Wandering
Some of the people I meet linger powerfully in my mind long after I’ve met them. They might be people I’ve known for anything from hours to weeks. One of these people was Joel*.
While hiking the Kepler track in New Zealand with my beloved, I met Joel during a game of cards in an overnight hut. The card game was started by a ruthlessly social young German who’d discovered where everyone was from and delightedly introduced Joel, from Israel, to two other Israeli guys — “Three Israeli guys all at once — I don’t believe it!” Joel bobbed his head quietly and paid attention to his cards. I should note at this point that Joel had an oddly tufted head of hair (I think he’d cut it himself), a wild beard and a brassy moustache of Nietzsche-esque proportions. We’d all been on the trail a few days, but Joel looked like he’d been hiking for months. We’d noticed him before, trailing about with one group of hikers or another, looking a little lost. The card game broke up for a ranger’s talk, and everyone went to bed.
The next day we crossed the stunning alpine section of the track. Giant clouds made a shadow theatre over entire mountain ranges as we traversed one narrow saddleback after another. A ranger told us later hikers sometimes have to crawl that section to avoid being blown into the valleys. After descending to the next hut we ran into Joel again in the kitchen. The kitchen was — a little bizarrely — decorated with Jewish calendars depicting scenes from the exodus. Joel pointed this out and grimly read the Hebrew for our benefit in his slow, quiet voice. He told us that, like many young people unreconciled with their country’s problems, he preferred to travel incognito. Israel, in his opinion, was a land addicted to war and conflict was a part of its national identity. I asked if many people there felt the same as him. Not many, he said. He’d spent a lot of time traveling in New Zealand, criss-crossing the country north to south hiking, camping, and falling in with different groups of travellers. He’d had also spent 4 months in Australia working at a Sydney dock and sleeping intermittently in a cheap car he’d bought. The job at the docks came through a contact with an import-export business, and he spent a couple days a week loading and unloading containers. He alternated sleeping in his car in Manly and Balmain, parking late at night in residential streets and using public bathrooms in nearby parks. Australia was, as far as Joel was concerned, a paradise. The pay was so good, he told us, he could eat whenever he liked and stay in hostels as often as he wanted. He didn’t eat out “as much as the Australians,” but a lot more than he could at home. “And the hommus is edible,” he told us. Not like in the States. He told us how in Israel he’d occasionally go to a cafe with his friends and they’d spend the afternoon working their way through a giant plate of hommus, scooping it up with flat bread. “It’s that much better than Australian hommus?” I asked. “You can’t imagine,” he said, grinning. I started a bucket list then and there and put Israeli hommus at the top.
When called for military service, Joel told his evaluator he believed the ongoing war was wrong and that he didn’t want to fight. He was subsequently diagnosed with a minor mental disorder and spent his national service at a desk. Joel told us about some of his friends given “very difficult orders,” such as remaining motionless in ambush positions for up to two days, while desert parasites lay eggs in their scalps.
We said goodbye that night and continued down the track the next day, walking through to the end of the trail and discussing Joel on and off as we went. I had a feeling we’d be seeing him again, and sure enough, ten days later in Queenstown while we were waiting for an ever-popular Ferg Burger, a young man bounded up to us saying ‘Hey! You don’t recognise me huh?” Joel had had a hair cut and was clean shaven. He was eager to meet a friend and couldn’t stay for long. We said goodbye again.
I really felt it was goodbye this time, and we left for the airport soon after. I was left with a nagging feeling of something undone, or unspoken. Back home in Australia — paradise — I realised what I wanted to say to Joel was that a country is the sum of its people, and it needs all of them, especially those willing to imagine a different future.
* I’ve changed his name to that of a grinning Jewish adventurer I met recently, because he keeps popping into my head too.
