The Writers' Circle

Professor Higginson was interested in the struggle up the mountain of my previous story 'the rope of destiny' and I found this one that I wrote at the time - so hopefully you'll feel the burn with me!

The Cave of Dreams

Chaim Cohen phoned and said, 'Come to Israel'.

He has said this to me before - twenty years ago- and then I went because I was running away and it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was a good idea, as it turned out, because I made a lifelong friend and I found a wonderful place, full of mystery and magic and ancient secrets. 

When Chaim phoned this time I wasn't running away anymore but I should have been - running at least. I was over-stressed, over-weight and under-fit. I nursed my 'injuries' as an excuse to avoid exercise. I have bad knees, arthritic hands, and so on and on (I won't bore you - I'm old so I'm quite grateful for these pains. In the morning they reassure me that I'm still alive.)

Chaim said, 'I've been granted a licence by the Israel Antiquities Authority to excavate a cave in Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea. I want you to be there. You can make a movie if you want- or write a book or something. You'll have to get fit though - go to the gym everyday and do that stepping machine. The cave is 400metres up a limestone cliff in the Judean desert.'

I was keen to take part in a real archaeological dig, especially in Israel but not so keen to climb a mountain. I decided to think about the dig and forget about the mountain. 

My husband, Johan, was keen too. We bought lots of gear - camel backs (cunning little water bags that you carry on your back that have a tube running over your shoulder and into your mouth), telescoping walking sticks, industrial-strength mozzie stuff and so on. Shopping is one of my good things. Stepping is one of my bad things so I didn't do so much of that. 

Research is a good thing too so I read a lot about the Dead Sea Scrolls, Ritual Purity and the Second Temple period. Chaim' s hypotheses (which he pronounces 'hippo-thethith') is that the cave was used by Jewish priests from two thousand years ago as an archive for title deeds, letters and legal papers. 

He thinks this because: 
Jerusalem (where the temple was) is too damp to store vellum and parchment and Ein Gedi is dry. 
Ein Gedi is only a day's walk from Jerusalem.
The cave is almost (but not quite) inaccessible and hidden. 
This is the second best thing - the cave is made from pure Mother Earth and that fits in with all the old laws about holy things that can only be touched by things that are pure or have been purified. 
The best thing is that, at the mouth of the cave, there is a big, plastered pool that Chaim thinks is a Mikveh or ritual bath so that the hot, dusty and impure priests could have a wash after scrambling down the cliff, before they touched the holy writings.

Not all the archaeologists who have ever seen this cave think the pool is a Mikveh. Some think it is a storage cistern, in which case the cave wouldn't be holy at all and wouldn't have been used by the priests. Chaim is a maverick. He always does things that people say can't be done. 

Johan and I suffered the indignities of a Goyim EL AL check in and flight. In the past the Jewish boys and girls at Heathrow have thought I was a terrorist and had me followed (they were wrong - I may terrify people but I don't do it in any illegal way) this time they found traces of explosive substances in my luggage but let me through anyway after poking about and making little tests but not finding any bombs. 

And then, at last, we landed in Israel and I got that funny feeling you get just from being in the Holy Land - something between awe, reverence and respect and the queasy one that has to do with bombs in buses and restaurants and black-robed ninjas. 

Avishay the cameraman picked us up in a dusty, beat-up Ford and we headed off to the desert. It was very early in the morning and I remembered being picked up by Chaim from the same place, same time twenty years ago. We stopped on the road to Haifa then and I was told to smell the smell of Israel. It was the smell of orange blossom really. I also tasted the taste of Israel, Sabra - an orange-flavoured liquor and felt the feel of Israel. It left me feeling like I belonged.

Avishay drove like a fiend, hurtling round the beautiful, pink city of Jerusalem in the dawn light and screaming down the highway to the Dead Sea. In a blur I saw the golden dome of the Mosque sitting in prime position above the Holy or Holies, camels in fancy dress (all looking like candidates for Hollywood Extreme Makeovers) and being led by Bedouins, picking their noses and scratching their bums. I also saw school children standing in patient queues for buses with tanned and grinning soldiers toting Uzis above them on a wall. There were Rabbis of every size with curls and funny shoes and Arab women looking dark and mysterious in burkhas and veils. There were low hills that looked like the wrinkly knees of camels with goats and goat paths criss-crossing them. 

In Ein Gedi, Chaim met us. He had morphed into Indiana Cohen - he had the hat, the gun and the attitude but the Jewish conk and Yamulkah spot on his head were still there. The cliffs of Ein Gedi reminded me of food - burnt cakes, biscuit crumbs, scone mixture, Baked Alaska, Almond Biscotti, fudge and toffee. They towered above the Kibbutz where we would be staying for the next three weeks like a giant rubble-filled building site.

Ein Gedi is very, very quiet, the air is pure and sweet and the Dead Sea is still (as you would expect). It is the colour of delphiniums but apart from the colour it is nothing like a flower. It is so salty that people float on it - even old Arab women in headgear and long, black gowns. You can't sink even if you wanted too - the water just tips you up again so why they have a sign on the beach warning that lifeguards are not available is unclear.

In the beginning you might think that this was a very inhospitable climate but after a while you see the date palms and you realise how much water is under the ground and how much the farmers use it to grow all sorts of things under irrigation in big plastic tunnels.

We went for a swim and a very casual man tried to very casually pinch my camera while I bathed. He pretended not to understand me screaming at him in English to leave it alone. 'Fuck off'. I shrieked. He understood that - Anglo Saxon succeeded where English failed.

That night we ate hummous and tahini with plump tomatoes and olives, flat bread and tuna fish and enormous strawberries. The crew were bemused at the sight of me.They were thinking, 'She'll never get up that mountain'.

In the morning I stood at the bottom of the cliff and thought about how much I couldn't climb it. I thought about how all the things I hate and fear had come together in one day - heat, flies, physical exertion, heights, enclosed spaces and bats. Also all the things I love - my husband, my friend, beautiful scenery, adventure and mystery.

Even with all the gear from Millets and Boots and my head stuffed with knowledge I still needed my legs to work. The only way, I thought, is to put one foot in front of the other and keep doing that for as long as possible. So that's what I did.

Chaim went in front and Johan behind so I had encouragement before and support behind. We saw some Ibex blithely leaping from rock to rock as I sweated and heaved myself up boulders and stumbled over stones. Flies got in my mouth and all the time the sun burned and blazed and fried my brains. Birds skipped up to us, all perky and charming - they had not learned to be scared of humans. I concentrated fiercely so as not to kill myself.

Then we came to David's spring. We sat down on a rock and took off our boots and just lay in the water, fully clothes and let it wash over us. I'll swear that steam came hissing off me. This was where King David hid from Saul. Chaim thinks he drank here and hid in the cave. 

The climb took two and a half hours. My muscles screamed and my nose ran. Young Orthodox Jewish girls in long skirts whizzed past and Chaim pulled and Johan pushed. Rocks fell and bounced past us and smashed into powder in the valley below. Finally we reached the spot where there was a very unhelpful sign. It said,' This is where Sarah Goodhope plunged to her death. God bless her soul.' There was a rope attached to the crumbly rock wall for climbers to clip onto.

Haim tied a rope around my waist and clipped me on. He tried to place himself between me and the abyss. It didn't work and he had to go on ahead. I inched up the rock face, spitting flies and snot, muttering curses and promising God not to swear, ever again if I could live. I could not give up because going down was just as terrifying as going up. In the end I scrambled onto level(ish) ground trembling and sweating and entered the cave of dreams. The volunteers were clearly surprised to see me.

It stank of bats and diesel from the generator and people toiled in the heat, dark and dust like Dante's Inferno, but they found wonderful things - perfume bottles from two thousand years ago and a Roman Arrowhead still stuck in the wall where it had been fired at Jewish rebels in A.D. 70. I sat outside the bat cave with a big smile on my face, drinking mint tea from a jam jar and filming it all with Avishay while F16's screamed overhead on their way to Jordan. I felt a sense of utter accomplishment. 'The cave is giving up its secrets,' said Chaim.

Then I went down the cliff which was harder than going up because my knees were wobbly and I kept slipping. At the bottom I knew that I was a different woman to the one who had gone up. 'Now you can do anything,' said Chaim.

The next day I went to a five star resort on the Sea of Galilee and paid a large Ukrainian woman to give me a massage and a pedicure. She kneaded my startled body in silence while periodically scratching her fanny. It was a full body massage - yes, I mean full, and I had to squirm and move to avoid inappropriate touching. Then she laid out blades, hooks, scrapers, knives and pliers and gave me an extreme pedicure, cradling my soft, injured feet and saying ,'like beeby'. I won't go there though. All the while, crazy Arab music played in the background, from a cruise ship full of revellers on the sea where Jesus walked on the water, and my mind trickled down a hole in a rock.

Chaim has proved that the Mikveh is not a cistern and I, like Moses, have climbed a mountain in the Judean desert and received a revelation.