written April 2018

My memory is like an ocean.
Vast and deep. Infinite.
Collecting and containing every drop of water. I forget no one and nothing.

Once I lost all my money in Jerusalem
And had to get by bus to Qiryat Shmona,
with the rest of the money Avi had given to me
In Afula I did not know how to move on. Not one shekel left. And I was hungry.
A Jewish teenager helped me out with some shekelim. And an Arab woman fed me
With delicacies from Ramallah. All along the way further up into the north. Like a mother.

I will never forget how we tried to talk to each other
In broken Hebrew
Sign language
And sometimes all we could do
Was smile at each other.

By Judit