I'm standing alone on a small hill near my home.
The cool morning wind washes over my skin and fills my lungs. The sun is just peeking
over the surrounding hills, and my large white furry dog, Django is sitting alert at my side. My
terrier, Lucky, leaps like a small brown rabbit, through the dense green growth. The grey,
black, and yellow speckled rocks, spotted with pink cyclamen, red anemone and purple,
pink, white and yellow wild flowers of Israel whose names I haven't yet learned.
This is where I go almost every morning to pray, meditate, and expand my consciousness by connecting to the source of this magnificent beauty. I am convinced that this hill was
put here just for me. I feel safe and held here by a higher Being of love and truth. My mind
and heart open and join with every other being alive on this complex planet of ours. I
overflow with gratitude, joy, and often almost in the same moment, with tears of pain and
sadness for so, so many of us who are suffering, confused and in pain.
This hill, my hill, is where I expose my soul to my Creator, and put in my request for the
kind of day I want to have. I express deep gratitude for the power of free will. For the
choice of how to start my day. For the power to choose my thoughts and desires. I have
experienced how powerful my thoughts are when I harness and focus them.
Django's white ears suddenly perk, and his nose shifts and points to a tiny dot in the
distance. Perhaps a deer, or a jackel, I think. Lucky has stopped leaping and is also
staring at the same tiny dot, which is now moving closer. I can hear now, what alerted
them; a faint haunting wail, the cry of a wounded animal. I wait for D'jango and Lucky to
bark, but they sit by my side silent, alert, watching the dot move toward us. Perhaps it is a
cat. Cats can sound so human.
I can see now that it is not an animal, but a person, running, straight towards us.
Sometimes I encounter other people out here on my hill. There are the regulars: a teenage
boy who comes here to walk his dog almost every morning, and the man with the tallis bag
over his shoulder who walks quickly by me to his hill, or his tree, in the distance, to pray.
There are Arab laborers building houses nearby, who sometimes come up on the hill as
well.
This person is none of the regulars. As she approaches I can see now that it is a child, a
girl, in a torn dirty dress. and she is running, wailing, right at me. Her face is twisted in
terror and she is racing forward over the rocks and bushes, faster than seems possible on
the uneven ground. She doesn't seem to see me, or my dogs, and she doesn't slow down.
Then she is upon us and I cry out in pain as her head cracks against my pelvis and we both fall to the ground. I feel my head hit a rock and I try not to cry out again, aware that I could easily have cracked my head open. As I gasp to regain my breath, I feel the child's nails clawing painfully at my arms,
grabbing, digging into me. She is still screaming, and I wonder at how she can run and
scream at the same time. I can't move or breathe well, and I am flat on my back with the
child on top of me.
I let myself think for a second that she must belong to the
Bedouin family who graze their sheep on the other side of my hill in the spring and
summer. I have never seen a child this terrified I think, and then I admit to myself that, no, actually, I have. I recognize this child and I have seen her before many times, although it is hard to admit. I sit up carefully, and hold her, trying to ignore the pain, trying to breathe, and
process the agony in my pelvis, and the agonized desperate child in my arms. Her hair is
matted and her dressed, streaked with dried blood, is so old and worn I can barely see
what color it once was. My maternal instinct kicks in and I hold her small rigid body close
and try to calm her.
"Sh...sh...sh...sh...sh..." I rock her, and I make the soothing noise mothers make when
trying to calm a screaming, hysterical baby.
She continues to cry and wail and claw. She doesn't seem to see me. She won't release her grip on my forearms. We sit there on the ground together, for the next few hours. It takes her that long to calm
down, to stop screaming and focus her eyes. I try to breathe, and stay with her in her pain,
to breathe through my own pain as I did in childbirth, and to remind myself how much
patience it takes to help children who are this badly hurt and scared.
I have done it before and I can do it again. I have been blessed with a special strength just
for these moments.
When she finally begins to quiet down, I tell her that I understand why she ran to me now.
I know it is because of the book I just published about her. I tell her,
"Precious child, you can finally, really, trust me. I wrote down your story in a
book that people are reading now. You are not dead, little girl, even though your family
and their rabbis tried with all of their might to make you and your story die and disappear.
You can stop running now, because you are finally here in the present, together with me.
You do exist, and you will always exist, long after we are both gone, because there is a
book documenting what happened to you. You matter, and what you went through matters! I
will hold you and protect you forever. You are here for a reason. Your story is a gift of
healing to the world."
She finally calms down enough to hear me, and to begin to relax. It seems like days
before we can get up and hobble home together. At home she allows me to clean her up and
show her how beautiful and safe the world really is now. She goes everywhere with me now. Sometimes still clinging, but more often than not, looking
curiously out from the safety of my arms, and engaging with her new safe reality of
existence and purpose. We have both healed from our experience, but sometimes, when there is an anniversary, we still need to cry together for all of the loss. The scars are still visible and may
always be there. I may always carry faint marks on my arms, and a slight pain in my pelvis when I move the wrong way, and invisible scars on my heart and soul that remind me what it felt like to be her.
