things in the sky, sheshbesh, hearing the hearts beating as one (chrismail 5.1)

We are all out on the grass, arms crossed, right over left, right over left.We are singing the CISV song, a ritual we all hold close, a testament to our hope, to everything we are here for. Above us are the stars; around us the brown hills which stretch from here to the Negev. We are standing here, ending the night with this circle, and we are singing these lines: "Here we share our hopes and fears, build a bridge across the years, sow a seed and plant a tree, beneath whose branches there may be, all the nations gathered free"; this is the end of the second verse. And we are singing, and we are passing pecks-on-the-cheeks, as we do (yes we do that), and then across the blackened sky comes the roar of fighter planes, three of them, and their flashing lights blipping as they cut towards Gaza.

Something is happening there tonight.

And as the sound fades away you can hear the whirring of a swarm of helicopters going the same way.

In the streets of Israel the cars fly ribbons from their antennas, colour-coded to proclaim their political opinions - blue and white means the driver is for the current plan to disengage from Gaza; orange means they are against. In the streets of Tel Aviv and Herzilya young girls in long skirts walk up and down by the traffic lights giving the orange ones out, and Israelis hungrily stick out their hands and clutch them passionately. The blue-and-white crowd is, alas, not so well mobilised.

But I am here in this camp, me and 29 others from all over, from Colombia and Brazil, from Canada and Japan, from the UK and France and Germany and Austria and Hungary, from Sweden and Norway and Denmark and Lithuania. And from Israel. We are enclosed here among the brown hills by electified fences with motion sensors, in a kibbutz with bomb shelters which kids have painted with smiling suns and blue flowers, our little home for three weeks. Every evening in the burnt glow of sunset swarming thickets of black birds fill the sky, wings flapping, chortling and squarking. Their arrival heralds another new ritual, my nightly tornament of sheshbesh on the soccer field with the Danish girl who looks just like Mischa Barton and the Swedish punk guy named Erik. Sheshbesh is hebrew for backgammon. The little sun is thick like blood as it sinks on the horizon. It is my favourite moment of every day.

The group is great, the staff are great, I am in love with them all. We cook and clean and dance and talk about gay adoption, about addiction, about Palestine. We play soccer with our limbs tied together, we throw water, we gossip on the stone steps of the building. We are already half way through the camp which makes my heart skip. Then there are five open, strange months to go for me, and I don't really know what to expect.

Except for homus and pita bread. I can expect to eat a lot more of that.