The Day That Changed My Photographic Life, Part Three

Shortly after arriving in Jerusalem and having just barely settled into my routine, I was told that I had been given the privilege of meeting the Prime Minister (Golda Meir) at her office. So one morning off I went to her office and there, with the Mayor, I was introduced formally to my hosts.

They asked me if there was anything I needed, or any member of parliament I wished to meet, and all I could say was that I wanted to meet Bedouins in the desert, and meet not the celebrities of the country, but rather its common folk both Arab and Jew. I wanted to feel and see what was worth all the killing and fighting for the last 2,000 years.

With this comment I was told I was on my own, they could be of no help to me, but wished me good luck. As I was leaving I was told that if I wanted to meet the one Bedouin member of the Israeli Parliament, I should go far out into the Negev desert and follow the telephone line.

With that, a quick cup of coffee, a few handshakes, I was off, somewhat relieved, a little confused but ready to do battle for my pictures.

With that meeting I started my daily ritual of looking, walking, driving each day to find pictures. I worked everyday but often would return in the early evening as the sun was setting and hear Isaac Stern practicing the violin. I would be in the middle ages during the day and return to the most civilized and gracious place in the evening.

So in the next few days I climbed into Jon’s VW bug and we set off into the Negev Desert. Farther and farther we went. Jon had some idea where the Bedouin encampment could be and we drove for hours looking until finally at a small crossroad, a telephone line appeared out of nowhere.

It was as if a tree had just sprouted. Where it had come from I had no idea, but as was suggested to me, we began to follow not the little brick road, but the telephone poles that seemed to stretch out for eternity.

For some time we traveled along a paved road and then suddenly in the middle of the desert with nothing more than a small dirt path, the line switched direction and followed the path deeper and deeper into the desert. It must have taken us at least one hour to finally arrive at small-tented camp in what seemed like the middle of nowhere.

There were no men around, only veiled women and children working with goats and camels. No men were apparent.

As Jon spoke Arabic, he explained that we had traveled for hours to meet the sheik and wondered if he would be so kind to let us visit for a few minutes.

Over the course of my stay I traveled to a few other Bedouin camps. I learned you would never know how you would be greeted. It can be quite dangerous and a rather unnerving experience. This day I was all innocence and luckily for me we were graciously invited into another world.

Okay, we have to stop for a moment.

I was in my twenties, but I never realized how little I knew of the world. Sure I had read National Geographic religiously, grew up in The Big Apple, had traveled to many places and by now had photographed migrant workers all over America. I had even lived in some very poor rural communities in West Virginia, but somehow had missed something important.

The world was truly a wondrous place, exotic, romantic, dangerous, forbidding, and filled with taste and smells I had never encountered before. As I walked into that tent, I was walking back into time. We now live in a culture of social networks, where it is all there at the present. The art is vacuous, the culture is lost and where, oh where is the romance?

Now back to the story. The Israeli government required that any member of the parliament be reachable by phone, and as this was way before the creation of cell phones, computers, twitter, facebook, email, etc. (thank God) The government at great and very controversial expense, had brought a hard phone line out to the tent of Sheik Allee (I think this was his name) their newest member of parliament. So as the tent flaps were opened, and as we walked into the inexplicably cool tent, the air smelled of tobacco, cumin and sweet tea. Sitting there right beside the sheik was an old-fashioned black rotary dial phone connecting him directly to all the powers at large. You might as well have run a phone line to the moon. You were as isolated and alone in the Negev as one must feel on the moon.

He was surrounded by bodyguards with long scimitars and flowing black robs, sitting or lying in the tent, and at first I didn’t know if I was to be beheaded or handed a cup of tea.

Luckily, the sheik spoke some English, was somewhat gracious, yelled something in Arabic and immediately two veiled women entered the tent and served us all tea.

It turned out there were many death threats made on his life and I understand that some years later he was killed with his body guards.

That day, unlike many other days while in the Middle East, I was given permission to take his picture and pictures of the other men, but never of the women.

I learned so many things in the Middle East that I will never forget. Mostly I began my slow journey deeper into myself and became even more aware of who I was and where I stood in the world around me. I found courage I didn’t know I had, a rigor, a forcefulness and true joy in being a classic romantic, living and feeling the joys, the sorrows, the envies of life and having a tool to express it all. Oh, what a life!