Marty's thoughts

On the shores of Jaffa, where fishing boats once set out each dawn, the new plans were drawn. Architects from Tel Aviv unrolled maps across polished tables, their pens sketching palm-lined boulevards, marinas for yachts, towers of glass and steel that would catch the Mediterranean sun. A Miami of the East, they said. Hotels where the old stone houses once stood, casinos where the nets had once dried, a place where tourists from Paris and New York could sip wine as the surf broke against a carefully managed beach. The sea would glitter with neon light instead of lanterns, and money would flow like a second tide.

But not far from the conference hall, an old man walked slowly along the shore with his grandson. His cane pressed into the sand at each step, leaving a trail soon washed away by the waves. He pointed to the broken stones jutting from the ground: “Here was my father’s orchard. Beyond, where they plan their hotels, my mother’s cousin lived. And that cistern there—our family dug it with our own hands.” The boy listened, not quite understanding, torn between the stories of loss and the glittering images of the future he had glimpsed in newspapers. He looked at the sea, eternal and indifferent, and wondered if both worlds—the remembered and the imagined—could ever live side by side.

The men at their tables did not see him. The old man, leaning on his cane, did not see them. Yet the land, as always, saw both, and kept their visions within itself. It held the memory of orchards, but it also bore the possibility of towers. Whether it would yield to one or the other—or find some unimagined balance—remained for the future to decide.