By Dionna Dash

I remember the day it all came to a close. All the cars stopped in the middle of the road as the siren sounded. Not the loud, wailing tone that triggered the snatching of gas masks and running to nearby basements, but a rather pretty one, strong and clear, like a throat belting out the final note of HaTikvah. We all rushed out of our cars to smell the clean air, to stare at the empty sky. Tamar loved the shapes of clouds. When we were kids she would point out a puff and say it was an animal. She’d explain its name and its story and its other family members. And when I’d tell her it was not a dragon named Eitan or our dog Avi’s long-lost brother, but merely a cloud in true-cloud form, she’d turn her glittering irises on me and say, “That is because your eyes, Ayala, only see what is there.” The clouds of that day were carefully crafted doves whose feathers had been restrained for too long. They were finally flying free.

After the end of the bombs came the end of the divides. There were big green dumpsters, and a crew of bulky men carrying the partitions, piece by piece, to their final resting place. After the barrier was thrown away, we flooded the area; myself alongside the hordes and hordes of other Haredi, conservative, and reform men and women. I ran my fingers over the whole wall, left to right. I had brought Tamar’s note with me. She didn’t write it for the wall, but since she couldn’t be there that day, I brought a part of her with me. It was a grocery list: eggs, sugar, flour, vanilla, frosting. My birthday was approaching. She had forgotten the list at home when she went to the store that day; when I drove to Haifa a week early, I found it on her coffee table. 

An elderly man wearing a shtreimel and a tzitzit asked me to put his note in the wall too, since I was closer to the cracks than he was. There was a picture of a little girl on the outside of the paper. She couldn’t have been more than nine. He told me about the school and I told him about the store, and he took my warm hands in his large, crinkly ones and we whispered the unlocked words of a prayer together.

When I finally returned to my apartment at the end of the day, the Prime Minister was talking on the television. He kept calling it “Treaty Day.” I sat down on the sofa to hear him speak, but something was missing. 

No–that’s wrong. Something was there. Something that shouldn’t be there. Someone.

I closed my eyes and there was a figure. Two circles. Shimmering. 

“Your eyes, Ayala…” 

Can see more than what is there. 

She was with me; in the car, at the wall, on my couch. She is always with me, hanging behind, guiding my eyes.

Maybe she crafts the clouds. Maybe they all do. Maybe they had to move to heaven so they could see what we could not, what was not there for us to see: peace. The peace that sticks to the honey-covered deserts and is swallowed in the milk that the children drink before school. The peace that makes countries put down their missiles and sects put away their disdain. The peace that is shining and wonderful and defies all expectations. The peace that was always in Tamar’s eyes. The peace that, like the pellets that rained down that day on the little store in Haifa, replacing Tamar with themselves, now pours down on the land of Israel, cleansing, replenishing, purifying.