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IOWA IMAGES: DUTCH IMMIGRANT HISTORY ILLUSTRATED
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by Irene Kooi Chadwick
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Excerpts
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Irene Kooi Chadwick
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1
War Zone
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A bomb shelter lies below the building where my daughter and I are
living in Israel. Children descend the dark stairs to the bomb shelter when
they find that the door has been inadvertently left unlocked. I climb four
flights of stairs to our apartment, enter, and pull on the string that turns on
the light bulb dangling from the center of the ceiling. A breeze comes from
the Negev Desert to lift the curtain of gray gauze over the window. Air moves
into the room and twirls the crocheted loops held by the lampshade's wire
hoops around the bare bulb. The light projected through the wire-framed
loops casts moving patterns around the room and mixes darkness with light.
Around the walls of the room race circles, stars, triangles, trapezoids, ovals,
and rectangles - elongated, widened, misshapen, then sharpened into the familiar
patterns of the crocheted doilies I remember in the Iowa farmhouse.
The blank shadows of linked paper dolls cut from a single piece of
paper march around the walls and attach themselves to memories of early
childhood. I am climbing steep wooden stairs, negotiating them one by
one, going upstairs to bed. Oval shadows along the walls lengthen as daylight
changes into night. In the narrow hall above me is a long string dangling
from a light bulb. Even when I stand on tiptoes, the string is nearly
out of reach. I miss. It swings. The floor is cold, the dark is scary, but I
must reach the elusive string to pull on the light before a ghost grabs me
from behind.
Time passes. Gradually the dangling string becomes several threads,
frayed, growing into the fuzzy colors of family, each member's fabric unraveling
stitch by stitch. Bouncing off each other are times when light and darkness
mix sections of farmland with city squares, bomb scares with exploding
stars, an Oriental Mideast with an American Midwest. Memories of Iowa
during World War II reverberate off the reality of living in Israel during
the Intifada. Over and over on continents on opposite sides of the globe,
wartime austerities, patterns, and practices reveal remarkable similarities. In
Copyrighted Material ©2004 Irene Kooi Chadwick
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Iowa Images: Dutch immigrant history, illustrated
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both kitchens, the same spoke is missing from the back of a wooden chair.
Walking up Eilat's streets, I pass kitchen windowsills where glass jars of preserves
are lined up, sunlight singing through the rich reds, purples, and golds
of harvest. Light bouncing off the Red Sea illuminates the door to a bomb
shelter - a storm cellar below the farmhouse in Iowa. In the dusk, I stare at
peaches, pears, tomatoes, and beans swimming in Mason jars lined up on
wooden shelves next to a bin of potatoes.
During the autumn of 1989, I lived with my daughter, a marine biologist
working in Eilat, Israel, located at the northern tip of the Gulf of
Aqaba on the Red Sea. Here coral reefs attract marine researchers, also scuba
divers, snorkelers, and water sports enthusiasts. Eilat is a winter resort for
vacationing Europeans and Asians, similar to the Caribbean for Americans.
It is situated on the Great Rift that once separated the land mass of two
continents. Between mountains, desert, and sea, Eilat lies on a slope, its shoreline
shared with Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The four countries lie so
close to each other that their ancient conflicts seem to shake the ground
under foot. Mountains of stone rise up as treeless ramparts, closing in and
turning the four countries toward the Red Sea. Pink with coral beauty and
crystalline clarity, the Red Sea reflects the distant red hills of Jordan, carving
shadow from light.
In 1989 an estimated 6,000 Arabs without licenses to work were living
underground in Eilat. They helped to keep the luxury hotels afloat, earning better
wages than they could get in the occupied territories of the West Bank or the
Gaza Strip. Ever since the Intifada began, however, tourism has been down and
terrorism up. Fewer hotels are full, and more Arabs are out of work and on the
streets. Israelis have become used to making a wide detour around the paper bag,
that might hold a bomb, left on the sidewalk or street. Security is tight; children,
especially, are protected. Elementary schools are often recessed in the ground and
fenced, their gates locked and guarded. At age eighteen, all Israelis become
soldiers for three years. From age twenty-one to fifty-five, the men disappear into
the military for three weeks each year, their families not knowing where they go.
A man in every apartment building is in charge of the rap on the door at night
that means GO NOW. On the street, one out of ten is in khaki; at home, one out
of ten is dead from the recurrent conflicts between Arabic countries and Israel.
Copyrighted Material ©2004 Irene Kooi Chadwick
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Irene Kooi Chadwick
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On the streets of Eilat, pairs of soldiers wander past, guns slung loosely
across their backs. My shoulders carry only the weight of doubt. To enjoy a
cup of coffee, I select an outdoor table in the tented Shalom Plaza Shopping
Center. Positioned next to a busy Kodak store and other small shops, this is a
good place to watch people. At the next table, gun across his lap, a khaki-clad
man reads a Hebrew newspaper to friends. Four Americans share news with
newly found friends. People with backpacks hustle past baby buggies. Young
locals mix with a diverse crowd coming in from the airport across the street.
Men, young and old, smoke and watch the parade of adolescents walking by,
advertising their assets. Girls have colorful hair bands holding their long hair
straight up, letting it fall from above their heads in a cascading fountain of
fuzz. Boys wear Jewish skullcaps. I notice that these yarmulkes are as obvious
an identification as the tribal marks cut into the faces of native West Africans.
Loud music competes with the roar of jets landing alongside the hotel
strip. From their fat bellies, the jets disgorge Arabs, Jews, Americans,
Europeans, Orientals, and Africans. They collect their bags and wander by,
taking in the newness of this place that is neither black nor white, but varying
shades and tones. Asia meets Africa at Eilat and at the nearby towns of Taba
in Egypt and Aqaba in Jordan, all sharing a common coastline on the Gulf of
Aqaba.
Since Eilat is a small town, everything is within easy walking distance.
Climbing hills behind tall apartment buildings under construction, I find a
sign marking the entrance to an archeological site and ascend to caves hidden
by weathered burlap flaps. I find bunkers. On the next walk into the hills,
there are more cave entrances blocked by twisted balls of barbed-wire. Clearly
visible are the lights and smokestacks of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan. In
the Gulf of Aqaba are fleets of gray gunboats at anchor. In the distance are
the dark holes of more bunkers in hillsides. All of Eilat is easily within view
of her enemies.
The area is steeped in history. Near to Eilat in the Negev Desert at Wadi
Timna are the remains of King Solomon's copper and iron mines. Excavations
have uncovered the ruins of metal foundries from that time. Eilat (Elat) was then
called Elath or Ezion-geber on the Gulf of Aqaba, and excavations carried out in
the area from 1938-1940 show that these were successive names for the same
Copyrighted Material ©2004 Irene Kooi Chadwick
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Iowa Images: Dutch immigrant history, illustrated
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place. It was one of the encampments of the Israelites on their journey
toward Canaan after Jehovah had parted the Red Sea to let them pass
through to escape an Egyptian army hot in pursuit. The Israelites wandered
in the deserts of Sinai for forty years before reaching their "Promised
Land." As regularly as manna came from heaven to feed the Israelis,
Pa's Bible reading followed every meal on the Iowa farm. And so, we also
criss-crossed the Sinai Peninsula, chapter by chapter, through Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua.
During Biblical times, the Gulf of Aqaba was a crucial commercial
artery for Arabia, as well as a military seaport for the whole of Arabia. King
Solomon extended the borders of ancient Israel down to Ezion-geber. He
based an overseas trading fleet there and the port became a heavily defended
export center. The goods traded included ebony, sandalwood, gold, silver,
ivory, myrrh, panther skins, peacocks and apes. After Solomon, Judean kings
ruled, then the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Moslems, Crusaders, Turks, and,
more recently, the British. Today, the Gulf of Aqaba remains the only gateway
to the Indian Ocean for Israel and Jordan; their sea-going trade with the
Orient occurs at the adjacent seaport towns of Eilat and Aqaba.1
Modern-day Eilat came into Israel only fifty-six years ago, after World
War II, when the United Nations created the State of Israel. In 1949 Israel
sent their convicts to build Eilat. It was a cost-effective measure to send law
breakers away from the populous north, down to Eilat at Israel's southern
tip, a place so remote that jails were not necessary. As the convicts laboriously
carved the road to the Red Sea out of the desert, mile by mile, guards
had to be posted to protect the law-breakers from the Bedouin. When the
first group of convicts finally arrived at the Red Sea, they found only three
abandoned huts on the beach - no shelter and no food. Jordan had moved
the borders of their ancient town of Aqaba a few yards up the beach and
1 John Bright, A History of Israel (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1972). Index:
Plate III is map titled "The Exodus from Egypt," showing criss-cross wanderings of
Israelis across Sinai Peninsula, also trade routes. Additional trade routes in The
Bible as History, page 218, Figure 37, by Werner Keller (New York: William
Morrow, 1981).
Copyrighted Material ©2004 Irene Kooi Chadwick
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