Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

“Shepherds don’t let the grass grow under their feet, they’re a lot more spontaneous and free-flowing,” Othniel said, and Gabi agreed. A shepherd doesn’t get tied down to one place, he forsakes a safe and familiar location for the nobler purpose of a devout and spiritual existence. He sees the world and broadens his horizons, whereas the farmer is fixed, enslaved to his material possessions and assets. Gabi confessed that at this stage in his life, he appeared to have the need for something solid to hold on to.

“The worker of the land has a solid base,” Othniel said, clearly understanding Gabi’s heart. “And he also creates something — he sows a seed and he reaps a fruit — and doesn’t simply sit in the shade and allow the herd to do the work. Our people, from the very beginning, have always lived on these two opposite ends of the scale. Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac, even Rabbi Eliezer started out as a worker of the land, while Rabbi Akiva was a shepherd. Othniel Assis alone is both!”

“Sitting around all day while the herd grazes is pretty damn boring, for the most part,” Gabi said, eliciting a toothy laugh and a slap on the shoulder from Othniel, who also promised that working with cherry tomatoes was very different from working with regular ones.

Gabi found his own special place during the long hours he spent in solitude when he first arrived on the hilltop — a stone ledge above the cliff that dropped down into the Hermesh Stream riverbed and overlooked the desert. Armed with a blanket one night, he went to sleep there under the stars, and the following day he came across a beautiful, smooth slab of rock that he pictured as a wonderful floor for a small cabin made of wood and stone. He laid out several rocks to mark the outline of the cabin’s walls. If he were to add a few more every day, he thought, he’d eventually have a wall. After more than a year of lonely days and nights, the wall was completed.

At the same time, he built a number of small terraces in the area around the wall and floor and put in plants, which didn’t survive Othniel’s hungry goats and the dry conditions. From Othniel’s fields, he borrowed several used and perforated pipes and set up a drip-irrigation system that with time allowed the plants to take hold in the soil. With the help of timber logs and beams, the original floor was turned into a beautiful wooden porch, which evolved into wooden walls and a roof.

At a certain stage in the process, Gabi realized he was building his future home, the home of his dreams. It may have been small and modest — a single multipurpose room — but “Gabi’s Cabin” more than provided for all of its owner’s humble requirements, and more important, it was all his, constructed with patience and love and by his own two hands. He felt fortunate, and never tired of the landscape, the translucent brown desert hills and, farther away, the mountains of Edom: a place of breathtaking beauty, close enough to the homes of the settlement to feel a part of the community, yet far enough to maintain an element of privacy, to be at one with nature, to withdraw into prayer. Gabi did his best to ensure that the cabin he’d built blended in with its spectacular surroundings, flowed with them rather than defaced them. He had never had any formal training in design, planning, or building, but he was blessed with talent and intuition.

There was room inside the cabin for a bed, a coffee table, shelves for clothes and books and CDs. Power was drawn from a utility pole some fifty meters from the cabin and a light was installed in the ceiling. The toilet facilities were outside — number ones in nature, number twos in a sawdust-filled toilet bowl. The bath, which had so impressed the Civil Administration officials, was Gabi’s pride and joy. He found the youth-sized stainless steel tub discarded in Ma’aleh Hermesh, brought it to the hilltop, placed it on a concealed crag of rock, and hooked it up to a water pipe in the center of the settlement. Around two of its sides, he erected a mud wall that he reinforced with empty wine bottles and fitted with a round, cracked mirror and a small niche for toiletries. There was no roof — bathing under the open sky! He laid another pipe from the tub to a basin fitted into a wooden table outside the door. A little below the cabin, down five stone steps, some natural and some finished off either with cement or segments of rock, Gabi erected a shaded patio, and around another nook in the rock he kept a small refrigerator and a hot plate — a kitchen, a dinette, and a place to kick back all in one.

Gabi worked slowly but poured his soul into the task at hand. He carried rocks, leveled sections of earth, gathered materials from here, there, and everywhere, adding layer upon layer. He tried to devote at least an hour or two each day to the cabin — he’d wake early sometimes and head there before the farm, and sometimes he’d spend his noontime break at the cabin, and after hooking up the power cable and installing the light, he’d go there on occasion in the evenings and at night, too. He worked patiently, focusing on one task at a time, and felt a deep sense of satisfaction and gratitude after making even the smallest bit of progress. And because everyone at the settlement was fond of Gabi, they encouraged him and helped him in various ways — providing him with surplus building materials, or taking an hour off work and lending a hand, or assisting with specific tasks such as installing the power line or water pipe.

The arrangement worked well for all parties. Where else in the world would Gabi have been able to build, with his own two hands, a home of his choosing, his taste, and catering to his needs — at almost no cost at all? And from the point of view of the settlement, Gabi’s pending move would free up a trailer that could then be used to house a new family. Moreover, the log cabin became a beautiful, eye-catching attraction, drawing visitors, political functionaries, and potential settlers.

Soon after Roni’s arrival on the hilltop, Gabi took him for a walk and showed him the cabin, saying to him, more in earnest than in jest, “You can pay your rent while you’re here by working with me here on the house.”

Roni, who absolutely loved the “open-air design” of the place, was quick to respond. “Sure, sure, no question about it,” he said. “I’ll come to help regardless of the rent thing. Are you kidding me? Working here in this fresh air and these surroundings, it’s a dream, man, it’s America rediscovered. What am I talking about, America? Things like this don’t exist in America, in America, things like this…” He took a deep breath and looked around, and his voice lost a little of its verve when he completed his sentence, “don’t exist…”

Gabi could have counted on one hand the number of times that Roni came to help. And one spring morning, Gabi asked him to. New wooden beams and planks had arrived, and Gabi had freed up half the day and needed another pair of hands to measure the beams and nail them together. Roni glanced at his watch. “Today, of all days?” he said. “Ariel is finally coming over and we’re going to have a look at Musa’s oil press; it took forever to arrange.” Roni looked up from the watch to see the look of disappointment in Gabi’s eyes. “I’m sorry, bro, I have plans with some people. I tell you what, how about tomorrow? Let’s make it for tomorrow. You really need to tell me such things in advance.” Gabi, however, would be spending the following two full days hard at work on Othniel’s farm. He laced and tied his shoes and left, offering only a feeble “Good-bye.”

“Ariel!” Roni called out with a broad smile as the silver Toyota hesitantly approached along the circular road. He was sitting on an easy chair in the yard alongside the trailer and reading yesterday’s newspaper that Gabi had found and brought home after guard duty during the night.