A distant memory
Right behind the University, there’s an Arab village called Issawiya. It was always known to be hostile. I remember stones occasionally being thrown from the village on cars driving down to Ein Gedi, on the Dead Sea, even before the first Intifada. I remember watching the buses, bringing the terrorists freed as part of the Jibril deal in 1985, arriving in the village. But my strongest memory of Issawiya is a young goatherd I saw once or twice. She seemed in her late teens or early twenties and we stared at each other curiously for a little while and then each continued on her way. She was obviously a Westerner, with fair skin, blue eyes and curls burnt blond by the sun. I was a young soldier. Talking to her would have been inappropriate.