66 After all, what does a man need?

After all, what does a man need? A room for the night in the upper end of Rosh Pinna with a porch overlooking the Jordan River and the Golan mountains, a good book, a cup of coffee, some peanuts and almonds, a breeze blowing after a hot day that slightly moves the boughs of the Mulberry tree, an old tile roof covered with a partition placed on thick stone walls, a green creeping plant that covers half of the stone wall and an ironwork railing painted blue.

And here I am, absorbed in a book that deals with events that happened right here. I ate lunch next to the Jordan River and thought about the beginning of the wild journey of Ora and Avram, Grossman's heroes, and how they crossed the river this way and that, bare footed, almost lost, with their huge back-packs. And when I ordered wonderful Turkish kebab I thought about the revolt of their son, Offer, refusing to eat meat, and he only four years old and very opinionated.

And tomorrow I shall take the steep road to the Nebi Yusha fortress and remember how Ora hated this cruel place where twenty eight Palmach fighters died in 1948 and among them Dudu ('bring the finjan and tell me, is there another Palmachnick like Dudu'). And from there I shall leisurely travel through the paths of the Gallilee and imagine that I am walking the "Israel Path" south. Thus I'll wind my way to the outskirts of Safed and around Mount Meron and rest in Peki'in to eat there the best labneh in the world. After that I'll take a brief look at the synagogue, take a few snapshots of Peki'in's alleys and buy myself some of 'grandmother Jamilah's' perfumed soap.

When I'll go up the road that surrounds the village, I'll drive until the observation point above Rame, and from there I'll see all of the lower Gallilee from the Kinneret to the Carmel and I already know that the trip of Ora and Avram reached that point.

But now the evening breeze sends me into my room to find something warm to wear, and I place the open book face down on the chair and stretch, smiling in anticipation of tomorrow's adventure. A little journey of pilgrimage it is turning out to be. After all, what does a man need? A good book, a porch with a view and the willingness to follow ones imagination and the book.