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Poetry || SubmissionsThree easy pieces from Picnic Grounds by Oz ShelahTEL-AVIVIANS IN JERUSALEM All Jerusalemites are familiar with the anxious, lost look on the face of strangers - peeking out of their car windows, usually a couple, or a larger group - and their question, "How do we get out?" They long for the safety of their own merry city, where, as if in a bubble, they think they can forget where they really are, where the orthodox Jews know their place, and the Arabs obediently wash dishes in restaurants. We, who know our way through all the narrow alleys, as well as the wider winding streets and the recently bulldozed express-roads that cut through the mountainous slopes of our city at impossibly straight angles, know also that this sense of being trapped in a maze is the foundation, the very essence even, of Jerusalem. Therefore we direct the Tel-Avivians deeper in, closer to the heart of the city. HELP On the flight from Bangkok to Delhi we sat next to a woman whose parents, a year after her only brother's death in a car accident, went on vacation to France and left her alone. Grieving, she swallowed some pills and slept for a whole day, waking up with a piercing stomachache. A week later, when her parents came back, she did not tell them, and they were so insensitive as to remind her that Friday had been her brother's birthday, on which they had chosen to be away. Since that time, the woman told us and a nurse who was sitting in the next row, she makes sure to be away from Israel on her brother's birthday, as well as on her parents' birthdays, on her own birthday, and during major holidays. We tried to help by inviting her to dinner, to mark her brother's birthday and perhaps tell us more about him. But she said, with a crumpled face, that she would rather not come, that she hates being reminded of that date. She then moved to another seat, away from us. THE NIGHT SKY The night sky over a picnic ground near kibbutz Kiryat-'Anavim, where our uncle took us, was changed, different from the starlit sky under which he and his comrades had moved in on the site one night, put up fences, built shacks, and took turns patrolling. In his old age, our uncle, whom we loved to visit, collected aerial photographs of the area. With a magnifying glass, and intuition, he pointed out pastures and natural flowerbeds, donkeys, farmer children, olive groves, and even carrots, onions, and lettuces that grew scattered among the olives. So clear was visibility in the years before industrialization, before armored vehicles began grinding the desert sand, that even in winter it was never cloudy for more than a few days in a row. The sky under which a village was bombed out and later razed was not the same sky, over the ground, which was the same, where we had a picnic one dusty day. Oz Shelach was born in West Jerusalem in 1968, has been a journalist and editor for Israeli radio and magazines, and runs an online news service and art gallery at http://www.oznik.com. He currently lives in New York. Picnic Grounds is his book from City Lights, the venerable San Francisco publishing house and bookstore. Here's an interview with him And here's the City Lights item about his book. Today's Situation
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