The Dead Sea has a drop of approx. 60 cm because of the irregular afflux from the Jordan River. At high tide you can hardly see she is dead, but at low tide her shores are bordered by a white saline zone, in which small objects like pebbles and branches are encapsulated by salt. At many locations along the shore there are showers and this is no superfluous luxury. I had seen photographs of people, floating seated, reading a newspaper and not capsizing. Truly weird water. The breaststroke was do-able, like a ship without cargo and a high bow, but crawling with your legs above the surface was something like a crazy wheelbarrow race.

Added to that was that the wind blew short and angry wavelets into my face so oversaturated with salt, that it cut off my breath. Not my glass of water, this belonged in a brown specimen jar in a collection of curiosities. Back on the shore the sluggish liquid itchingly dripped off my body in a sun without mercy. The shower did not work, so I had to press on to the 'bathtub brook' and a little later I was spluttering and wallowing like a young dog in a bowl. 'O water sweet, thy taste I greet!'

One evening Carol and I walked along the upper reaches of the streamlet, when steep above us I saw something sparkle. I magpied up and found a chewing gum tinfoil. Looking down was even steeper as this continued way beyond the other side of the path. I leaned with my hand on a stone, I thought, but when I looked I held it in my hand and was in shaky balance, tending to crash. I looked Carol in the eye and she looked back at me, we did not speak, but looked long and perilous. An Angel laid me to the side and oh so very carefully I descended.

A little later Carol asked me: 'Shall I take my pill today?' as if I didn't know how this works, but saw no need to tell her. She took me sitting, a blanket flying around her shoulders.

In this our new relation I was dealt a subservient role. Carol decided we should live together now and moved us to a room that had fallen vacant. Boss Pedro was hopping mad, but did not intervene. I thought he himself had an eye on Carol. Our tender happiness though was rather explosive. Even to such an extent that one time I saw myself forced to stretch barbed wire across the middle of our bed. One of the single houses fell vacant and immediately Carol started dragging over our stuff. Then Pedro exploded and after a lot of hassle we were kicked out of the kibbutz with a month's 'pocket money' each.

To be continued: ‘East Village’