I want to tell you about the experiences, the words, the opaque tears, the translucent smiles, the wrinkles on my hands. But I can’t. I want to take all my deepest fears and struggles and pour them onto this page. But I can’t. You cannot clarify your world through undressing yourself with words. You can only make another soul understand your home through sprinkling insight with letters, with honesty that pours down one’s throat like honey. And I am going to create a door into a piece of my world, allowing the warmth of its sunlight to embrace you gently.
My universe can be condensed by describing a place I visited. The home of my ancestors. A universe different from ours – one where there were barriers.
I visited this land when the air tasted and looked like dark chocolate, crumbled into grains and depleted of moisture. I was in the Negev Desert, at 1 o’clock, before dawn. Before me stood Masada, a mountain that was once someone’s world, and I believe this moment, as I carve these words onto this page, is mine.
Centuries upon centuries ago, a group of my people, Jews, fled onto the peak of this desert mountain and created an entire civilization without descending. They were a string of families escaping Roman