The Last Rain by Edeet Ravel Page B

Should Varda be allowed to give Dori a
 
goodnight kiss?
Vote :
For = 1 Against = 2 Abstentions = 4
    Dori
It’s Independence Day. We join a big parade of everyone in Eldar. We hold little Israeli flags that we made and we sit in a gigantic circle and sing songs. Hundreds of songs.
The older children play hide-and-go-seek. I hide behind the barn but no one finds me and when I come back the game is over. Did I win because no one found me or did I lose because I didn’t run back without being caught?
The older children go to the clubhouse to dance. We run after them. There’s a record of Let’s Twist Again Like We Did Last Summer 39 and everyone dances the twist. My brother David is very good at twisting. I love that song. They play it a hundred times. The bigger children don’t like the little children getting in the way but we don’t care. They keep complaining and we keep getting in their way. They’re happy when it’s time for us to go back to the Children’s House.
I can’t wait to be bigger.
    Our First Year
    14 February 1949. Thirty of us have arrived from the interim kibbutz. It’s a cold, rainy, misty drive around the Kinneret, through Safed; the poppies are beautiful, but it was a lousy trip. One has to be in a certain heroic mood to appreciate the transient, vagrant beauties of this country from the back of a truck, in the rain, with inadequate clothing on one’s back.
    Five of us are housed in a high-ceilinged, stone wall, unplastered room; it leaks, it’s damp and oppressive; no windows; a dim lantern provides meagre light; and it’s so crowded we’ll have to demand that one person move out; there are also a few mice in my corner, but otherwise it’s quite comfortable.
    In the evening two young Arabs from Jish dropped by and wanted to discuss the political program of the United Workers Party with us. Just like that. They look like intelligent chaps, but it’s been very difficult for us to be genuinely interested in politics these past few days.
    Dori
My brother David is teaching me how to embroider. The cloth is in a metal circle with a picture in light blue that you follow. Mine is a bird.
David showed me how to do three different stitches. He’s very good at embroidering.
In Camp Bilu’im I went to the arts and crafts room every day. The counsellor in that room was very nice. She gave me popsicle sticks and glue and paint and pieces of coloured paper and scissors.
Most scissors don’t cut very well it seems. Some don’t cut at all. My grandfather in Canada had scissors that were very good at cutting. Why doesn’t everyone get that kind?
My grandfather also had a glue bottle with a red rubber top and a crack for the glue to come out. If you squeeze the crack it looks like a mouth opening.
I liked that glue bottle so much that Daddy brought it with him from Canada. Or maybe he found one like it in the city.
At Camp Bilu’im at first I ate with everyone else in the Dining Hall. But then my mother said we had to eat in the kitchen because the campers didn’t want little children around.
I didn’t want to eat in the kitchen with Sara in her high chair. There wasn’t even a table for me. Only a stool and a counter covered with pots and dirty dishes.
I got into a bad mood. I could hear all the campers singing a song about two sisters she won’t do it but her sister will and having fun. They never even noticed me when I ate with them and if they noticed me they were very nice. I think Mummy made up that story but I don’t know why.
    Marsha from Arts and Crafts

    Dori
By the way I never talked once in that kindergarten Mummy forced me to go to in Canada and I never did anything. I just stood in the corner or sat on a chair and ignored everyone.
The only time I joined in was when they gave us see-through paper to glue behind shapes that you cut out of a black piece of paper. Then on the back it looks messy but in front all you see is the see-through paper shining inside the shapes. That