two days ago the first rain in weeks fell in israel. deep warm thunder and lightning last afternoon, as I had my first stick shift driving lesson. last night rain came but the wind that carried the clouds brought with it desert sands from the south and has grown stronger as the sun rose higher, bending small pomegranate trees towards the ground and ripping the ripened pecans off the tree and throwing them with a thump against the plastic tables and chairs in the yard. the air is full of gold, sky like gold threaded silks of a tent, diffusing the sun evenly, leaving little shadow. everything is glowing, shining like silver and copper. the metallic leaves of the lemon tree flicked in the wind as my eyes fill with dust each time i go outside to take in the magnificent scene. i love storms, rain, thunder, lightning, but a sand storm, an ancient inhabitant of the desert, is a very special event. a biblical event, timeless and almost supernatural, especially to my fair-skinned western sensibility. well, eastern european really, but fair-skinned nonetheless. each storm is like a trip - it takes you into a tunnel where you remember every trip you've had and can feel the ones to come.
this storm reminds me of the storms on corfu in greece when ana and i sat on the roofed veranda overhanging the Aegean sea. i watched each sunset like a play, rushing to get home, take a shower, get dressed, make dinner and sit down, facing the sea and the sky and watch, sometimes talking, sometimes in silence, for a couple of hours. after a hot day of bending down over piles of olive branches, picking of each one, taking out the leaves, sorting, looking down at the ground all the while, to look at the sky and the water was the crown of the day, the payment for all the labour and stress of working for a tooth-and-claw greek family. i saw two great storms, one of them was on our last night, when we had to sleep on the beach, due to a disagreement with the farmer husband pigman, who vomited up his economic frustration (there is a serious depression in greece at the moment) at us in the form of harsh words. we left that day and camped on the beach along the row of hotel fronts and beach bars, vacant in mid-november. we spread out the sleeping bags and hung our clothes in a roofed wooden dance floor. our clothes were soaking, because we left before we could take them out of the washing machine. a rough end for a magical stay on an island, but so it goes. it was time to leave. as we spread out our things, and ate the little food we managed to grab as we left, we rolled up the present that nikos, one of the step-children in the pigman's family who was in the underground with us sneaking and hiding around the house to avoid the totalitarian regime. with his generous blessings we entered dusk and the mystic dimension of night.
The horizon was clear and we watched the sun's disk disappear into the the sea until the curlved top dipped into the water. standing on our heads all the while. one really must try to stand on one's head at least once a day, especially at sunset. the wind was gentle and a few dogs came running up and down the beach, playing with each other and tumbling across our humble abode once in a while. they were castaways and happy about it, just like us, and soon we accepted their company, or they accepted theirs, since it was their beach after all. later that night the smaller of the dogs, a black and white spotted mutt, slept curled beside us, guarding us from the corfu ghosts, which voiced themselves in the waves and falling branches of the night storm. As the sun set, clouds rolled in from the south, from the middle east and across the Mediterranean. clouds full of hot air and salty water. having traveled a long way they were ripe with rain and the changing atmosphere of the greek mainland would burst their full bellies letting out a generous flood, much awaited by trees and farmers, but disabling the drivers of the whole island for a few days - when rain falls, it covers the already slippery layer of olive oil from the fallen fruits on the roads and the steep hills seem to be made of ice beneath tires and the bottoms of shoes.
The sun's light dimmed and a full bright moon rose in the east. suddenly a large spot light was turned on behind our roofed shelter and sharp shadows were thrown onto the beach in front of us. for a few minutes we sat discussing what could that be, and ana said that she was scared to go look, because if it really was a spotlight, then we were not safe somehow and we were not alone in our peace. i thought it must have been the moon, but together our paranoia fed both of our fears and we sat huddled staring at the grotesquely industrial shadows on the cold sand. eventually i got up to look at this mysterious spot light. was it coming from a hotel, a helecopter, a UFO may be? we had to find out, because the night's magic was not accessible to us with such a fear. i peeked backwards over the roof, and there she was - the moon. clear and bright and white as a shell. suddenly the sand became warm again, and the shadows no longer grotesque, but lulling and deep blue and magnificent. knowledge brings light, but knowledge takes courage. the clouds kept approaching from the south-west, changing shapes, turning the water to the most magnificent and other-worldly shades of indigo, when suddenly we noticed an abnormally sharp shape in the clouds. a needly, like a wasp's stinger protruded from a low dark cloud on the horizon and grew longer and longer until it touched a boulder rising above the reef. we closed our eyes and opened them again to see if the darkness and our mystified state of mind were distorting our vision, but there is was, long and thin, and now moving in and out of the cloud, undulating, breathing, reaching for the rock and receding back into the cloud. a water tornado. this was the synoptic side of my brain speaking. but we are in greece, nothing is just a storm, just a cloud or just a wave. it's always zeus' wrath, a reclining nude athena or a siren washed up on the beach. so this was no old water tornado, although the idea of a rapidly spinning pillar of water and debris coming towards us, us who were scattered at the edge of the water exposed to the elements and the whim of spirits and protected only by a thin roof. that thought was enough to put the fear of god or gods into us. but, no, this was no ordinary water tornado, this was, as we calculated from further observation and discussion, this was a tail of an ancient sea creature taking up the opportunity and riding a cloud in order to cross the mainland of greece to the other side of the mediterranean without having to swim all the way south and around the peninsula. of course! and somehow, when the water tornado turned into a tail, things began to make more sense and we loosened the iron grip we both had around each other and sat there discussing the travel patterns of mythological creatures, especially those dwelling in the sea. it rained madly all night, but as we situated our sleeping bags in the middle along the back wall of our shelter, the whipping water was just short of reaching us and we were safe, dry and warm. when i woke up in the middle of the night a few times when the rain got so loud, the small spotted dog sleeping near us would look up at me and ensure that everything is alright and i can go back to sleep. i slept soundly till dawn.
the morning was quiet and clean, and it was a time-to-get-a-move-on kind of morning. the clothes were nearly dry and a much lighter load. we packed up, finished the oranges and the little bit of water we saved, packed and left poseidon's beach. he sure treated us well in those few weeks. the pigman has a lot to learn from him in hospitality matters. many sunsets seen and many lessons learned, we left the island a few hours later, catching a couple back-to-back rides and just making the ferry. later that night we found ourselves in athens.
