Shifting Sands: The Negev Desert and Changes in Bedouin Culture

Flakes of tobacco gusted into Abraham's wiry eyebrows. The deep grooves in his forehead gave evidence to decades in the sun, and scars of joy around his eyes. Abraham is one of the few remaining nomadic Bedouin Israelis and the Negev desert is his backyard. "See this flower?" He pushed a scraggly baby goat named "Mish Mish" (hebrew for apricot) aside and handed me a flower resembling chamomile, "This cures aches of the mind."

Abraham represents the beauty, complexity, hope, and obstacles of the State of Israel, and its minority populations. He is a pastoralist, an ethno-botanist, a Muslim tracker for the Israeli army, a father, tribal leader and incredibly generous host. Abraham's wife, Zainab, brought me Bedouin coffee, piping hot from the wood fire, graced with cardamom, Bedouin spices and placed beside me on the rug of the goat hair tent. This, I thought to myself, is the real Israel/Palestine.

The first time I entered Tel Aviv, I was whisked away by American and Persian Jewish friends and taken to hip garden cafes where we smoked apple shisha, dined on shaksuka (delightful fresh eggs encased in a cast iron pan filled with tomatoes, feta, rosemary and bell peppers). We walked the shores of the Mediterranean, danced to European deejays at the annual Gay Pride festival, and drank cheap beer in the streets. We ignored the security everywhere, the gates that separated the wealth of young Israelis, to the poverty of Palestinian ghettos. We hiked the ancient Masada trail at sunrise, learning why the Pre-Israelites fought for their independence and survival, and opted to conduct mass suicide rather than submit to slavery and submission. We rolled in the healing mud of the Dead Sea and looked over the golden pink hills of Jordan as the sun diminished over the mountains, occasionally seeing movements of Bedouin exploring the caves, camels feeding, or a lost hot, dusty tourist, trying to find his way back to camp.

My parents always worried about traveling to the Middle East. "You must realize, during our entire lives there has been war." What is a pan-spiritualist, Californian looking for in the contested land? I suppose it was Abraham and his family. It was understanding why so many people fight over the Holy Land. It is a man who brought 280 soldiers through a field of landmines to safety during the Lebanon war, and is now fighting to preserve his nomadic life style, and quality of education for his daughters. It is Bedouin bread and coffee.