In the afternoon I picked up from the local junction a Glaswegian photographer and sangha member doing a project over here (she sent the photo below from the bus stop at Latroun to make sure she was at the right one)
She joined us for lunch, while our grandchildren’s TV programs blared out from different screens. Then D took her to Hares (West Bank village) – a bunch of Israelis, most of them Buddhist practitioners, went there to join Palestinians for the evening iftar meal. They do this every year. It was kind of the last moment in Ramadan, since the moon has been sighted and Eid al-Fitr will begin tomorrow. I decided not to go this time – I generally feel uncomfortable on such occasions, for some reason that I don’t fully understand myself. I also didn’t go for the iftar celebrations here in our village. This was one:
Instead I went for a long late afternoon walk in the woods and fields.
On my walk I continued listening to David Graeber & David Wengrow’s “The Dawn of Everything”, which I find really interesting. A completely different look at some of the same history and pre-history covered by Yuval Noah Harari in Sapiens.
(wild mustard flowers growing by side of the dirt road going down the hill)
I covered a lot of ground, both in the book and on my feet, and arrived home after dark at around 8:30, eating the leftovers from lunch time instead of the rich iftar fare: bit of salad, broccoli florets, half a pita, ball of labaneh with za’atar, and beetroot soup.