Drifting off, my mind wanders back to a summer evening in 1980 when a group of us volunteers linger around a campfire in Kibbutz Misgav-Am in upper Galilee, Israel. We enjoy the moment, absorbing the calmness of the evening after a week of continuous cross border shelling and bombardment.
Guitar music fills the air to the tune of all the alleluia lyrics, alternating with rock’n’roll, blues and country music, which becomes increasingly more pleasant to the ears, the more we indulge on cheap beer, wine, vodka and Israeli brandy.
Having reached a higher state of oblivion, a drunken Dutchman throws his empty bottle into the darkness with great pitching skills. Shortly after and unannounced, our concert is interrupted by search lights and an army unit on night guard, who expect to find terrorist insurgents from Lebanon. Their search proves fruitless, there is no sign of any attempted border crossing.
What they do find, is the Dutchman’s empty bottle, which has hit the electric wire on the Lebanese border fence, only ten metres from where we are sitting and triggered off the alarm.
Every performer knows that ‘the show must go on’, so we compose a song: “Dutchman throws the bottle away – Alleluia”, where it falls, he has no say, “Allelu-u-ia”…