Meanwhile in Ein Karem the doves are coloured white

Typogram and translation by Ornan Rotem.  

                                                              

MEANWHILE IN EIN KAREM

by Rachel Shihor

                        

                        I have spent my entire life at the Scottish Convent and I

have been musing over the convent in Ein Karem. Here we

heat water by shoving mouldy logs into an overhead stove

that takes up most of the space of the bathroom, and the

taps are narrow and they heat up in such a way that you

cannot touch them without slightly scalding yourself,

and the cloisters and narrow, and the cells are rectangular,

and in the dining room the carpet is frazzled and stained,

and the flowers are slightly withered, since they are not

drowned by the rays of sunlight that penetrate the room

obliquely as the day nears its end, and days turn to night

so quickly that the loss of light is barely noticeable, and the

dogs dribble, and the grape harvest is never satisfying, and

all the tools are rusty, and the main water valve has been

in want of repair for ages.

      Meanwhile in Ein Karem the doves are coloured white

and they are weightless, and the storks sojourn on the

pavilion roofs as they make their way south, and the smoke

coming out of the heating chimneys is bluish, with grey

only on the rum. And the pancakes are wafer thin, and

the prayer books are not stained, and Mother Superior

and her assistant wear fresh collars every morning, and

unhurriedly the evenings descend, and come to a close

when Sister Wanda, after putting her dolls to sleep, plays

short piano sonatas that extend over the whole valley and

then beyond, over the lowly hills finally reaching us.

This cloister-shaped typogram is balanced on the same letter,

the terminal n [the long red and black L-shapes] but given

the direction of the text, they end up being presented horizontally

and as a mirror image of one another.  The first n appears in Ein Karem,

the name of an ancient village near Jerusalem that is now a

neighborhood in the city.  Ein Karem means 'Spring of the Vineyard'. 

The other n is in lavan (white).