I Was A Blowfish
When I was five years old, if I puffed
out my cheeks, I was a blowfish. When I blew out my belly round and full, I spun like a top, weaving a path across verdant
landscapes. In Shaker Heights, Ohio, sometimes I stood on the front lawn sucking in my belly so I could eat all that I desired.
Higher than the frigates at sea, I could fly across blue oceans to the desert of my ancestors and witness the Israeli greenup.
I was five in the spring of 1975; Israel was twenty-nine years old; Palestinians attacked the small nation from Lebanese soil.
At night Mama stroked my brow, whispering her encomium, and always ending with, “Hannah,
the world is yours.” I believed whatever Mama pasted across my forehead; her touch turned into a magic wand. Then at
five years old I knew all that I wanted could and would be.
Spin and I was twenty-one years
old flying to Eretz Yisrael. I took all that I needed to Jerusalem, making a wish come true. I lived in the small town of
Arad. I listened to the sibilance of the exposed gas heater in the middle of my one room apartment. Outside I could walk down
the Arad Path leading to a view of the Roman built ramp to the ancient city of Massada. In A.D. 73 Roman soldiers built
the ramp to attack the citadel atop a mesa-like promontory. When the soldiers arrived, they found 967 Jewish religionists
called Zealots had committed suicide rather than have their wives raped by the Romans and their children become slaves.
When I climbed the citadel and peered into the empty crypts that once contained thousands-of-years-old
sacred scrolls, I witnessed the truth of my history. I reverently walked across the broken stones of Massada. Arms spread,
I whirled like the tiny helicopter seeds of maple trees. When I was five years old, I used to watch the paired wing seeds
twirl to earth on breezy fall days. After leaving Massada I traveled through the scorched Judean desert. As the sun touched
the western edge of the sky bowl, I remembered at five the magic of passion: if I puffed out my cheeks, I was a blowfish.
But at five years old I hadn’t yet seen the cracked head of another five, six, or seven-year-old
lying in the Sabbath sun in her Purim costume. I hadn’t yet seen the cracks ooze red after the human bomb detonated
near the Agam fountain by the Dizzengoff Square in Tel Aviv, while master musicians stroked their violins for shekels, where
I shopped for Levi jeans. The cracks looked like the scabrous earth waiting for next spring’s greenup. But these cracks
bled red, the child would not see next spring. At five I hadn’t yet seen the grocer Yaacov, lying on the sidewalk on
Ben Yehuda Street where on slow Sunday afternoons I sipped rich Italian espresso from my lover’s coffee bar. Yaacov
would not witness next spring’s greenup either. At five I had not learned the price of my ancestors’ freedom.
No magic wand could or would wake the child in her Purim costume or Yaacov the grocer wrapped in his stained apron. But spinning
at five, if I puffed out my cheeks, I was a blowfish.
THE END
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