Trip to Golan Heights

One Sunday morning at rush hour, we left from Tel Aviv with the car towards the Golan Heights.
Mountain road: East, Jordan; North, Syria. Syria, white clouds in the sky, green mountains, flocks
of sheep, Syria. The mountains squeeze the long Jordan river that runs along. The ford and the
lower parts of the slopes are very green, although now the riverbed is dry and covered with
grassland. Over the river crosses an iron bridge which was blown up to prevent an imminent Syrian
 
tank invasion during the Yom Kippur war.


We continued going up through the paved road, the motor coughs as the gears are shifted.The curve
and the rise are steep and there is a fear of finding another vehicle in front or receiving a stone hit.
Golan Heights: a nice contraste between the arid hillsides and the green summit. The highway is jammed 

with trucks, harvesters and tractors used on farms and fields flanking the route. The cars get stucked in a 

traffic jam at least half and hour during which the strong flavor of Turkish coffee fills lips and palate, 

the cigarette calms the anxiety and the cold and the bladder is relieved.
A secondary road, also paved, leads to one of the fortresses used during the war.
The entrance of the stronghold is guarded by a giant Israeli flag under which its stunning metal mast 
shines  under the sun. Uphill, to the fortification, there are two or three rusted Merkava tanks, over 
overgrown  grass, and a troop transport. It is a gigantic bomb-proof bunker criscrossed by a network 
of internal galleries leading to a system of trenches. Ceiling splattered with respirators, sniper peepholes 
made in the walls,  a niche machine gun composed by a mobile base of a large caliber weapon, gunner 
seat and binoculars.
Upon leaving the building, a hungry cat meowed; in a corner we found their food, we fed it and went 
down to the entrance.

Three monoliths. The left has three piled-up stones: the top seems an index to heaven, and the middle 
one says in Hebrew: "Memory"; the bottom says '' Bad ''. The central menhir is a marble plate doubled-
page in Hebrew and English titled '' Friends never forget friends ''. The monolith on the right, under the 
heading '' My friends who did not return from the hill '', displays a gallery of thirty-two photos in black 
and white of fat-cheeked boys, lopsided kippa boys,whited-smile boys, bearded boys, uniformed boys, 
thick rimed eyeglasses boys. 
Our car leaves silently through the asphalt slope. We rejoined the highway and arrived to a route stop.