Dead Sea Festival of Love Concert in the sandstorm
Trip Start
Dec 05, 2008
1
16
33
Trip End
Jul 13, 2009
Dead Sea,
Israel
Thursday, April 16, 2009
Very luckily, as it would turn out, a group of five Israelis set up their tent next to ours, and we hit if off with them right away. They had somewhat recently finished their army service and so had just returned to Israel from their post-army traveling experiences to the U.S., India, Australia, and New Zealand, among others. They had brought two tents, a grill, and of course lots of food, making us feel stupid for not bringing anything, but also lucky for being able to join in with them.
Near 10 pm, as rows and rows of tents were grilling and playing the guitar along the Dead Sea shore, a ridiculous sandstorm suddenly took form without any warning and began to blow everything away. Within seconds, it became a mad scramble to secure everything and throw it into the car. You couldn't even see much through the sand, not that you wanted to either, as it hurt your eyes and face to look in that direction. At one point, I took my camera out to film what was going on. You can't see anything in the footage, but the sounds and voices you can hear are hilarious. The sandstorm was so strong it made the news the next day. The three of us managed to throw our tent in the car and decided to run to the shuttle so we could head to the concert at the kibbutz. Everybody there who had just arrived was covered in sand: hair was gray, clothes turned a shade of brown, and by swiping one finger down your cheek you could take off a layer of sand covering your face.
There, some reggae and funk bands played late into the night. The grass field was sheltered on all sides by buildings, so the wind and sand was no problem here to the 1,000 or so people in attendance. As usual, when meeting random people here, they were mostly shocked and confused as to why I would voluntarily go to the Israeli army, no less why I would pay for it.
Returning to the campground, the sandstorm was, amazingly, still raging on firecely. While the Israel among us insisted on throwing the tent back up and sleeping in it (he was nothing more than a body under a fabric cloth), the other kid and I slept uncomfortably in the car. Getting up in the morning, sandstorm gone, it was really funny to look around and see all the people slowly getting out of their car, with some fitting four or five inside. Nobody had slept outside except for my one friend, and the area was strewn with damaged tents.
From there, barely having slept, we were too tired to go hiking or anything, so we drove south to the house of the Israeli in Yated, 2 km from Gaza and a similar distance from Egypt. Neither his house nor his farming neighborhood could be considered in danger of rocket fire from Gaza, because as he described, rockets shot into Israel would be shot over his house and not at it. Ironically as well, his house was incredibly modern, probably the nicest I'd seen in all of Israel. I figured that this could be due to how cheap it was to live in this area.
Arriving back to the Tel Aviv bus station, I saw two of the commanders from Marva ahead of me in line. They might have even been on my bus. I guess this can happen in such a small country. Instinct told me to avoid them, as part of the "keeping the distance" theme between commander and soldier, and I did so. However, walking to the other end of the station, I inadvertently crossed paths with one of them. She looked at me for a few seconds as if something was registering in her memory. Again instinctively, I kind of smiled goofily back at her. I'll probably get punished for this when I return to the base.
