A Room of Their Own by Rakefet Yarden (best summer reads of all time .TXT) 📕

was ready. A couple of days earlier, I’d called Mikki, the dietician that Rotem had found for me, and made an appointment with her for the day after my release. Even though I didn’t yet know her, I knew that this time I’d succeed. I knew that this time it would work.

Northbound

I started my journey, got onto the northbound highway and traveled up the familiar route. I turned towards Yokne’am at the Ein Tut intersection and kept going. There was hardly any traffic and the road was clear. I stopped at the Mahanayim intersection on a whim and went into a grill restaurant, having decided to eat some dead animals just before entering the once-a-day rice and lentils regime, and I ordered a burger and fries with all the dressings. After that, I felt that I was able to continue.

A further 20-minute drive on the highway, with fields on both sides of the road and birds cutting across them in the sky, and I reached a “Ma’ayan Baruch” sign. On the right-hand side of the road were avocado groves and trees bedecked in leaves of bold green. When I reached the gate to Ma’ayan Baruch, my cell phone alerted me to a message from Dani, a message with a single word.

“Sorry.”

Another message immediately followed. “Thanks for visiting me. I signed my release and Tal’s taking me over to her house.” It was so clear to me that she was still hospitalized. My heart dove inwards. I passed through the gate and dozens of colorful buttercups welcomed me. Then another message beeped. “Rotem, when can we meet?”

Luckily for us both, I wasn’t anywhere in her vicinity. If I hadn’t gone away, we would have met and talked and I’d have ended up postponing this trip forever. We’ll see how it goes, I told myself. In less than an hour, I’ll deposit my cell phone and become encased in blessed silence, which will envelop me like a thick fluffy cloud. I kept driving and reached the center of the kibbutz, left my car at the main parking lot, and continued on foot. Aged trees shaded the whole area with their vast foliage.

“Hi Dani, I’m driving. Get to Tal’s and we’ll speak later. Okay?”

I didn’t write her about being away for more than 10 days, which is a lifetime at times like this, and without a phone on top of that. I was scared of rattling her already-shaky ground. After she gets to Tal’s and before I part from my phone, I’ll talk to her and explain the situation, I decided. Maybe my absence will motivate her to return to the team at the unit. Or something else, perhaps. A girl can dream.

Ma’ayan Baruch is a 73-year-old kibbutz, established a year before the state, with bright lawns and massive trees covering its older areas. A couple wearing shorts and flip-flops crossed the path and I approached them. “Do you know how to get to the Vipassana workshop?”

“We’re from the army preparation course. These are our buildings here. You probably mean the yurts at the entrance to the kibbutz. You need to get back on the path towards the entrance and you’ll see them on your left.”

A man bowed and introduced himself. “I’m Yehuda.” So this is the Yehuda who got us all to come here. Where are all his followers, and what is he doing giving me information leaflets himself? That wasn’t how I’d imagined him. He said that we would start the first session shortly. The papers listed the schedule as well as the commitments we were to take upon ourselves for the duration of our stay. The appropriate morality, ‘Śīla’, on the road to the purification of the soul. Basic moral behavior that is supposed to calm the mind enough so that one can practice self-reflection. I deposited my cell phone, as well as the Mary Oliver book that I took with me everywhere I went. I’d left my jewelry at home and felt a strange, naked sensation on my finger where the ring I’d bought for myself usually is.

Yehuda turned out to be a very pleasant man, dressed in jeans and a plain T-shirt. I’d expected a guru dressed in white, donning a cape, or at least loose pants, with his hands on his pot belly and a piercing look in his eyes that reflected all of your heart’s deepest secrets as he’d say something like, “You’re a wounded person who has experienced a lot and wants nothing but goodness.” Who doesn’t? But this guy didn’t even have a pot belly.

There was a plastic box for shoes at the entrance to the yurt. I took off my pink wooden sandals and slowly walked across the soft rug. The yurt, a round tent made of white fabric, was divided into two − the men on the left and the women on the right. On cushion No. 12 I found a card made from recycled paper with “Rotem Golan” on it, and I sat down. There was a young woman next to me who looked like a teenager, but I remembered that the website stated the minimum age for the workshop was 20.

Yehuda began to speak. “Welcome. ‘Vipassana’ means seeing things for what they are − the art of living. The purpose of this technique, which isn’t affiliated with any religion, cult, belief, or nationality, is the complete extinction of all negative emotional sediments, leading to complete release and true happiness.”

And nothing less. I sat cross-legged on the mat, and after 10 minutes my legs were already numb and my back was creaking. I shifted my left leg a bit, but a minute later my right leg started sending distress signals. I focused on breathing according to Yehuda’s instructions. He showed us how to shift between breathing through the narrow bit underneath the nostrils and the wide area at the top of the skull. I discovered that I really was glad about the whole silence thing, but I wondered