Wailing Wall

L’hitraot

In Hebrew means

See you again

Not goodbye

And that is what she said

But that is not what happened

Because even though she said l’hitraot

She never saw him again

Her Israeli paratrooper

Usurper of her virginity

That summer on the kibbutz

Tall and handsome

Dark wavy hair

Smooth strong body

Piercing blue eyes

Just the way she liked her men

Her cousin had called him black

Like the blacks of your country she’d told her

Because of his Kurdish heritage

But she the young idealist American college student

Summer visitor to the land of milk and honey 

Wanted no part of that racist point of view

And not until she’d reached mature adulthood did she understand

That the Kurdish Jews of Iraq

Keepers of the ancient language of Aramaic

Mountain people

Goat herders and wool dyers

Uneducated

Unsophisticated

Unlike the urban Jews of Baghdad

Became the underdogs of Israeli society

But she’d left a note in a cracked brick of the Wailing Wall

The last remainder of the Second Temple in Jerusalem

A place where Jews go to mourn its destruction

Get married

Pray

In keeping with tradition

She’d tucked a small piece of paper into its ancient rocks

Asking God for a great summer

And he’d sent her Yohoshua Eli

Her delightful love

She spoke a bit Hebrew and he a bit of English

Enough words for their wondrous purpose

Hot slow dusty kibbutz afternoons

Napping

Loving

Teaching each other

Finding enough youthful common ground that

When they parted at the end of the summer

She gave him a necklace

Her name in golden Hebrew letters

And said l’hitraot

Not goodbye

©kcasady2014