West

About a week ago I was in the Jordan Valley and extremely frustrated.
To vent my frustration, I got in my little car and drove off south toward the Dead Sea with no particular plan. Things passing by your eyes at high speed have some sort of relaxing effect, or rather: detaching - which I needed.
Still frustrated, I changed direction. I took a turn and headed North parallel to the Jordan river and only a handful of kilometers from the border to "the other side". Looking around into the tree-dotted desert drylands, occasionally interrupted by heavily-irrigated aubergine-fields and Bedouin tents, I suddenly noticed a very straight dirt road to my left, westwards.



As if aiming at the Lion's den, this road headed straight toward the occupied Westbank and disappeared into the distance. But it looked inconspicuous, like a farm road, and there was no barriers, border, nor guards in sight. I felt a childish flow of adrenaline through my veins and turned into the dirt road. Slowly, at 20 kilometers an hour, I rolled along toward the hills below Jerusalem in the distant mist. Calm spread through my body. I had the odd notion that I could just keep going, rolling on westwards toward the river, the border, and that cataclysmic country, whose authorities black-listed me two years ago.

A brightly clothed Bedouin girl looked up from washing dishes in the shade of a thorny bush outside a tent. The bewilderment in her gaze seemed to say: "Where the hell are YOU going?"

About a kilometer after an earthen road-block, the dirt-track ended in the most barren landscape. Still looking west I saw the valley dropping down between the two countries just a few hundred meters ahead over a dry hill. I locked the car and started walking. No phone, wallet, nothing. Just me and my feet.

I felt light. And happy.