Reflections on the Road: Two Countries and a Friendship Lost (Part 1)

On my laptop is a Word document in which three years ago I typed up my favorite passages - 4,000 words worth - from Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  Every so often, particularly when I'm in need of inspiration, I'll click on the document and read a few.  Occasionally there will be a line that strikes me differently because of an experience I've had since last reading it.  An example: "We're better off having some people as enemies than friends."

The line brings to mind a December night in Tel Aviv in which a friendship ended.  I can still see the shutting bus doors, and Zivah's angry look as the bus took her away.

This story is in two parts.  The first (below) looks at how Zivah* and I came to know each other in India during an amazing week in September 2004.  Then in two weeks I will post part two, picking up the story two years later in Israel, where our friendship unraveled on a bench in Tel Aviv's Rabin Square -- another victim of a destructive conflict.

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Dharamsala, India.  This particular area, where most travelers stay, is also known as McLeod Ganj or upper Dharamsala.

Already I had fallen in love with Dharamsala, the mountainous Indian town best known as the home of the Dalai Lama.  The Tibetan people, the thick afternoon mist, the chaos-loving monkeys who with great flamboyance ruled over the garbage dump on the road to the Anglican church -- everywhere you turned there was something to appreciate and ponder.  With its mix of Tibetan exiles, Western backpackers, and middle-class Indians (the latter seeking a short respite from the heat and crowds of the lowland cities they called home), the town was unlike any other I had ever visited.

But my love for the place grew even more over dinner one night as I met an eclectic group of travelers, including Zivah, at a rooftop restaurant.  Earlier in the day at a waterfall outside town I had met a young German guy named Dirk.  In that wonderful tradition of the backpacking world, he told me he would be joining several Israelis for dinner later in the evening and that I was invited to join them.

The people gathered on the roof came from at least a dozen countries.  Across from Dirk and I were two Israeli women, one of whom was Zivah.  When in passing I mentioned I had worked in the West Bank, a heated conversation between the two women began, which Dirk and I proceeded to look upon with interest.  Zivah had no sympathy for Palestinians.  When she made a particularly disparaging remark toward the people of Gaza, the other Israeli shot back with something like, "If some government boxed you into one of the most densely populated strips of land on earth and then treated you like crap, you wouldn't like that government either."  To add to the political richness of the rooftop, at the table next to us the people were speaking Arabic.  They were from Lebanon and had come to look for a young woman from their family who had last been seen in Dharamsala about a year earlier.  They feared she had been murdered.  Everyone at our table wished them the best in their search, and two days later we were saddened to learn that her remains had been found four miles outside town.  Apparently she had fallen off a trail while out hiking alone.  She had survived the fall, it appeared, but couldn't move because of broken bones and so froze to death.

But back to Zivah...

Zivah was not the sort of person I would have expected to have been attracted to.   From what I heard her say during the argument with her friend, I thought her politics bordered on criminal, and the ease with which she smeared an entire people made me a little angry.  Yet she was also fun.  She was intelligent and passionate, and at the end of a heated argument about Gaza with her fellow Israeli, she somehow didn't let it detract from their friendship.  I wanted to know her better, and before leaving the restaurant I suggested we meet again in two days for a hike.  She agreed.

Thirty-six hours later, as I stood under the bright morning sun outside my hotel and watched Zivah round a bend in the road right on time for our hike, I confirmed the other reason I thought she was attractive.  The night before I knew she was pretty, but the light on the rooftop had been so dim it was hard to make out one's food much less the details of other people.   But now under a burning sun in the foothills of the mighty Himalayas, she was simply stunning in her physical beauty, with her penetrating eyes and arched eyebrows, and a body bulging in its voluptuousness.  This, of course, had an effect on me.  While earlier in the morning I had felt calm and well centered (I had circumambulated the Dalai Lama's house silently and in prayer), I now felt a little ruffled.  Picture the Tasmanian Devil dumped into a china shop, or the beginnings of a tremor on the San Andreas Fault.

After breakfast, Zivah and I set off.  We hiked up into the forest, got lost a couple times, and after about two hours found the Tibetan Children's Village.  We talked with students, watched teenagers on a soccer field, and walked past a colorful cargo truck that had a photograph of the Dalai Lama mounted front and center above its windshield.

 
At the Tibetan Children's Village

On the hike back to Dharamsala a heavy rain dropped not only buckets but also the temperature, forcing us to find shelter.  For half an hour we shivered together out of the rain, trying to keep some physical distance between us -- she had a boyfriend back in Israel -- as she told me more about her family, her religious background, and her army service (she had been discharged a month earlier, her last assignment being at an observation post on the Lebanese border).

Over the next several days we spent more time together -- breakfasts, dinners, a movie (Collateral, we agreed, was the worst movie we'd seen all year).  I'll always remember how one morning, as I sat in my hotel dining room with my head in my hands, drooped over a pile of notes which I was struggling to transform into a story, a voice surprised me, saying, "Excuse me, sir.  Is this seat taken?"  I looked up to find Zivah, those arched eyebrows and pursed lips looking right at me.  What could I do but smile broadly?  Except for dinner later we had planned not to meet this day so that I could devote the time to writing.   But she had come to offer a short interruption and to say hello.  And it was most welcomed.

Zivah and I knew we disagreed deeply about much of what has happened and was happening then in Israel/Palestine, but we had been happy to not talk much about these issues during our few days together.  There were other things in life to speak about and enjoy, and that is what we did.

When it came time for me to leave Dharamsala -- I needed to be in Pakistan by the end of the week and had already overshot my intended departure by two days -- Zivah walked me to the bus stop on the edge of town.  It was dusk, and the light was nearly as dim as when we first met on the rooftop.  Having already expressed the hope that we would one day meet again in Israel -- I knew I would be returning to the West Bank at some point -- we hugged goodbye.  I boarded the bus and watched her disappear into the darkness as she walked back to her hotel.

The 12-hour journey to Delhi should have been a decidedly miserable experience, particularly since tickets had been oversold and there were no seats available by the time I got on.  I would spend almost the entire night wide awake, scrunched up with several Indians on a makeshift bench beside the driver.  But for some reason, it wasn't that bad.

A student at the Tibetan Children's Village tries to explain to a dense-looking traveler why Dharamsala is such a nice place, or perhaps he is trying to tell me that he doesn't understand a word I just said. (Photo by Zivah)

* "Zivah" is not her real name 

 TO CONTINUE TO PART II, CLICK HERE

		Joel Carillet, Gather Travel Correspondent
	Joel's column, "Reflections on the Road," is published every other Thursday to Gather Essentials: Travel. His articles, based on extensive travels in Asia and the Middle East, seek to shed light on humanity, both our own and that of others.   They aim not merely to entertain and inform but also to develop a sense of connection between the reader and the world. Joel's writing and photography have appeared in several magazines and newspapers, including the Kansas City Star and Christian Science Monitor.  Currently his agent is seeking a publisher for a book manuscript entitled Sixty-One Weeks: A Journey across Asia, and in February 2008 he began selling photographs through jcarillet.imagekind.com. When not on the road, he happily calls Tennessee home. Keep up with Joel's article series by joining his network, or subscribing to his content.