So I put the phone down because she’s waiting for the doctor to ring. And Kathleen smiles gently, tells me everything will be alright.
We go for a walk across the cliffs, just the two of us and Caffrey. We walk right along the edge, look down at waves and rocks, curlews and gulls. Remember the time we saw what looked like the body of a shark washed up. When we first moved here I used to cycle along these cliffs to sign on in Whitley Bay, then sit down on an overhanging rock and write, wait for Anna coming back from work. It’s the first time she’s been here for years. It’s not the place to take young children, right on the edge, and it’s me who does the early morning and late night dog walking. We hold hands all the way, reminisce further; how we used to clamber over rocks together, take hours because we had no responsibilities, no time constraints. We look for the giant hole where we joked King Rabbit must have lived. Remember how we used to see men with guns and dogs out hunting. Hawks perched on shoulders. You don’t see hunters out here anymore. Disease has wiped most of the rabbits out.
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The Golani came round most nights after a week or two; names like Hagai, Itsic, Moses, Uzi, Yossi and Hanan. It was a mutual fascination between us and them, outsiders together but a world apart in every other sense. Hesitant at first, they dropped by in groups of two or three. They asked about England, about London, hoped they would be able to travel themselves when they left the army. The older Golani said little about their military experience, found mutual interests and pressed these instead. Did we like The Doors? Velvet Underground? The Beatles and the Stones? Simon and Garfunkel? We made a fire, played chess, drank cheap Russian vodka from Tiberius. I played my tapes: Primal Scream, Van Morrison, KLF, Neil Young. A passing German called Holgar told of a place on the edge of the Egyptian Sinai Desert called Dahab. Said people of all nationalities went there to smoke cannabis, take opium, listen to Hendrix and Marley, scuba dive and chill by the sea. I added it to my agenda, straight in at the top of the list. He told us about Jerusalem, said we had to visit, but that two German girls were murdered there a few days before for being western. It happened in the Arab quarter where he told us to go to a cafe and ask for water pipe and hash. In the meantime, I climbed down rocks from Piq, found a fresh spring, picked fruit from the pomegranate tree, brought them back for Anna who was feeling off colour. Then one night, fed up with not being able to buy beer and sometimes cigarettes at the shop because kibbutz residents and soldiers were allowed in before volunteers, we set off at half past ten to walk to Bnei Yehuda, a settlement with a shop and pub more than a mile away. Three English and one Scot, walking through the Golan Heights in the pitch black, shuddering at the howling of wolves. Motivated by alcohol rather than adventure. On the way back, we laid down flat on the road. Looked up at a sky full to bursting with stars, pin pricks in heaven. Watched meteors enter the earth’s atmosphere, streak above us, leave behind shining trails of gas. Then, after just a few hours sleep, we were up again, spending the morning in baking heat, on cherry picking machines that allowed us to zoom up to the larger apple trees with our buckets. Anna, Helen and I agreed on a cigarette break every hour. Wherever we were in the orchards, we pulled the lever down until we rose higher than the trees, could see mile upon mile of Golan, watch the colour of the sky change, look out for eagles and vultures, wave to each other, lean back carefully and enjoy our smoke.
On the next Shabbat, Anna, Rob, Pete and I decided to hitch-hike to Hamat Gader on the Jordanian border. After walking for three hours in boiling heat we split into pairs to see if it made things easier. All the boys wanted to go with Anna. The company of a pretty girl was motivation enough but it also meant you were more likely to get picked up. Rob won. So he and Anna got a lift before Pete and I, who had to wait another half hour and then were dropped off a mile before our destination and had to walk along the road by the barbed wire and electric border fence. We were stopped three times by soldiers, advised to turn back at the border post of watchtowers, jeeps, Howitzers and rocket launchers. Still, on we continued. Anna and Rob were waiting at the gates with nervous smiles. Being Afiq volunteers we were able to get in without paying, due to some arrangement with the kibbutz that probably included free avocados, apples or chickens. We stripped off and sampled the bubbling hot water, fed by mineral rich hot springs that welled up from deep underground. Then we walked around the ruins, tried to imagine two thousand years before, when it was one of the largest and most luxurious health resorts in the Roman Empire. Finally, the alligator farm and a picnic on the grass, where we looked up from our low position to the two mountains either side of us, one Israeli occupied, the other Jordanian. And then, as our eyes returned towards ground level, we noticed for the first time, soldiers with machine guns on the roof of the expensive restaurant.
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Cancer is a mistake cell that is growing wildly out of control, that may consume the patient through malnutrition, organ failure or infection. Nearly all cancers are caused by abnormalities in the genetic material of transformed cells. These abnormalities may be due to the effects of carcinogens such as tobacco smoke, radiation, chemicals, or infectious agents. Other cancer-promoting genetic abnormalities may be randomly acquired through errors in dna replication, or are inherited, and thus present in all cells from birth.
On such tiny details whole lives and families can be ripped apart.
Primary causes of cancer include:
•Poor nutrition; leading to an excess, deficiency or imbalance of certain nutrients
I put the book down and stare out the window. Anna has a better diet than anyone I know. She loves fruit and vegetables, salads and seafood, hardly ever eats fatty foods or ready meals. In the garden last year she grew potatoes, spinach, kale, carrots, broccoli, beans, peas, radishes, turnips, beetroot, tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, peppers, watercress and about five different types of lettuce. I walk into the kitchen, open a cupboard door. These are the different types of herbal teas we’ve got: revitalise, detoxify, clarity, peppermint, chamomile and spearmint, nettle, fennel, ginger, green tea, white tea, Egyptian spice, perk me up and sleep easy. Anna likes all of them. Combined they alleviate insomnia, relax nerves, relieve anxiety, reduce fever, reduce pain and swelling, eliminate excess fluids, enhance weight loss by reducing appetite, lower cholesterol, prevent tooth decay; soothe stomach aches, allay ulcers, bladders, kidneys and urinary tract ailments, cleanse the colon, soothe and promote healing of minor burns and skin irritations, provide the essential elements and dietary minerals lacking in our bodies, protect us from the formation of free radicals by neutralizing them before they can cause cellular damage and disease, promote endurance, increase stamina, enhance memory, improve circulation, boost the immune system, act as a digestive aid for nausea, vomiting and motion sickness and ease irritable bowel syndrome and menstrual cramps. I shake my head, shut the cupboard and walk back to my book to find out the second primary cause:
•Stress; the mind generates chemicals that can lower protective mechanisms against cancer
Anna is the most stable person I know, the most stable person I have ever known. People have always come to her when they’re in need of balance and neutrality, when they require a safe haven of calming energy, someone to listen without judgement. I feel like throwing the book through the window. This isn’t the way things were supposed to be. This wasn’t Anna’s role in life, just like it wasn’t her mother’s and her mother’s before that. She comes from a female blood line of angels upon earth. She’s had one day off sick in the last seven years. She’s never been a victim in her life.
•Sedentary lifestyle; exercise helps to oxygenate and regulate the entire body
The only programme Anna sits down and watches is Gardeners World; that’s half an hour a week. And she often doesn’t read until she’s lying in bed. She cooks, cleans, washes, chases after children, digs, plants and walks the dog. Since moving up to the North East nine years ago she’s worked on the home care, walking round the village looking after the elderly, then taken people with physical and learning disabilities out into their communities. Before that she worked as a massage therapist, massaging people with
