in baking heat, on cherry picking machines that allowed us to zoom up to the larger apple trees with our buckets. Anna, Helen and I agreed on a cigarette break every hour. Wherever we were in the orchards, we pulled the lever down until we rose higher than the trees, could see mile upon mile of Golan, watch the colour of the sky change, look out for eagles and vultures, wave to each other, lean back carefully and enjoy our smoke.
On the next Shabbat, Anna, Rob, Pete and I decided to hitch-hike to Hamat Gader on the Jordanian border. After walking for three hours in boiling heat we split into pairs to see if it made things easier. All the boys wanted to go with Anna. The company of a pretty girl was motivation enough but it also meant you were more likely to get picked up. Rob won. So he and Anna got a lift before Pete and I, who had to wait another half hour and then were dropped off a mile before our destination and had to walk along the road by the barbed wire and electric border fence. We were stopped three times by soldiers, advised to turn back at the border post of watchtowers, jeeps, Howitzers and rocket launchers. Still, on we continued. Anna and Rob were waiting at the gates with nervous smiles. Being Afiq volunteers we were able to get in without paying, due to some arrangement with the kibbutz that probably included free avocados, apples or chickens. We stripped off and sampled the bubbling hot water, fed by mineral rich hot springs that welled up from deep underground. Then we walked around the ruins, tried to imagine two thousand years before, when it was one of the largest and most luxurious health resorts in the Roman Empire. Finally, the alligator farm and a picnic on the grass, where we looked up from our low position to the two mountains either side of us, one Israeli occupied, the other Jordanian. And then, as our eyes returned towards ground level, we noticed for the first time, soldiers with machine guns on the roof of the expensive restaurant.
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Cancer is a mistake cell that is growing wildly out of control, that may consume the patient through malnutrition, organ failure or infection. Nearly all cancers are caused by abnormalities in the genetic material of transformed cells. These abnormalities may be due to the effects of carcinogens such as tobacco smoke, radiation, chemicals, or infectious agents. Other cancer-promoting genetic abnormalities may be randomly acquired through errors in dna replication, or are inherited, and thus present in all cells from birth.
On such tiny details whole lives and families can be ripped apart.
Primary causes of cancer include:
•Poor nutrition; leading to an excess, deficiency or imbalance of certain nutrients
I put the book down and stare out the window. Anna has a better diet than anyone I know. She loves fruit and vegetables, salads and seafood, hardly ever eats fatty foods or ready meals. In the garden last year she grew potatoes, spinach, kale, carrots, broccoli, beans, peas, radishes, turnips, beetroot, tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, peppers, watercress and about five different types of lettuce. I walk into the kitchen, open a cupboard door. These are the different types of herbal teas we’ve got: revitalise, detoxify, clarity, peppermint, chamomile and spearmint, nettle, fennel, ginger, green tea, white tea, Egyptian spice, perk me up and sleep easy. Anna likes all of them. Combined they alleviate insomnia, relax nerves, relieve anxiety, reduce fever, reduce pain and swelling, eliminate excess fluids, enhance weight loss by reducing appetite, lower cholesterol, prevent tooth decay; soothe stomach aches, allay ulcers, bladders, kidneys and urinary tract ailments, cleanse the colon, soothe and promote healing of minor burns and skin irritations, provide the essential elements and dietary minerals lacking in our bodies, protect us from the formation of free radicals by neutralizing them before they can cause cellular damage and disease, promote endurance, increase stamina, enhance memory, improve circulation, boost the immune system, act as a digestive aid for nausea, vomiting and motion sickness and ease irritable bowel syndrome and menstrual cramps. I shake my head, shut the cupboard and walk back to my book to find out the second primary cause:
•Stress; the mind generates chemicals that can lower protective mechanisms against cancer
Anna is the most stable person I know, the most stable person I have ever known. People have always come to her when they’re in need of balance and neutrality, when they require a safe haven of calming energy, someone to listen without judgement. I feel like throwing the book through the window. This isn’t the way things were supposed to be. This wasn’t Anna’s role in life, just like it wasn’t her mother’s and her mother’s before that. She comes from a female blood line of angels upon earth. She’s had one day off sick in the last seven years. She’s never been a victim in her life.
•Sedentary lifestyle; exercise helps to oxygenate and regulate the entire body
The only programme Anna sits down and watches is Gardeners World; that’s half an hour a week. And she often doesn’t read until she’s lying in bed. She cooks, cleans, washes, chases after children, digs, plants and walks the dog. Since moving up to the North East nine years ago she’s worked on the home care, walking round the village looking after the elderly, then taken people with physical and learning disabilities out into their communities. Before that she worked as a massage therapist, massaging people with terminal cancer, and for the home care service in London. She doesn’t sit at a desk, fiddling around on a computer or answering the telephone. She couldn’t.
•Toxic burden; hence detoxification becomes crucial
I look to my mother, her allergies in this unnatural world we’ve created through our desire for progress, power and money, our fascination for technology and our need to fit into a world that gets faster and faster. I wonder about all the fruit and vegetables we’ve eaten, the chemicals that have been sprayed upon them to stop nature taking place, disease or pests consuming profits. If you took all the pesticides we’ve eaten throughout our lives, added them together and then offered the collection to us to drink right now, would there be a glassful or a bucketful? I think of the time Anna worked as a cleaner, squeezing out bleach, oven cleaner, multi surface sprays and bathroom mousses, ironically all with fragrances such as lavender, pine and lemon fresh; how she tried not to breathe in or had to leave the room for half an hour because of the fumes. And all those times when she just had to get on with it, breathe the fumes because she had to get finished on time. Had someone’s ironing to do before they came back from this slavery trap of modern life. And I wonder....
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The dark had set in hours before. We carried on because there seemed no other choice. Pete was in a good mood, whistling and making up limericks. And he walked behind Anna and I most of the way, which was fine by us. Our initial intention was to walk all the way round the Sea of Galilee but we’d set off too late, probably for the best as we hadn’t realised it was more than fifty-three kilometres in circumference. Instead we bussed fourteen kilometres to Tiberius with the intention of hitch-hiking from there to Capernaum, where the apostles Peter, Andrew, James and John were born and where Jesus first began to preach to the masses. After half an hour Jane moaned enough for Helen to go back with her, leaving just Pete, Anna and I. By five p.m. we gave up the idea of hitch-hiking in favour of walking as far round the Sea of Galilee as we could, before sleeping in a bus stop until a bus arrived. By six p.m. it was pitch black and we were already tired, just Pete’s whistling and silly songs to motivate us. But on we went, because there was nothing else to do. At nine p.m. we reached a fish restaurant next to the ruins of Capernaum and stopped for one beer each, an extravagance we'd earned but could ill afford. Relaxing in welcome light for a change we were approached by a slight English lad called Ricky who described himself as an “alcoholic skinhead from Stoke” and had a tattoo on his forearm spelling ‘Riot.’ Ricky had been thrown off his kibbutz but had found work at this restaurant during the day. We finished our beers and he walked outside with us, said he was pleased to meet some English people for a change. Off the road we went, along the shore a little, found ourselves a spot. He gave us free beer and wine, steak with pitta bread, ice cream for pudding. We got drunk under the stars, cooked on a fire that lasted all night through, dipped our toes in the Galilee and laughed at Pete, who had a cardboard box to curl up in and looked downright miserable. Anna, Ricky and I settled down on thin mattresses and warmed ourselves to sleep by the fire. Then promising to visit again, we said goodbye to Ricky in the morning and got a hitch straight away, missing completely the new church built on the site of Saint Peter’s house, the ruins of the old Roman town, one of the