David´s Grandma ( a fiction)

David is in pain. He is crying hard. He is alone. David does not know what to do. But there is something that he resorts to when he is lost in his innate mind; it´s his late grandma. David still remembers his late grandma; he is looking now at her picture, and holding the beautiful watch made by his late grandpa, whom he never saw. She had always been a source of enlightenment and pride for him. Her stories and rituals used to create a world of illusive surroundings that sometimes made David a daydreamer. She used to tell David many religious stories from the Torah. Little David used to memorize and repeat many of the Psalms, and loved to play the lyre that his lovely grandma kept for him; an inheritance of about 100 years since the Solomon´s moved to the small town of Freiburg in the Southwest of Germany. The late Rachael Solomon used to be the beauty queen of that little town. Her charming beauty made her family over-concerned about her protection. Then they decided to marry her to Yitzhak Solomon; a humble, conservative trader at that town of Freiburg. Yitzhak was a watch maker. He loved his profession and excelled in it. He learnt it from his father at their hometown in the border with Switzerland; Friedrichshafen.

Still David recalls what his grandma used to tell. The sweet days didn´t last forever with the Solomon´s, as the National Socialist German Workers´ Party (Nazi) was escalating with the minorities, and seemed particularly too aggressive towards the Jews. Rachael and Yitzhak decided to flee with the other minorities in the town and head southwards. However, Yitzhak instructed his wife and family to go alone, as he had to find a way to get his lost brother Absalom who was in a Hungarian college and seemed to be missing. He never replied any correspondents since May 1933. Absalom was the baby of the family and Yitzhak considered him as his own son, not just a younger brother. Rachael cried a lot when she bid her last farewell to her husband, who never showed up after that. The disturbing and shocking news came to Rachael from Absalom in France that Yitzhak was caught and killed by a bullet in the head and thrown in a hole with dozens of other bodies. It seemed that earlier Absalom had been kidnapped by some racists in Hungary, but, however, managed to escape from them walking and running in the never ending forests of the Central Europe. Absalom met on the way to France people who recognized him and told him about what happened to his brother. The brutal, ugly Nazi never gave mercy to him or considered his request for just sending a farewell letter to his family. The Nazi´s were undertaking what they called the "Final Solution" (Endlosung); a plan of the then Maniac Hitler to annihilate the Jewish population from Europe.

Well, David´s grandma used to tell those stories to him with tears on her wrinkled cheek, but she used to tell him that those pains and hardships should teach him a lesson or two. She taught him to have love and compassion, never to allow hate to overcome him, and to always be thankful to God for his life.

David used to have few Arab friends at his school in Acco, a small, beautiful seaside town in Israel. He used to ask his grandma about Arabs, and she used to tell him that they are our neighbors; their language is close to our language, and that their ancestors and ours lived on this land hundreds of years ago. But what David did not understand was the kind of hatred that some of his Jewish friends had for those Arabs; they used to scold him whenever they saw him with them. They used to tell him that the Arabs hate us and want to kill us. But David wasn´t carried away with what his Jewish friends used to say, because to him their words were similar to those who hate and do not want to accept others. David´s grandma warned him never to be racist, because racism and hatred will lead to something similar to the ´Nazi.´

David today is a high ranking officer in the Israeli army. He promised his grandma that he will serve in the Israeli army to defend peace and protect the Jewish people from any possible ´Nazi´s,´ but David is so confused now. He does not understand what he is doing these days! He has been ordered to go to the small strip of Gaza and find terrorists there. The problem is that whenever he carries out an operation, only children and helpless Palestinian women get killed. It seems that the operations in Gaza served best the interests of the so called terrorists, and caused the whole world to condemn the Israeli brutal acts. ´I didn´t pledge my grandma to kill children and weak women and feeble old men,´ David is talking to him self while he is looking at his grandma´s photo. ´I think I´m doing wrong, my grandma; I´m doing things similar to those brutal, merciless acts that caused the death of my beloved grandpa,´ David sobs. ´When are we going to live in peace with our neighbors?´ ´When will the Jewish people and their neighbors exchange flowers and bread instead of bullets?´

The problem is that David´s grandma will never answer him, nor anyone on this planet!!!!!!!!!!!