The fierce winter storm that pounded the Mediterranean coast for three days finally abated and the sun pushed through the leaden clouds as we rode north, along the coastline on a tour bus. While the storm raged, we’d been cooped up in an apartment with Richard’s grandmother, and her distant cousin, Bunny, an American widow from Maryland with dual citizenship who worked as an Israeli tour agent. The two women had taken to speaking in Yiddish to talk about us. This, among other things, made me stir crazy. I tried to read but was too anxious, so I amused myself by finding the nouns and verbs to decipher the language, a mixture of Hebrew, German, Russian and Middle Eastern dialects. Bunny handed me a guidebook about Caesaria as she dropped us at the bus terminal that morning, likely just as relieved to have us out of her apartment as we were to leave.
Caesaria was a short bus ride, taking less than a half hour from Netanya, a seaside town just north of Tel Aviv, the capital of Israel in 1980, the time of my visit. Settled into the solitude of the bus, I read the guidebook to learn about Caesaria: an ancient Phoenician settlement and vital port city when Herod the Great, the Roman king of Judea, rebuilt it from the years 22-10 BCE. Herod named the port Caesaria, after the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. Modern Caesarea held the remains of a man-made harbor constructed of concrete blocks and Hellenistic-Roman buildings. An aqueduct carried fresh water from springs ten miles to the north and the port had served as a base for the Herodian navy.
Ruins and remains were heady stuff for me, a Miami born and bred girl with shallow roots. St Augustine, founded in 1565 by Spanish settlers, was, by American standards, old. So were Jamestown and Williamsburg. But Caesaria was ancient, as were so many of the other places Richard and I visited in Europe and the Middle East from 1980 and into 1981.
Since the founding of modern Israel, in 1948, Caesaria had been developed into a premier golf course and resort, but the excavated ruins remained, providing a glimpse of the mastery of Roman architecture. I smiled when I read that it was common for visitors to find ancient relics in Caesaria, notably Roman coins and pottery shards, especially after a winter storm. I had found many pieces of broken pottery in Greece, so the prospect of finding a Roman relic thrilled me.
The bus pulled into a lot covered by storm-tossed beach sand, which Palestinian workers were slowly shoveling into wheelbarrows. I stuffed the guidebook into my backpack and nudged Richard. He was asleep in the seat across the aisle.
“If I find a Roman coin today, I’ll give it to my father,” I said, as we left the bus. Several of the men had stopped work to watch me. I pulled a scarf over my head to cover my blond hair.
There is never a good time to visit the Middle East, but 1980 into1981 was tenuous at best. The American Embassy in Tehran had been seized by a group of Islamic students in 1979, and 52 Americans were still hostages. The militants were determined to replace the secular Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi with Muslim clerics called Ayatollahs. When I reached the Middle East, the occupation had been ongoing for more than a year. It was the biggest story of my life, thus far. My parents were uneasy about my open-ended travel plans amid this unstable climate, and they warned me to stay out of Iran. They knew I had press credentials from the wire services and loved a good story.
“Just come home after Greece,” my mother said as she handed me a credit card for “emergencies.” She was unimpressed with our travel plans of bicycling, hostels and camping, so she tried to have her travel agent book us into a sensible, two-week European adventure. “As your honeymoon,” she said. But I wasn’t sure there was even going to be a wedding. The engagement was more a formality than a reality; in those days a commitment-to-be-married was a socially acceptable way to legitimize an unmarried couple living together. Weddings held little appeal for me. I had job offers and career choices to consider, after the trip. I had given up my Tallahassee apartment and moved my belongings the 500 miles back to my parents’ home, where I had not lived for nearly five years. Tensions ran high, particularly between my mother and myself. Late one evening, I overheard my parents speculating in the kitchen about a quick breakup. My mother said the words bad tempered and spoiled rotten and I knew she meant me.
“Wait until he sees how unpleasant Susie is before that first cup of coffee in the morning,” my father added. “That should scare him off.”
I was amused they thought Richard would break up with me.
My father took a scholarly approach and gave me a working understanding of the Middle East. We discussed the history of Israel, the genocide and diaspora of the Jews, and the recent Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars. We examined the eviction of the Palestinians: the loss of their ancestral homes and livelihoods as the steady influx of Jews into Israel prompted the building of apartment and settlements on the disputed territories—land which had been held by Israeli forces as they pushed back the invading armies from surrounding countries during the incursions. It was a harrowing history, from concentration camps to a country of their own, but at the expense of another group of people. There were brokered deals and broken treaties. Broken people. My father had mixed emotions about my trip: he was adventurous in his youth and envious of my plans, but he was worried about his 22-year-old daughter traveling without a safety net, in dangerous regions, so far from home. He was afraid he wouldn’t see me again. He was dying, and we all knew it.
We’d arrived in the port of Haifa, Israel on the morning of December 9, 1980, and disembarked from the ferry to the news that John Lennon had been murdered in New York City just hours before. The passport agent gave Richard a second, then third, look. Richard, with his long dark hair, full beard and wire-rimmed glasses had often been mistaken for John Lennon as he played his guitar and sang Beatles songs in hostels and on street corners in Europe. Indeed, it was his love of music and the desire to write and perform that guided Richard to Israel.
I just tagged along for the ride.
(Please ignore my pun.)
As we exited the Haifa port, we heard a familiar voice calling our names. Richard’s grandmother, affectionately known as Baba, waved her arms in the air. She had persuaded her son, Richard’s father, to send her to Israel, where she could acquaint herself with distant relatives, and spend time with her favorite grandson and his shiksa girlfriend.
Surprise was an understatement, and the sight of this woman comforted me. Richard and I had spent the early morning hours in the huge garage of the ferry, packing our bikes, preparing to ride again. We’d had no real destination—at least I didn’t. Richard planned to find a kibbutz where he could live indefinitely in Israel. I wanted to write some stories for the wire services. While this had seemed a fun idea at the beginning of our journey several months earlier, I soon realized that neither Richard nor Israel was meant to be a long-term partner for me. On those long nights on the ferry across the Mediterranean Sea, I formulated an exit strategy: once he found a kibbutz, I would make my way back to Miami, and figure out my next steps. I was tired, in need of a long, hot bath, a thorough hair wash, and clean clothes, different clothes. I was joyous at the prospect of staying with Baba and her distant cousin Bunny for a few days. My mind swirled with thoughts of a real bed, a bathtub, a kitchen, heat. A phone. Perhaps I could call my parents. But there was no bathtub, and the hot water was regulated, so we had to schedule our five-minute showers for every other day. Late at night I rolled out my sleeping bag on the floor of Bunny’s living room, my mind on fire for hours while Richard slept peacefully nearby. I could not make overseas calls from her phone. I had to go to the post office to make an appointment for a phone line, prepay, give them the number in advance, then return at a designated time, often days later.
After two weeks of Bunny guiding us through the country, Richard’s grandmother was to fly back to Florida. Bunny arranged to take Richard and I to Jerusalem, where we would stay with a retired NYC art teacher friend who promised to take good care of us. I wanted to go to Bethlehem for Christmas Eve services.
As I walked through the sand-covered parking lot that morning in Caesaria, my mind filled with thoughts of Christmases past. This was the first time away from my family during the holidays. I visualized my parents, my sister and her husband, my nephew Sean, then 8 years old and so dear to me. During my high school and college years I worked Christmas holidays at a toy store and spoiled the heck out of him. I missed them all.
I felt a intense, sorrow-filled pain. What if this was my father’s last Christmas? Why didn’t I go home after leaving Greece?
Just then I looked down. Something poked out of the sand. I picked it up.
It was a Roman coin.