Israeli Jets scream up the Syrian border, occasionally erupting in bangs that mark the speed of sound. The dull noise of tank artillery exercises shudder across the incongruous countryside. Boom. Boom. Boom. We drive in between barbed wire fences, and signs that read ‘Danger!’ and below that, ‘Mines’. Our view of the beautiful flowers and endless fields that stretch up towards snowy mountains is diminished in the traffic of 20 armed vehicles sporting mounted turrets and other tools of death. As we crest the edge of the border at Mount Bental, we squint towards Damascus, a mere 60 kilometers away. Here we notice another, lower, booming noise echoing towards us. Black smoke billows lazily in the distance. UN buildings mingle with abandoned Syrian houses, a 5 minute drive away.
(Owner of our hotel, Mowis,)“Constant tension in Israel, especially North Israel……One becomes addicted to the news, because there always is news. New news, as in the news you see 30 minutes later is different from the news you’ve just heard. You want to be in the know, but you also just want to live your life. How to live if you are always scared? So you let go until the next missile comes.”
“Here in Israel, we live for the day. We never know when we’ll have to shut down the hotel for a few days, a week, a month… or if we’ll be bombed. We cannot live in fear, so we live in the moment–Occasionally you hear a siren, and seconds later….boom! Sometimes you have 30 seconds. Sometimes a minute. You never know…”
–Every new house built in Israel needs to have a bunker (made out of metal and cement at least 30 cm thick) equipped with at least 6 hours worth of food and water, as well as gas masks. However, most Israeli’s find dual purposes for them, and Mowis’s son plays the drums down there because it is completely soundproof.
“I have been through five wars since I was born. I remember when I was two and my mother shoved me into the toilet tank during one of the many wars, to protect me from the bombs. Nowadays I hear the sirens and I have to sprint to wake up my kids and rush them down to the shelter. This—-this is not fun. Several years ago I told myself: it is time to move on, and I moved to the south of France—but I was rejected [by the culture]. I wanted to talk to my neighbor but he wanted to keep to himself. It was not like Israel, I couldn’t understand. I went to the U.S., and that didn’t work either.”
Coming from a Greek Orthodox family that has lived there for 5 generations, life in Israel hasn’t been the easiest path either. The family chose the place because it is holy land for Christians too. He has two things pitted against him. A) his religion, and B) never having been allowed by his parents to serve in the military. This is worse than it sounds, because serving in the military is mandatory for Jews that make up the vast majority of the country, (unless you can find a good enough excuse –usually just the extremely religious Jewish scholars get out of it) so he was suddenly isolated from his friends. His road is also harder because many employers would look into one’s military profile to get a sense of their work ethic, etc.– he had no profile.
Despite all odds, Mowis stayed in the Golan, opened a popular restaurant, created a hotel block above it (to meet interesting people), and greets his guests with a smile each morning.
– Leland
The Brighams Of Baltimore 