Friday dawned cold and cloudy, but promised no rain after two rain filled weeks. I awoke earlier than my usual time as I was being picked up at 7.30 by a woman from a nearby village who had kindly offered to drive me to the junction where a bus was to pick us up. We also had to get military clearance as we were going up north.
This trip had been cancelled two weeks previously due to heavy rain and snow.
I signed up for "A Visit to Express Sympathy with Druze families whose sons had been killed in the present ongoing war." - an unwieldy title that is shorter in Hebrew. I knew it would not be an easy day, but I felt it was important.
The bus picked us up from our designated spot near Netanya railway station at 8.00 am. The bus was full - 50 people, men and women (mostly women.) Somewhere after Zichron Yaakov we were joined by a Druze professor, Dr. Rajah Faraj. He was to be our guide and our liaison with the families. He is a Druze Professor of Middle East History and Educational Sociology. Our Druze bus driver handled the narrow village streets and roads that twisted and turned and climbed and descended with skill and aplomb. It was a relief to me that I didn't have to be concerned about dangerous driving conditions, although some of the women sitting near me did gasp on each sharp turn,, of which there were many.
The Galilee after the rains is incredibly beautiful - mountainous, lush green, almond trees just starting to blossom, olive groves, stone houses on cobbled streets. I have written about this before, Israel is a beautiful country, and the geography is so varied, as is the flora, the vegetation, the climate. Its people are varied, different customs, different manners of worship, different clothes, different food - so fascinating, and so very very sad. This land has been fought over, and fought in, and fought on, for centuries.
We paid our respects to three families, in the Druze way of mourning. We felt the commonality of losing children in wars. Parents are parents, mothers are mothers, fathers are fathers. We all grieve together and long for an end. The least we can do is hold each other, and this is what we did.
