In 1941, when I was eight, my father worked as a telecommunications engineer in Haifa.

In December that year he and I were both recovering from a serious attack of Scarlet Fever and went to convalesce in Tiberias the day after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. My father was excited about our holiday. Galilee had been a favourite place of his, ever since he had won a Sunday school prize of a book containing coloured pictures of a miracle at Capernaeum and Jesus calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee.

We left Haifa in cold drizzle but an hour later, when we stepped onto the quay at Tiberias, a warm sun shone out of a blue sky. At the far side of the quay several small shops, including an Arab restaurant, burrowed into the ground floor of the monastery where we would be staying.

	The monastery unfortunately is to the right of the scene shown in this picture. The last time I visited Israel in 1998 both mosques were still there but in a dilapidated state. I was surprised to find an Arab restaurant by the quay looking much as the one I remembered but the monastery was further back. I have learnt since that it wasn't the monastery that moved but the sea that had receded.

Our bedroom was on an upper storey of the monastery away from Polish soldiers who occupied most of the building. My memory tells me that walls of flushed-pink stone curved into four triangles to become the ceiling. Square clay tiles covered the floor. Two iron bedsteads with woven white covers stood on opposite sides of the room.
On our first afternoon we went exploring. From the quay, at the corner of the monastery we turned into a stone slabbed street. Tatty canvas awnings jutting above dingy shops narrowed the originally wide road. A strong smell of frying chickpeas wafted from roadside braziers. Half way along the street we passed a multi-domed mosque with a slim minaret. At the top of the street the tall telephone pylon displaying at least a dozen white ceramic junction units seemed very nuch out of place.

On the main road through the town my father bought two large oval oranges from an Arab squatting behind a whole pyramid of them. Once we were in the country we left the road and went down to the lake to have our picnic tea sitting on black rocks at the edge of the water, halfway between the town and a huge house almost hidden behind tall pine trees.

I remember peering through the trunks and looking at smooth green lawns and colourful flower beds.My father told me that the building used to be a very posh hotel and country club before the war but the army had now taken it over for convalescent officers.

My mother had packed us some rather dry fish paste sandwiches before we left. While my father andI sat there eating in comfortable silence I stared across the lake. A few yards from shore a golden path shone across the greeny-blue water to the glowing pink mountains of Transjordan on the other shore. Near the magical path a white Flying Boat rocked gently on the water. It seemed strange to see an aeroplane with no camouflage.

My father told me that the flying boat brought oil managers and post to Palestine over from the Gulf.

We ambled back to the quay that first evening of our stay and sat at a table close to the edge. Water lapped gently several feet below while an appetising smell of garlicky mutton wafted across the paving slabs.

The owner of the restaurant, squat and moustachioed, took our orders and brought coffee for my father and fresh pressed orange juice or me. I shook the crumbs out of my rucksack into the water and watched tiny fish zoom into one dark wriggling mass, heads poking above the surface until it became too dark to see them. Across the water though the tops of the mountains still glowed pink in the last of the sun sinking behind the Judaean hills. The moon now made a glittering diamond path across the water ending in a silver circle.

The restaurant owner trotted round the tables setting out candles protected by etched glass
funnels. The quayside twinkled like fairyland.

Coming from Haifa I was shocked at blackout regulations being so deliberately flouted but my father explained that blackout was no longer needed in the Jordan Valley since we had taken Syria.
I watched an Arab boy about my own age, in a short striped tunic trundle in a gramophone on a home made cart. A song blared out,"Wish me good luck as you wave me good-bye."

Suddenly the quay was full of women. They clustered round tables giggling and chattering. Occasionally a Polish officer would leave the hospice, approach a woman, take her to a table apart from the others and order a meal.

My father took a traveling chess set from his pocket and laid it out on the table. He beat me as usual, then took a torch from his rucksack, handed it over and sent me to bed

Back in the monastery I discovered that the plain bed was extremely comfortable and I was soon asleep. When I woke a narrow shaft of day light was making a golden frame round the plain wooden door.

We had breakfast on the quay near a sheep tied to a gnarled olive tree. The sheep kept bleating as if it didn't want to be there. Perhaps it knew it was tonight's dinner. We had as much warm pita bread as we wanted and a whole flat fish each, with a wedge of lemon. I had never eaten a whole fish before. This one was white and firm on the inside. While I ate I looked at the blue-grey rippling lake water stretching out to the mountains, Their steep sides this morning, were tawny like the wrinkled coat of a pye dog.

Close to the quay fishermen squatted on a narrow stretch of pebbles, mending their nets as they had done in my father's book of bible stories, the only difference being that, instead of keffiyas and long gowns, these fishermen wore skull caps, ragged shirts and trousers.

When I had finished my fish, I ran my fingers along the pattern of its beautiful skeleton.
My father could see how much I had enjoyed this meal and promised we would have breakfast here every day. He stood up, then and told me he was off to arrange our boat trip to Capernaeum. I reminded him that he had promised my mother that he would book a boat trip to the Hot Springs for Saturday when she came down? I was rather more excited about the hot springs than Capernaeum as my father had told me the water was so hot we would be able to boil eggs in it.

I watched him march off over shingle and speak to the fishermen. They had a long conversation which, as usual in Arabic, looked like an argument but my father finished up smiling, while the fishermen salaamed respectfully.

This picture was taken a mile or so father north of where the Arab fishermen my father spoke to mended their nets. This spot is still used by fishermen. The modern scene in one way resembles the biblical scene more closely since the fishermen are Jews but visually less so since they use motorised boats and wear jeans and tee shirts.

My father returned pleased that he had managed to pin the old man he had been talking to down to Thursday for the Capernaeum trip and Saturday for the Hot Springs.

Our picnic that day was vastly superior to dry fish paste sandwiches. At the bakery, more a cellar than a shop, we waited for our loaf to cool after the baker had raked it out of his hole-in-the-wall oven. From another shop we bought a substantial wedge of sheep milk's cheese.

We visited a grocer's that had a floor of bare rock and counters displaying trays of olives, some plump and soaked in oil, some wrinkled and dry. We chose plump purply ones very similar to Greel Kalamata.. We also bought a slice of my father's favourite sweet, halva, (pronounced hallowee), made from sugar and sesame nuts and textured rather like meringue.

We didn't walk far, because of my father having been so ill, but we did a lot of sitting around, talking. My father told funny stories about living in Palestine during the Arab troubles, like the nights he had to arm himself before going out to repair sabotaged telephone wires, only to
discover that Bedouins had stolen the wire to tether their donkeys. I told him how I used to creep out of bed and watch him from the top of the stairs as he strapped on his revolver. He was surprised because he didn't think I would be old enough then to remember.
I didn't like it when he told me that once he had had to eat sheep eyeballs when visiting an Arab sheik. I said I would have thrown them away. He said it would have been the height of rudeness if he had refused to eat them.

My father ordered mutton stew that night, and said that if there were any eyeballs in it I could have them. Then he took his guidebook from his pocket and started reading.

I couldn't stop thinking about eyeballs staring at me out of the stew. I wondered whether I could get away with saying I had a stomach ache and just wanted to go to bed. But if I did he would thinking I was going to be ill again and we would have to go home. So Iknew I would have to be as brave as my father and eat the eyeballs.

To keep my mind off them I swivelled my chair to look at the other customers. Some girls there with the Polish soldiers didn't seem much older than the big girls who sat in the top row in my class.

The muttton stew came. I saw no eyeballs, even after I had stirred it. Then I realised mthat this was the sheep I had seen that morning and of course it only had two eyes so with all the people eating in the restaurant that night the chances of my getting an eyeball were pretty slim. After that I ate the stew happily and it was as good as it had smelt.

Wednesday went off much as Tuesday but on Thursday, the day of the trip to Capernaeum my father woke me while it was still dark. and toldd me to dress quickly and pack a change of clothes.

I didn't want to get my Sunday best creased in a rucksack so I wore it and packed my old dress. I put on my gaberdine because it was cold early in the morning

My father examined my rucksack before we left and decided it was not water proof so he carried your things.

The sun was appearing over the mountains when we went down to breakfast, chasing away the darkness, turning the water orange.

All through breakfast my father kept glancing at the fishermen but the one my father had chosen wasn't there mending his nets.

When I had cleaned the last bit of flesh from my fish bones my father decided to go over to the boats.As our feet scrunched on pebbles a boy raced over to a small flat- roofed house at the rear of the beach and came back leading young man. No ordinary fisherman this, he wore a gleaming white shirt tucked into pressed khaki shorts. His white skull cap sported a red tassel. He spoke to Dad in Arabic.

"This is Da'oud," my father interpreted, "His father has had to go to a funeral so he's taking us."

Da'oud began talking again rapidly. My father began to shout. Da'oud shouted back, gesticulating wildly. My father grew angry. The fishermen round them shook their heads, muttering gloomily to each other. At last Da'oud moved reluctantly towards the boat and my father looked triumphant.

"What was the matter?" I asked

My father told me that Da'oud hadn't want to go as far as Capernaeum. 'Some nonsense about the weather not being suitable for a long trip' he said but my father suspected the real reason was, that despite him having paid through the nose, the fishermen didn't want the work. Before the war fishermen fell over themselves to take people out but now with fish prices so high they couldn'tn't be bothered; "But I put my foot down.", my father said.

I looked up at the blue cloudless sky, felt the gentle breeze and knew my father was right. There was nothing wrong with the weather.

By this time Da'oud and the boy between them had moved the boat into the water and jumped in. The boy hauled the mast upright. Da'oud shoved the boat off the pebbles with an oar. My father and I took our shoes off, waded over. Da'oud helped us overboard onto cushions at the prow. Da'oud took over the tiller and the boy squatted under the mast.

I trailed a hand in water still warmer in December than the Mediterranean in summer. My fingers formed their own tiny vee shaped wake in imitation of the larger one spreading from the stern. My father took his bible out of his pocket, became immersed in the New Testament. We passed a beach in front of the hotel I had seen before. Men were on the lawns in dressing gowns. Some had bandages swathed round their heads. Others had plaster casts on their arms and legs or walked with the aid of crutches. Some though, were well enough to be in the water playing water polo.

The sunshine was now so warm I took off my gaberdine, folded it carefully and placed it on the bottom of the boat.

A sudden rumble of distant gun-fire disturbed the peace. I nudged my father "Hear that?"

He looked up briefly, "Don't worry. Peggy. It's a long way off."

A tiny puff of dark smoke rose above the north-western hills, followed almost immediately by a larger, murkier billow that expanded rapidly to become one black roiling mass.

The whole of Haifa must be on fire, I thought. Had God got so upset by the wicked night clubs
there that he had sent German bombers to destroy it utterly like Sodom and Gomorrah? I tugged at my father's arm urgently, "Daddy, look at all that smoke coming from Haifa."

He laughed and told me Haifa wasn't in that direction. I was looking at Syria and it wasn't smoke, only clouds. He turned back to his bible

I had never seen clouds move so fast. The gentle breeze died away. The lake became ghostly still. The sun shone with a weird, metallic brilliance. Our sail went limp. Da'oud shouted at the boy. The boy jumped up and rolled the sail round the mast. Da'oud left the tiller, stepped nimbly down the length of the boat and spoke to my father.

"He wants us to move to move so the boy can get the mast down." My father translated. We wobbled our way to the stern, rocking the boat so much I was sure it would capsize. I wondered how Da'oud and the boy could move about in it so easily.

In the distance the water changed from mirror smoothness to a bright mass of foam surging towards us. The black clouds covered the sky turning warm day into cold night. Too late I realised my gabardine was now imprisoned beneath the mast.

A sudden blaze of lightning, an almighty clap of thunder! and a horrendous gust of wind struck the boat. I threw myself backwards to stop being blown overboard and landed, screaming with fright at the bottom of the boat.

A giant wave crashed over the side. Too petrified to stand up, I lay on my back on the wooden planks, trembling with cold and fright. as wave after angry wave burst over me and rain poured down like a waterfall. I knew I should be grateful to be still alive except I doubted that condition would last for long. Vivid forks of lightning gave glimpses of my father standing, laughing and holding his bible aloft. I waited for him to shout "Peace be still" but instead, when Da'oud looking almost as frightened as I felt, shook him by the arm he sat down and put his hand on the tiller. Da'oud and the boy rowed towards the shore.

My father noticed me lying on the floor boards and hauled me up beside him. "Not many people are lucky enough to have an experience like this," he yelled so loudly I could hear him even above the noise of the storm, "It's just like in the gospels." I clung to the edge of the boat with trembling fingers.

Da'oud left his oar, came over to me holding out an old saucepan. He mimed scooping water over the side before handing me the saucepan. I baled for all I was worth.

Then suddenly the boat was scraping pebbles. We waded through hefty waves to a rocky shore. I sank onto a large boulder, not wanting to move again, but my father forced me to my feet, ordered me to run backwards and forwards.

God switched the rain off, the sun came out. My father opened his rucksack and pulled out my spare set of clothes, miraculously dry, and a towel.

from I changed behind a large boulder. When I returned my father had changed as well and and had spread our wet clothes over a rock. Ny Sinday best was so creased it looked as if it would never be the same again. I wondered how I was going to tell my mother. dress..

I couldn't see Da'oud and the boy.

"Gone off," my father said "To find something to eat, I suppose. We'll have our picnic."

Sitting on solid rocks, in warm sunshine we munched cheese, olives and bread. By the time Da'oud and the boy returned the lake was completely calm.

The next day my father was si stiff hecould hardly walk and my throat had closed up, not just because I had caught a cold but with anxiety as to what my mother would say to me for allowing my father to "over do it".

By Saturday however we had both recovered. After breakfast, we walked to the bus depot.

My mother jumped off the Jerusalem bus and came running to my father.

"And what do you think about Tobruk, then?" she shouted triumphantly.

"We haven't looked at a newspaper or listened to a wireless the whole week," my father replied, "Has something happened ?"

"It's been relieved at last, that's all," my mother replied with a huge smile.

My father lifted her into the air and whirled her round.