| My kids, ages 15, 12, and 11, had grown up on stories of my experiences in Palestine as a youth. They never tired of hearing these stories and made me retell them numerous times to the last detail. With this in mind, I always knew that I would take my kids back to Palestine and walk with them the same paths that I had walked and show them what I had seen so that they may begin to understand my lifelong love affair with my homeland that has not diminished by time, but in fact had only grown. A few days after we arrived in Palestine, coincidently it happened on the very same day that the 1967 War had started 36 years earlier; I took my kids on a hiking trip up the steep hills that surrounded our village of Beit Hanina. It was in these hills that I had my greatest and most enjoyable memories of adventures and flying kites as a youth in Palestine. Not a day went by that I did not wander up the hillside to visit with my grandfather and cousins. It was also in these same hills that I had some of my most frightening moments. At the start of the 67 War, we fled our homes and headed into the hills for refuge in the many caves that populated them. These caves were very well known to us as both kids and adults. I had spent my first night of the war along with my family and about 15 other people huddled in the cave that is shown in the attached pictures. I made it a point to take my children up the hills to shown them the now “famous” cave that they had heard so much about. They stood silently staring at the mouth of the cave as I showed them exactly where I had sat as a 6 year old 36 years earlier. I was overcome with emotion as I relived that time along with my wife and children. We ended up staying in old Beit Hanina well into the evening. We decided to walk the 4 kilometers up the now destroyed road that was torn up and littered with car sized boulders and mounds of rocks and dirt placed there by the Israelis as a means of making sure that the residents would not be able to travel by car and must walk over and around the maze in order to get the upper portion of Beit Hanina. As the sky began to get dark, I noticed and amazingly beautiful full moon radiating over the hills that we were facing us. The moon was our companion as we made the hour long walk. I walked silently the entire trip, staring at that magnificent moon. This very moon, I was all too familiar with. It had been my companion 36 years earlier to the very day… Below is a piece that I had written about a year ago and half ago as I sat in my office in my home Michigan, in the dark, on one sleepless night... Moonlight I look outside my window and see a most beautiful full moon, so bright and brilliant; it literally sends golden shards of light through my window shades. I begin to remember that night in June of 1967. Could it have been the same bright and peaceful moon that lit our escape path as we ran for the neighboring hills and caves? I remember it being so big and bright, that the worn dirt path that led us away was clearly visible. The mouth of the cave faced due east and that night, the moon shone like a giant spotlight that seemed to be resting on top of the hill that my family had owned a large chunk of for generations. The moon seemed to be resting on top of that hill facing the west and looking straight into my eyes as I sat there at the mouth of the cave. I was in awe struck as the jets crisscrossed the night sky, their silvery metallic bodies gleaming, and reflecting dabs of moonlight. Could this be really war I wondered? It didn’t seem like it. Except for the brilliant flashes of light that were later followed by the thunder, all seemed “normal”. Yes, we were cramped, more than 25 people were in the cave with us, but I had somehow tuned out all the noise of the women and the cries of the other children. I was totally hypnotized by that gorgeous moonlight. Suddenly, I was rudely snapped out of my hypnotic state, as my mother yanked my arm, yelling for us to run away from that cave. I got up and ran simply because of my mother’s frantic yelling and urging. We ran until we reached a large tree in the middle of an olive grove about 100 yards away. Then I became conscious that my mother was still urging the others to follow. They hesitated at first, but finally relented as it became clear, you see that those jets gleaming in the moonlight were preparing to hit us. Not 5 minutes had passed when I saw them again, flying low over head. After 2 passes, a jet positioned itself and dove at us from the east, the same direction as that brilliant moonlight. The flash from under its wing deployed its rockets directly into the mouth of the same cave where we had taken refuge only a few minutes before. There were powerful explosions as debris flew outward. I began to realize, finally, that this, indeed, was war: a word and a reality that had carried no tangible meaning for me until that moment. There was no electricity in my village of Beit Hanina and thus, I had never watched TV nor ever seen a movie. All of knew of war were the tales that the old people told about their experiences in 1948 and the raids by IDF into neighboring villages. Now, a first hand experience was putting War into my life in bright, vivid colors, accompanied by a very violently booming soundtrack. This, my introduction to war, was also the end of my childhood innocence. The sights and experiences that followed would be recorded by my brain for all of eternity, no matter how horrible they were. The moon continued to light our way as we went through the olive groves and seeking yet another scorpion infested cave. That cave would be our “home” for the next 10 days or so. Our new ‘home’ opened directly overhead, looking into the sky, so I no longer had a view of the moon or of what was going on around us. The only reminder of war was the ever present thunder of the artillery in the background, and the confinement inside that cave. To this day, when I look at a full moon, I wonder if it remembers that 6 year old boy gripped then, as now, in its hypnotic powers on that fateful night in early June of 1967… Mike Odetalla 2002 All rights reserved. |
| Of Caves and Moonlight By Mike Odetalla |