A few minutes into the journey when the train makes a sharp turn and enters the mountain ravine, I am ready. My face pressed to the window, I follow the brook running from one side of the tracks to the other. Maybe, this time, I will see them. Emek Refaim. The valley of the giants. The words, like a mantra, spin in my head. Another sharp turn thrusts me back into my seat, then the piercing noise of the horn, breaking into a hundred slivers against the mountainside, echoing back giants . . . giants . . . gia and within minutes, we are out crossing the open fields.
In the central bus station in Tel-Aviv, lines of buses are puffing and spitting smoke, ready to lurch. A dense cloud of fried food fills the air. The sun is beating on my head, and my sweating hand is clutching my mother's. If I’ll lose her, my mom, like the last time, who will find me?
When the bus climbs the last hill, my mother says, “Be ready,” My eyes are glued to the window and still it always catches me by surprise. She points out, at the lattice of greens and browns, dotted with blue, the valley of Jezreel.
I count the minutes now. The signs at the side of the road are hard to make out, as the bus accelerates on the last section of the road. Yael, Deborah, Heber the Kenite, the Hill of Moreh, images of glorious battles pale in the face of the new coming adventure, running to catch the bus to the moshav.
Now the road is narrow and bumpy. The mountain of Gilboa on our right (“O mountains of Gilboa, Let not dew or rain be on you . . .”) comes alive in the view of the bald patches on the slopes. At the familiar cement brick bus stop, we are let off.
Quiet, just my parents, me and our suitcases. We are waiting for a ride. Yellow fields of wheat, almost ripe and ready to be harvested, and across the street the crumbling walls of the Ottoman, the British station still guarding the train line from Syria to Haifa.
Minutes later, a horse-drawn wagon let us off at the back of my aunt’s house.
We walk inside through the back door and pile into the kitchen. “Surprise!” I scream at the top of my lungs.
It’s Passover once again.
