I had just returned from my first dip into the Dead Sea, and I stepped out onto my balcony to hang up my bathing suit for drying. The view of the Dead Sea from my balcony was unbelievably beautiful - the sea doesn’t look dead at all! Lively silvery waves played with the sun, and I could have sat out there and watched the view forever. But a knock on the door disturbed me. I opened it, and a young man of ebony black color grinned at me, flashing his snow white teeth - which had probably never been touched by a dentist.“I don’t need you to clean my room today," I told him, "I just came back from the beach and would like to nap."He shoved me gently aside and entered the bathroom. He dumped a pile of clean towels on top of other clean and unused ones, and he started to dust the room quietly while whistling to himself."Please not today!” I repeated, but he went on with his work. I switched from Hebrew to English, to Spanish. Nothing. No use trying German I figured, the guy just doesn’t understand. So how does one communicate with him? I gave up and settled down on the sofa, watching him work. He worked cheerfully and slowly. I decided to call the desk and ask them to make him go away, but I got the long promotion speech: "Thank you for being a guest in our hotel, please take advantage of...” I hung up realizing that the recorded speech may take longer than the boy’s work. I was very tired and my thoughts started to drift.The young man was evidently a foreign worker. Where did he come from? Does he send his meager earnings to a family abroad? What does his mother do, how does she live?Probably by far not as good as I do, due to accident of birth, geography, skin color or whatever else. Or maybe she has a peaceful life without the internet, telephones and all the other blessings of civilization.I was at a beautiful hotel, and yet I managed to lose my way so often between the spa, gym, pool, dining room and my own room.
Every guest of the hotel received a white bath robe, courtesy of the management. Unfortunately, all robes were of the same size: extra extra large. So while the man from the next room who was seven feet tall, and the owner of a remarkable belly, hardly managed to cover the bare essentials, I dragged around half of the robe on the floor after me.I took a daily bath in the Dead Sea. Its water was oily, soft and velvety. I had to hold on to something because I was afraid of floating away. It would be so easy to drift along looking at the bright sky, thinking of nothing and reaching nirvana.Someone knocked on my door, and there stood a woman with a solemn look on her face: