Neve Emek: Room 102 - Part 4 of ?

4

My fingers were sticky with sweat as I dragged the suitcase from the carousel.

The doll was no longer with me. I didn’t leave it behind on purpose, though. No, nothing like that. But things… just got out of control. The last thing I wanted was to leave a kid with that… doll. You know? Why would I? Something about it put me on high alert, and although it was impossible for it to—I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. But something told me not to leave that thing with the kid. In the end, I ended up doing just that.

I was reaching for my backpack in the overhead compartment when I noticed belatedly that the woman and the kid who had sat beside me were gone. The seats were empty. Clean. Like they were never really there. Naturally, I searched for them as I walked down the aisle and between travellers, catching glimpses of countless hurried faces. Still, I couldn’t find them. I scanned the departing passengers several times in the terminal, too. But my desperate search yielded nothing. They were nowhere in sight. Just gone.

And so I gave up and directed my focus on a much more pressing matter.

I’d never set foot in Tel Aviv before. The signage was unfamiliar, and the announcements were in a language I did not speak or understand. I must’ve gone in circles for several minutes trying to figure out where I was supposed to go, when I finally stumbled upon an information desk. Behind it, a woman sat hunched forwards. Her eyes were fixed on a computer screen, but she glanced up briefly as I crept closer. I must’ve looked quite out of place and awkward by the way a flicker of irritation passed through her wide-set eyes behind the thick, granny glasses.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Do you think you can help me? There’s this place I need to get to. It’s called, uh, Neve Emek.”

The clerk lifted again. “Neve… Emek?”

“Yes,” I said. “How do I—”

She cut me off. “You have family there?”

I hesitated. The tone of her voice told me I couldn’t tell the truth, not the whole truth, that is. So I lied. I had an American passport, and there was no way this woman could discern me from an Israeli. “Yes,” I said finally, hoping the explanation sounded plausible enough. “Got some… uh… inheritance issues I need to take care of so… yeah.”

Her eyes narrowed, just a fraction, as if she was gauging whether I was telling the truth or lying. Why was she even asking me these questions? Was it routine here to do so?

“Well, there’s no train going there,” she said. “But you can take a train to Haifa, then a bus or taxi once there. Terminal 3. Next train leaves in twenty minutes. Better hurry.”

“Right, uh, thanks.”

Even as I followed the signs to the underground train station and took the escalators down, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the questions the clerk asked me were not routine. The mention of Neve Emek had changed something in the way that woman looked and talked to me. I was certain. But there was no time to dwell on these things. I had to catch up to the train.

I never felt as out of place as I did standing on the steps and slowly descending to the platform below. It was like entering a time capsule, of which I felt like an impostor among a sea of uncanny faces that seemed to distort under the lights, especially this deep below the ground with nothing but artificial lights to guide me.

Trains arrived and departed in a fast sequence as I stepped onto the platform and lowered my suitcase to the ground, feeling the wheels settle heavily. I shifted my weight from foot to foot as I waited, listening to the clatter of arrivals and the din of passengers moving through the station. I hardly waited five or so minutes before my train arrived, the doors sliding open with a hiss, and I stepped inside.

The carriage was nearly full; I moved along the carriage, searching for an empty seat, but found none. Settling instead somewhere near the exit doors, I placed my suitcase at my feet and pressed my palms against its cool surface, letting the rhythmic sway of the train breathe with me. Outside, the platform and city lights blurred into streaks, buildings and streets sliding past like a scene from a fast-moving film, carrying me further from the airport and deeper into the unfamiliar night. The carriage itself was quiet, with the occasional clack of wheels against track the only thing that pierced through the prevailing silence.

And yet, I felt it again, that subtle uneasiness that had gripped me at the terminal. Like I was being watched, though no one looked at me. I shook my head, trying to shake off these harrowing thoughts that led nowhere. I was tired. Drained. I told myself I had to be. But it was easier said than done. So, I steered my thoughts in another direction.

The only way for me to reach Neve Emek was either by taking the bus or a taxi in Haifa. But even though I looked the place up on the map on my phone, I couldn’t find the village. I even tried its old name, hoping for some trace, but that too returned nothing. It occurred to me then that the village must be one of those old Palestinian settlements sieged by illegal settlers, rumoured to have been set on fire, and the few that survived were forcefully displaced.

I recalled a news segment about it happening far more often than what was shown in the news, but was later ‘debunked’ as being propaganda with no truth to it. And for whatever reason, all records of those villages got removed from every archive in existence all over the world. I guess the government at the time wanted to cover up for what the extremists were doing as part of their plan for a ‘greater Israel’ – and, perhaps, to a certain extent, even protect those whom they supported in secret. Therefore, my only means to find the village, I realised now, depended entirely on the Israelis' knowledge of its existence.

The train slowed, pulling me out of my mind. Overhead signs flickered in Hebrew and English. Haifa, next stop. I gathered my suitcase and moved closer to the doors. As I was doing that, however, I saw that kid again. The one who sat beside me on the aeroplane. Beaming wide.

I froze.

The doors opened. Hissing.

Someone pushed me out of the way and out onto the platform. Even then, I could not move of my own accord, like I had lost all control over my extremities. Only when the doors closed could I move, like the weight over me had lifted the moment every chance of me stepping back into the train was out of the way.

My legs almost gave way under me as I tried to wrap my head around what had just happened. But it made no sense. No sense whatsoever! Was I really seeing things? What was wrong with me? Trying to dispel the disorientation, I shook my head repeatedly, but the questions clung and disturbed me, nonetheless. Something was wrong – very, very wrong. But what? Just… what? Things like this never happened to me. Ever.

Sure, I had not been sober for ages, and the possibility of me seeing things that weren’t there was more than just a possibility, but… I don’t even know what to say, how to explain all of this madness. It was like a curse had fallen over me, wrapping around me like a thick fog I could not see or shake off. Perhaps it was this very moment, as I not only noticed but felt something wasn’t as it was supposed to, that I should’ve returned and not look back – even if the curiosity would’ve eaten my heart out for the remainder of my life.

But I didn’t. I chose to ignore it and move on.

Not a single vehicle waited as I approached the taxi stand, which made the entire place seem almost unreal under the harsh glare of the lampposts, painting long and sharp shadows across the cracked pavement. The air was too still, the usual sound of idling engines and conversation absent, leaving a silence so deep it gave me the heebie-jeebies, though I was a grown-ass man. Every time I looked over my shoulder, however, the distant terminal and the darkened streets beyond it felt intensified in this desolate place devoid of souls.

I paused and forced my shoulders to relax. My hand drifted towards the letter, my eyes tracing the name ‘Neve Emek’ over and over again as if repeating it aloud would give an answer, some hint of direction. But that didn’t happen.

Then, finally, a taxi rolled slowly into view, headlights cutting through the pooling shadows. A man stepped out, clad in a worn leather jacket. He leaned against the car, bringing a cigarette to his lips. The faint glow flickered, casting sharp angles across his face as he inhaled, and the thin trail of smoke curled into the night. Even from a distance, I could see that heavy, acrid scent clinging to him.

When he noticed me, the chauffeur exhaled a long plume of smoke, and his hooded eyes met mine for a second as he took another draw from the cigarette. It wasn’t hostility I saw there, but caution, as if he were assessing the purpose for me being here at this very hour, at this very place. I guess he could tell I wasn’t a local by the way I was acting like a fish out of water and was thus on high alert.

“What do you want?”

“I, uh…” I cleared my throat. “I need to get to Neve Emek. You know the place?”

He squinted at me through the smoke. “That’s far. You got money?”

“Yeah. Money’s not a problem,” I said, trying to sound confident.

For a long moment, he didn’t say anything, the faint orange glow of the cigarette tip trembling between his fingers. Then, with a sharp flick of his wrist, the cigarette clattered to the asphalt and he ground it under his heel, muttering something in Hebrew I couldn’t catch, before adding:

“Get in.”

The taxi scraped along the uneven asphalt as we pulled away from the train station, the streetlights flickering past in a blur of motion. The landscape itself opened into acres of olive groves and low hills stretching towards the horizon as the day drew to a close and night settled, albeit too slowly. I frowned as the unfamiliar world passed me by in a haze and the city gradually disappeared, replaced by narrow roads winding through scrub and dust.

We’d been driving ten minutes without a word when he finally spoke.

“Neve Emek,” he said. “Not many people go there. Especially at night.”

“I guess I like quiet places,” I said, watching the fields slip past the window, unbothered and not as vigilant as I should be in the backseat of a stranger’s vehicle in the middle of the bloody night.

He made a sound, something between a laugh and a snort. “Quiet, yeah. Too quiet, maybe.” He tapped the steering wheel with his fingers. “You got family there or something?”

This was what the clerk also asked. Family… I mean, it wasn’t entirely a lie. I did once have a family in that village, only now they were either displaced or buried in that burial ground I was supposed to inherit.

“Something like that.”

He looked at me in the mirror again, his eyes lingering a little longer this time. “You don’t sound local.”

“I’m not.”

“American?”

The words slipped me before I could hinder them. “No.”

“Sounds American to me. Where you from?”

I hesitated, well aware that I just fucked up pretty badly. Why did I even say that? I wasn’t supposed to let anybody, especially a local, aware of my real identity. But there was no way I could tell the man my real roots. That’d be too risky in this situation, if not foolish.

“My family used to live near Neve Emek. A long time ago.”

The driver didn’t respond right away. He just stared at the road. His expression was unreadable; I couldn’t tell whether he believed my lie or was simply occupied with another thought. That is, up until he suddenly locked eyes with me through the rear-view mirror and said something so chilling that my heart skipped several beats.

“Ah. You mean before ’48. ”I couldn’t even get a word in before he quietly added, not taking his eyes off me for even a second. “You’re one of those families, then.”

I said nothing. Couldn’t. The words got stuck in my throat.

 “You know, they rebuilt that place from nothing,” he said. “Ashes and stones. Took years.”

“I heard,” I said. “My grandfather used to talk about it. Said he could still smell the olive trees burning, even from the hills.”

The driver’s hands tightened on the wheel. “Olive trees,” he repeated. “Funny thing to remember.”

“They… were his,” I said.

The road narrowed in the windshield, and the fields gave way to clusters of dilapidated huts marked by fire and soot, before the taxi once again pulled up at the edge of a rough, uneven dirt track. It was at this moment that I shifted my gaze away from the windshield, just in time to see the driver’s eyes flicking away from mine in the rear-view mirror. My eyes narrowed, but not for long. Instead, I lurched forwards abruptly, and the vehicle came to a stop.

“What’s going on?” I said, looking out into the empty landscape cloaked in darkness, trying to make sense of what was happening and calming myself down.

“Neve Emek,” the chauffeur said. “Get out.”

“Neve—what?” I repeated, confusion mounting, as I took a gander at the window, where some distant lights did indeed reveal to me that there was a village up ahead. But the distance was too great. I’d have to walk on foot for at least half an hour. So, naturally, I opened my mouth to protest, to insist he drive me closer to the village, but something in the way he rested his hand on the wheel stopped me. What the fuck was this guy’s deal, even?

As soon as I stepped out, the taxi swung back onto the empty road behind me and disappeared out of sight. Great. Now what? To think I’d have to walk to the village in this suffocating darkness did little to soothe me. On the contrary. I didn’t know this place, didn’t know the people, or what awaited me once I set foot there. Not to mention it was bitterly cold – so darn cold!

The narrow, single-lane road was darker than I’d wanted, twisting between low hills and uprooted olive groves that were no more; even the shadows were deep enough to swallow a person whole. But these things were hardly what set a shiver down my spine. From here, this distance, I could feel the silence, the way the world held its breath in eerie anticipation as the wind bit at my face repeatedly. Relentlessly.

And I was alone.

All alone in this forsaken place with nowhere else to go but forwards.

To be continued...