Adina hadn’t yet turned onto the sun-blasted coastal road and she was already sweating in the air-conditioned car. Jabbing the air conditioning higher, she followed the road up onto the final hill before the landscape flattened and the fir saplings she had been searching for came into view. The dark blue sea and the sun spread out before her.
“Whoa,” she whispered. The firs towered over the roadway, and the bushes of bougainvillea now formed a luxuriant pageant of orange, purple, and yellow along the road. Both heralded one’s imminent arrival to Kibbutz Keren Or. A small, rusted sign read: Brothers and sisters living in harmony between the earth of the Carmel mountains and the Mediterranean Sea.
Adina rolled down her window and inhaled, hoping for a whiff of the heady pine and sea salt she remembered so well. She rolled it right back up at the steamy scent of cow.
She lowered the visor to check her hair again and the car rental contract fell out. Damn, she thought, leaning sideways to feel around for the papers.
The yellow gate was before her. She had been back to Israel many times, but the last time she’d seen that gate was in the rear-view mirror, thirty-two years before. Tuesday, March 13, 1979, to be exact, “but who’s counting?” she said aloud, startling at the sound of her own voice in the silent car. It took a few more minutes to understand that the old gravelly lane was now the smoothly paved byway she was traversing...
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