An impulse to bend rules and indulge in some ‘risky business’, along with a big injection of hormonal lust, saw me accompany the sexy, blond-haired Sven on a trip to Banias Falls.
Nineteen seventy-three. We were volunteers on Kibbutz[i] Amiad, in the Golan Heights, a stone’s throw from the Sea of Galilee and 40 kilometres south-east of the border with Syria.
Luck with hitchhiking would see us close to Banias Falls after nightfall. An under-the-radar overnight stay in a barn, on the edge of Kibbutz Quneitra would allow us plenty of time to visit the falls the next day, and cross paths with some of the ancient Druze people. This would be no ordinary hike. We had to slip past the Israeli border control to reach the falls, located in territory annexed from Syria.
We departed Kibbutz Amiad after dark. Neither Sven nor I were keen to mention our destination to the kibbutzniks[ii]. Travelling ultra-light made it easy to scurry undetected down the long driveway from our kibbutz to the highway.
We had secured a ride some time later and found ourselves at the turn-off to our destination. The bitumen behind us, we padded silently down a corrugated track. Ahead, the voices of Israeli soldiers focussed our attention. My heart sat in my throat, reverberating into the heat of the evening. A group of male and female soldiers was huddled outside their tents, conversing in rapid-fire Hebrew. We had to traverse the boom gate that separated us from the falls. This meant negotiating some obstacles. Firstly, an enormous spotlight etched the surrounding forest with an electric luminescence. We could only proceed when the soldiers had retired to their tents long enough for us to scarper out of sight.
After what felt like hours, the soldiers retired to the main tent for belated happy hour drinks. Their voices became louder as they broke into song. This was our opportunity. Moving stealthily like commandos, we breached the waist high barrier. Skulking in the shadows along the tree line, we picked up pace once out of earshot. It was well after midnight before we managed some shut-eye.
Sven, kitted up for the four kilometre hike to the falls, dragged me into consciousness before sunrise. Our breathing was laboured as the gradient of the track became steeper. Working our way toward the top of the falls, rivulets of perspiration ran down our legs. My gait was heavy and clumsy like a drunkard’s. Negotiating the track and maintaining my balance demanded intense concentration.
The morning sun emblazoned rock faces a golden bronze. Coruscating light mingled with water spray from the falls creating ethereal rainbows and droplets of water that kissed my burning skin. Air so bracing you could have served it in a chilled glass of sparkling lime and soda. The pounding of water was deafening and exhilarating. It vibrated through my body like the quivering strings of a violin. The view was breathtaking, memorable and worth the risk- taking involved.
The trek down the gorge was so effortless that we came upon the Druze village in no time. Here foreigners stuck out like the proverbial Aussie out-house. Two Druze men, attired like Lawrence of Arabia, and seated on their sturdy camels beamed at us with amusement. Their congenial mood morphed into the darkness of censure when we mimed a desire to photograph them. We departed without a record of our encounter with these majestic people.
Miraculously that night we escaped detection as we retraced our steps past the Israeli encampment. A bonus serve of good luck and risky business manifested in an illegal ride back to our kibbutz with an Israeli army ambulance, the ‘Magen David’. The young ambulance driver put the pedal to the metal and took off at warp speed. His colleague, riding shotgun, ratcheted up Steppenwolf’s ‘Born to be Wild’, and we flew along the highway at break-neck speed. Our levels of adrenalin and oxytocin rose exponentially: a fitting release from the past twenty-four hours of risky business.
[i] A farming community based on socialist structure, set up by the pioneers of the state of Israel.
[ii] Residential members of the kibbutz, not to be confused with the international volunteers who came to work for time-limited periods.
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