Meir walked over to the jackass, raised his shoe, and gave it a kick on the rump. The startled beast brayed, bolted, and loped off down the dirt road. Meir ran off after him.
“Be careful,” Meir’s wife called.
Meir followed the jackass along a narrow path which wound through an olive grove to a fenced yard and a two-story house, seven times the size of Meir’s caravan. The jackass stopped in front of a feed trough and brayed, wanting some water to wash down Meir’s roses. The settler knocked on the carved wooden door and waited until the owner appeared, an Arab about fifty-years old, wearing the long white gown and head gear of a well-to-do Moslem. He stared expressionlessly at Meir, as if this was a daily occurrence – a Jew on a social call at his door.
“Is that your jackass?” Meir asked.
The Arab’s eyes shifted quickly to the animal and returned expressionlessly to Meir. He paused, as if deciding whether to answer or not.
“He ate a rose bush of mine.”
The Arab shrugged, as if to say what could one do? Jackasses ate bushes. That was a part of Allah’s great plan.
“I don’t want your jackass eating my roses again,” Meir warned. “Tie him up. Keep him in your yard. Do you understand?”
The Arab nodded. This time with a smile. Meir couldn’t tell if he was being friendly or laughing, but Meir trusted him about as far as he could lift up and throw the mule.
That was on Sunday. On Tuesday, Meir came home from work to find his wife silently preparing lunch in their corridor kitchen.
“What’s the matter?” Meir asked.
“The jackass came back,” she said. “He ate another two of your rose bushes before the soldiers could chase him away.”
Meir slammed open the caravan door. It rebounded off the wall and yanked the screws off a hinge. The settler’s heart sank when he saw his small garden. Only one rosebush was spared. Like a picky eater, the jackass had nipped off the tasty flowers, leaving the thorny stems. Meir leaped down the embankment to the dirt road and ran off toward the home of the four-legged vandal.
“Be careful,” his wife called once again from the window.
The jackass was taking an afternoon nap, snoozing in the sun as if he had just finished a sumptuous Sabbath repast. Around its neck was a rope tied to a tree. The smell of pungent tobacco wafted outside as the Arab opened the door of the house.
“Your jackass ate another two of my rosebushes,” Meir informed him.
The Arab looked over at the innocently sleeping animal. “It cannot be,” he said. “The jackass has been tied up all day.”
“It ate my rosebushes,” Meir repeated.
“Perhaps it was someone else’s animal,” the Arab said. “After all, jackasses look alike.”
Meir felt the Arab was playing with him.
“But, of course, I am sorry all the same,” the Arab graciously added.
“I don’t care if you’re sorry,” Meir said. “The fact is my rosebushes are gone. If I find your jackass back on my property, you’ll never see him again. Understood?”
“That isn’t your property,” the Arab said bluntly.
For a moment, Meir couldn’t answer. He felt that someone had snuck up from behind and bludgeoned him on the head. In the dark eyes of the Arab, Meir could feel centuries of hate. He knew there wasn’t a way to answer the man, for the real answer rested on Divine truths too ethereal to explain. But even on the practical side, the Arab was wrong. The Shoshana settlers had returned to land owned by Jews throughout the time of Turkish rule up to the Massacre of 1929 when Arabs burned the houses on the site and murdered the Jewish residents who hadn’t had time to flee.
“Perhaps,” the Arab said, “your roses wouldn’t be eaten if you lived somewhere else.”
“Just walk away,” Meir thought to himself. “Just walk away,” he repeated until his feet obeyed the command.
At the gate, Meir stopped. Softly, he warned the man again, then turned and walked away, back to his caravan home. But the very next day, Meir was driving some women up to the Kiryah to do their weekly shopping when he received a radio call in the van.