Two Twenty Minute Writing Exercises

 #1. Description of Abraham from Jordan:

     Abraham is one of five local Bedouins allowed entrance into the touristy “Cave Bar” located right outside the gates of Petra. His dress is part gangster, part Bedouin. His jeans are slung low on his thick hips and his head is wrapped with a thin white cloth. This man constantly moves. When he sits and talks, he rocks back and forth. He acts out his stories, occasionally gripping the armchair to show someone’s surprise. He lets his words gain momentum as he swings and the tourists glare when he laughs with his tongue stuck out. His dark arms are not inked with a tribal roadmap like the rest of the Bedouins that pinpoints their site-specific heritage, their blood tie to the land. His movements are Western. He mimes out gestures from movies and magazines, but he tells me he will never visit America and he tells me he is stilling waiting to be allowed back into Jerusalem.

 #2. S.Y Agnon was the author of “Fable of the Goat,” a symbolic short story that describes the connection between Jews living in the diaspora and in Israel. In the story, a son travels and finds the Land of Israel. He sends for his father by tucking a note inside a goat’s ear and directing him back home. When the father fails to find the note, he slaughters the animal and thinks his son is lost forever. The goat represents many things, including the “easy” pathway to Israel, which has been destroyed. Below is an imagined dialogue between S.Y. Agnon, who came to Israel in the early 1900s and Abraham about the story. (Btw, the goat is magical and its milk tastes like Eden.)

           “It was stupid to kill the goat with milk and honey flowing from the udders,” Abraham puts his hands up to his chest, pats, and gestures milking his nipples.

            Agnon smirks and nods, shifting in his seat.

            “I think this goat was my brother actually.” Abraham lifts a glass of frothy beer to his lips. “The son killed my brother, sent him to his death. My goat brother, used to live in the mountains, caves—a happy life.” Abraham sets the glass down and leans forward, elbows on his knees. “The Bedouin have a saying: strong as the desert, soft as the sand, move like the wind, always free. Now his blood is spilled all over,” Abraham claps his hands and spreads them out in the air. “The old man killed the messenger.”

            “It is not your messenger,” Agnon says and takes a sip of tea.

“You see honey and milk, I see blood and sand. I cannot visit where my family has been buried. My blood,” Abraham extends his arms to show his tree-root veins.

“Yes but every Jew is tied to Israel. Deep in the ground, every Jew that has ever or will ever exist, is connected. The internal Israel and the physical Israel. All their ghost souls, all the people, belong in Israel.”

“It is my home too. Rocks, sky, water,” Abraham shakes his opened hand.

“ I am talking of a promise.”

Abraham sits back, raises his eyebrows, and cocks his head to the side. He shrugs and looks away, drumming his fingers against the armchair. “Strong as the desert, soft as the sand, move like the wind, always free,” he murmurs in a sing-song voice.