“Yorba, yorba ,” his aunt yells from the back row of the van. “It’s spelled with a J,” she says in English, “but said like Y.”

I nod but don’t turn from the window. I can no longer keep track of what language we are in – Hebrew, Yiddish, Hungarian. Even English sounds foreign at this point. All I know is that we are forever going yorba – left. Maybe it’s illegal to turn right in Israel.

We are driving to the Dead Sea. All week, David’s aunt, uncle, and cousins have been telling us we must see the Dead Sea. So on the last day of our visit, we set out in the morning from the rocky Mediterranean coast. The dripping bougainvillea reminds me of Southern California as do the highways signs, written in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, that use the same green metal and bold font as American ones. After an hour in the car, we see camels and shanty towns more often. We are in the dry, endless desert. More desert than I could have ever imagined.

The desert back home has nothing on the Middle East – though this term, I learn quickly, is insulting. Israel is the beginning and the end. The center of life; it is not in the middle of anything.

David is driving. His dad, Csaba, rides shotgun, translating when the relatives forget to speak English. I’m in the middle row, sitting between Jacob and Mary to keep them from bickering. They are good kids, but the trip has worn us all down. I let Jacob dissolve into his music while Mary watches a movie. I ignore David’s pleas to make the kids look at the scenery.

“They’re missing it,” he groans.

His dad snorts. “You were the same way. I could hardly get you to look at the Eiffel Tower!”

“This is different.”

They rehash – for the hundredth time – the story of their trip to France. I close my eyes and try to get comfortable against the low headrest. Behind me, the aunt and uncle speak in Hungarian, the cadence of the language and the warmth of the car pulling me into sleep.

*

I wake up when the car stops, relieved that we finally arrived. But we haven’t. We are stopped at a checkpoint at the edge of the West Bank. For the first time during our trip, I am nervous. These young people, with stern faces and machine guns, seem too young to have guns, to be in the military, to point weapons at my children.

Though we are ‘one of them’ as David’s dad says – meaning not an Arab – it doesn’t make me feel better. I squeeze Mary’s hand, not realizing she had slipped hers into mine. I smile tightly as David explains that his uncle had talked to the Israeli soldier in Hebrew so they know we were okay. They wave us through with their guns, the ease of their moments making it even more frightening.

“Just two more hours,” David announces, trying to be cheerful.

I can’t fall back asleep so Mary and I play tic-tac-toe.

*

David has been to Israel many times with his father since he was a child. It’s the first time for me and the kids. I don’t know why we waited until now or, honestly, why I have come. We’ve been sleeping apart for months now. But Csuba invited us. Even though he travels here every year, I cannot believe it’s safe. But I couldn’t let the children go without me. If something is going to happen to them, I want it to happen to me, too.

I am not foolish enough to think that this trip will change anything. That we will fall back in love and live happily ever after. But I thought we’d find some joy in traveling, like when we were first together.

Long before the kids came, we went to Budapest with Csaba and decided to take the train up to Prague. We were walking to the train station in the rain when a spectacular bolt of lightning struck. We gasped as the sky lit up. Inside the station, it was chaos. With David’s vague Hungarian we learned that lightning had torched a track switch and so all trains were delayed. We spent eight hours in the cold, grimy station, laughing and talking and kissing. It became one of our favorite memories. But now, there is almost nothing. There have been a few moments, like exploring the market in Jerusalem and seeing the Western Wall, but I know when we return home, everything we felt here will be gone.

*

Finally, we are at the Dead Sea. We crawl out of the minivan and into the burning sunshine. The parking lot is full of screaming kids, sullen teenagers, parents burdened with coolers and towels. David’s aunt and uncle usher us toward the water.

As I help Mary down the dirt slope, I see the water and am startled by my overwhelming disappointment. There are hundreds of people along the water’s edge. I can’t make them out as individuals, just a mass of sound and motion. Nothing at all like the empty, tranquil beaches boasted about in the travel brochures. I turn to David, wanting to ask him where that beach is, where we can enjoy the rejuvenation of Dead Sea minerals in silence like the brochures promised. But David is busy mediating between his dad and his aunt about where we should set up.

On the strip of beach, some of the young women wear bikinis. Others are fully clothed with headscarves. These women are all dark – dark hair, olive skin, flashing brown eyes and attractive in the way that all young women are attractive. My husband could have gone that way. I guess he still has time to make a beautiful olive-skin child to go with our two redheads.

David and Csaba lead the kids across the rocks and chunks of salt deposits to the water. As he passes by, Csaba asks me something in Hungarian. I guess at what he’s saying and answer, “In a minute.”

“How do you know what he said?” David calls back.

I shrug and look away. The water is an impossible blue and the sun bores through the useless sunscreen I slather on. My privileged disappointment is tamed by seeing our children floating in the buoyant water. I’m grateful they are having this experience. Even if they are only half Jewish, even if they don’t care about it now, they’ve traveled half the world to be in a place that’s rooted in their DNA.

I pick my way over the rocks and swim out near the kids. The water is bathtub warm and slick. I taste the salty water and turn to float on my back. Away from the crowd, I feel relief. It’s just like every other beach I’ve been to. Of everything I’ve learned this week, it’s that what is true here is true everywhere. Families want to raise their children, observe their religion, have a place of their own. Though that last part is the point of contention here, the undercurrent to every conversation. I try to ignore the politics. It’s not my place to insert myself into this war, something I don’t pretend to understand, that I don’t feel down to my bones as the family does.

*

After floating for a while, I paddle back and sit in the shallow water near the rocks. Nearby are two women in jeans and headscarves. One woman holds a girl on her lap. The child is about six, her long wet dress clinging to her body. The child isn’t paying attention to the water and so when a salty wave splashes over them, it hits her open eyes and mouth. She begins to scream.

The women try to calm her down, but her screams turn to body-shaking sobs. Everyone on the beach is watching. The child slips from their arms and begins to run down the beach. She doesn’t look back. The two women chase after her, calling her name. The girl doesn’t stop. It’s as if she knows she will be safe if she can just get somewhere else fast enough.

I stand up and shield my eyes against the relentless sun. Soon the girl will run out of beach when the sea and rocky cliffs meet. I hear my own daughter calling my name but I can’t turn my gaze. The girl is almost out of beach but still, she doesn’t slow down. It’s as if she’s going to run right through solid rock. But I know, as well as she does, she’ll either have to go into the water or turn back the way she came.

– Jen McConnell