future. How can I shake off this depression? She thought. She wished she could get excited as easily as her friend. She could not cope being in a group the whole time, it made her lose track of her own individual thoughts.

She disrobed in the changing room, hung her towel on a hook next to the door and stood under a free shower.

It was a large square room with high windows and shower heads fitted around three walls. On a ledge above the showers, frogs sat and croaked looking through baleful eyes as the group of girls of all shapes and sizes yelping with pleasure and laughing as the cold water cooled them down. Refreshed from her shower wearing a blue cotton dress, Claire joined the rest of her group to walk up to the communal dining room across the campus where stone bungalows were scattered around a large grassy garden. They passed the children’s house, the meeting room and the chameleon sitting on his usual rock. They walked up the steps to the veranda and into the dining room where 100 other men, and women were queuing up for stew and salad.

Claire had her first glimpse of Iago sitting at a table parallel to hers. He was speaking loudly and making his friends laugh. He can’t be that funny Claire thought, perhaps it nerves.

She noticed that Iago had light brown hair, almond shaped eyes with thick eyelashes. His dark brown eyebrows met in the middle giving him and intense look.

He was very slim with a nervous energy that had an electrifying effect on the people around him.

There were many rules imposed by the managing committee of the communal farm. The strictest one being the right for members to eat with their families in a reasonably peaceful atmosphere.

“They’ll be told to keep their noise down soon,” she muttered.

“They certainly bit our heads off when we first arrived and raised our voices,“ Isabel complained. 

“Well the Uruguayans must be glad that there are more Spanish speaking people . You know no one likes the British here, especially as the group before us were so lazy,” Claire answered.

After the meal the Mexicans kept tightly in their own group and because of the language barrier Claire and her friends did not try and communicate with them. The next morning after breakfast of bread, cheese, hummus and a salad of juicy tomatoes, fresh green peppers, onions and lettuce. Claire and twenty other volunteers were shuttled to the citrus orchard in a flat trailer with wooden benches, pulled by a tractor. Claire sat with one leg crossed swinging over the other, smoking a Nadive, the free unfiltered cigarettes the Kibbutz gave the volunteers along with their monthly pocket money.

The tractor trundled two miles up the dusty old Roman road, passed the apple orchard where they had been pruning for three weeks, and then stopped at the end of a line of grapefruit trees. The word for orchard in Hebrew, is Pardes, from which we derive the English word paradise.

A pick up truck had deposited a large crate at the end of each row of trees ready to be filled with the golden fruit. Each shouldering a canvas bag the teenagers went in pairs to pick the grapefruit. Wearing thick gloves to protect her hands from the thorny branches and dodging the irrigation pipe, Claire gradually filled her bag enjoying the sharp citrus perfume, singing absent minded “I’m fixing a hole where the rain comes in to stop my mind from wondering”.

She stretched up to reach a very large grapefruit tempting because it was hard to get. She dropped it into the bag that started pulling painfully on her shoulder.

It was hot. The earth was hard and compact from the long dry season. Holding onto her cotton hat so it was not knocked off by the densely packed low hanging branches, Claire walked to a crate, opened the canvas bag from the bottom and let the grapefruits gently roll into it.

She noticed that the grapefruits the two Mexicans had deposited were unripe.

She called across to them.

“Your grapefruits are too small!”

“Too smole? Oh, too smaal.” Iago chuckled looking at her up and down.

Is he taking the piss ? Claire thought.

“I didn’t understand your English accent,” Iago explained. “So how do you know which kind to pick?”

“Look at the size of,” she hesitated, “the grapefruits I put in the crate,” Claire continued slowly and carefully.

At coffee break the twenty volunteers from France, England, Canada and Mexico gathered around the small fire that was heating up a pan of water and ground coffee, Iago had the chance to ask the usual questions. - Where are you from, Why are you here, Whilst they drank the unfiltered piping hot coffee, careful not to drink the dregs at the bottom of their cups.

Claire noticed that Iago had a downy beard starting to grow on his fine boned narrow chin. 

Over the next few weeks Claire saw how at home Iago was in his own skin, totally confident about who he was and what he believed in. He was also very generous. No alcohol or drugs were allowed on the Kibbutz but the shop sold chocolate and biscuits that most people would buy and hoard away for their use only

Iago bought a large tin and filled it up to the brim each week and offered the biscuits generously to whoever came into his room. He could be funny and entertaining and was a natural centre of attention. He was also a very attentive listener. Yago had brought a slim portable record player with him from Paris which was the reason most people gathered in his room. He played Bob Dylan, The Doors, who were popular in the States but had not made their name in England yet. And some obscure French records.

One morning Claire was sitting near her open door lacing up her boots when Iago passed by.

“Hold on. I’ll walk up with you,” she called out.

Yago sauntered across the room and casually picked up her book.

“What’s this about," he asked

“It’s a bit pathetic really, I didn’t get a chance to study philosophy at college so I’m reading this book. It’s got subjects to discuss at the end of each chapter.

“I studied Philosophy at school," Iago told her gently.

Claire beamed at him.

“Really? At school? We don’t study subjects like philosophy until university in England." 

"Well we do.”

He sat down on the bed next to her.

“I’ve also been taking lessons in white magic with a witch.”

“What’s that all about?” she asked him as they walked up to the dining hall.

Later that night she was dancing , losing herself in the music when Iago came and danced next to her. When she sat down Iago sat next to her looking into her eyes intensely.

“You are a wonderful dancer,” he told her and taking her hand in his he said.

“You are very sweet and kind.”

Tears welled up in Claire’s eyes.

“I’ve been hurt badly recently and I’m not very good company.”

Her heart was filled with pain. It would be a long time until she trusted anyone and who would want her? No education, no money, and a psyche that was a big frozen cube. She was at an all time low.

Now silent Claire had found someone she could share her opinions without being mocked. 

But then after months of depression Iago had entered her life. He lovingly encouraged her to talk about her feelings. It was very hard for her to break her lifelong habit of keeping her thoughts to herself but she knew it was time that she changed how ever difficult it would be.

She needed to learn how to communicate her feelings to other people. Now she she came to realise that what she said could be interesting to her friends.

She had been an island in a sea of people who could make contact with each other. She did not know how to reach out and talk about her feelings. She found it impossible to let the hard shell she had retreated into to protect herself from the harshness of life.

Iago made her feel alive again. He reached out and it was as if he had grabbed her innermost essence and pulled it out. And she knew she needed to come out of her shell

The weeks became months. Iago had been able to make friends with the Uruguayans and Paraguayans and was soon seen driving a tractor, an honour non of the other volunteers had been given. He had bridged the gap between volunteers and kibbutz members. He had a natural aptitude for languages and so he picked up Ivrit (modern Hebrew) as he went along. Not embarrassed to launch himself into conversations and make errors.

On December the 31 st Claire was completely absorbed in the New Year's Eve preparations for the celebration the European groups were planning. Israel would not celebrate the beginning of 1969 because according to the Hebrew Calendar the new year started in September and the date was 5739.

In the meeting hut someone had put fruit punch together perhaps with a secret ingredient and the kitchen had donated a large cake. Everyone fussed around putting up decorations and welcoming volunteers from other Kibbutzim. Iago and his group felt that they had been ignored.

“We’re going to have a better party!" He announced and went off with his buddies to build a bonfire in the middle of the courtyard.

By 11.30 Claire was bored with obligation of hosting the European party and suddenly realised that she did not want to stay in the meeting room.

She walked over to the fire where the Mexicans were playing guitars, singing and telling stories.

She sat next to Iago who put his arm around her.

“It's much more fun here," she told Iago who was smiling broadly.