SAFE LIKE A BABY IN A BEDOUIN WOMB
In 1982 I was chosen to play a leading role in an American film, Remembrance of Love, produced by and starring Kirk Douglas. An NBC special. The money I made from that paid for most of my newly purchased studio in 1983. I thank God for this studio.
It was a cave like, rundown, little space with no air except a door and a window facing the sea, and it was up for auction. No water pipe inside, walls were damp and one could not breathe there. And, it was so dark, this cave, but when you turned around and saw the port of Jaffa and the Mediterranean Sea, it took your breath away. It had Crusade like Ottoman arches from the 18th century, it’s estimated first construction. It was mysterious, full of alcoves and niches. It was warm in winter, cool in summer, the walls were a meter thick, made of sandstone and earth, and most of the studio was embedded inside the hillside, the warm earth.
I thanked God daily, for decades, for giving me the edge and winning the auction. I bid a few hundred dollars more, against 2 competitors and paid every penny I had then. Plus the renovation.
In January 1984, on my 32nd birthday I entered it, and began writing, painting, and rehearsing my theater shows and my movie, in this “Bedouin womb.” I called it that, because it was shaped like a womb, rounded arches, 9.5 meters long, about 4 meters wide, and 3.5 meters high, and it was warm and protective. I felt safe like a baby in the womb there, yet the waves of the sea were striking violently against the breakwater just 60 meters away.
Almost 32 years the gate below the studio balcony was locked and I worked there in solitude and pure silence, except the sound of the waves. In 2015 a transformation took place. For which I thanked God again, and am thanking Tzlila Hurvitz to this day.