Poems by Caroline Horwitz

On the Dead Sea

by Caroline Horwitz

From Canary Summer 2018

Caroline recently relocated to the confluence of three rivers in the Lower Allegheny watershed, following several years in the Mojave Desert and a brief residence in the prairie of the Great Plains.

At the lowest point on Earth there are bodies floating in the water.

Not dead—just extra buoyant from the high salinity of the Dead Sea. Even so, looking down the hill at these figures on the water rather than in it is somehow unsettling.

My eyes shift from the spectacle and settle on long white formations resting along the surf. They look like wave crests frozen in time, forever breaking on the beach in an inexplicable display of static energy. I look closer. It’s all salt.

The Dead Sea is the endpoint of Israel’s Jordan River, which runs south from the Sea of Galilee and nestles between the eastern edge of Israel and the western edge of Jordan. The latter’s dusty mountains and beaches are visible from where I stand. They look, at least from a distance, just like Israel’s.

Most of what I’d heard beforehand about the Dead Sea described it as a hot, greasy, over-rated salt-pit in the middle of the desert. I see a blue and brilliant sea.

My fellow grad students and I, visiting Israel for a field seminar, make our way down the hill and onto the undulating rocky beach. I remove my cover-up and hat but leave my sunglasses secured to my face to protect my eyes from any stray splashes of the water, almost ten times saltier than the ocean.

I want to protect something else, too—my wedding ring. I have no idea if such a high concentration of salt can harm it, but I’d rather not take any chances. I slip it off my finger and into an interior pocket within my bag. I’m not worried about its safety since a couple students in my group have opted to look at the sea rather than swim in it, and they sit near our belongings.

I slather myself in sunscreen, careful not to draw the ire of the fierce Middle Eastern sun. I step out of my flip-flops, then right back into them after the flat sandy rocks scorch my feet. I wear them to the water’s edge until I’m forced to abandon them.

I suspect that the temperature of the water is going to be quite warm, perhaps like a hot tub. I bend over and put a hand on the salt crust that comes up to my calves. It’s the color of drifted snow and hard and gnarled as stony coral. It’s not as warm as the rocks, so I ease my body down onto it.

All around me the other students are inching toward the water. We all move gingerly, testing out this new landscape that’s unlike any we’ve seen before. I’m ready to put my feet in. I wonder if the salty water will make me aware of any cuts or scrapes I don’t know about.

“Don’t shave your legs for at least a couple days prior, unless you like pain,” my sister-in-law told me before I left home. “The micro-cuts will sting like crazy in all that salinity.” She had travelled here in college and my husband, her brother, studied abroad here in high school.

Sitting on the salt crust, I stare at my hairy legs and then down at my feet and their chipped pink nail polish as I plant them in an inch of water. I sigh, as though in the back of my mind I half-expect them to sizzle off. The water is much cooler than anticipated.

I scoot myself off the taller salt crust and onto the underwater layer, smoothed by the constancy of the waves. I try to stand on this sheet, slippery and white as ice, finding my footing as I submerge more and more of myself. If I slip, I could propel face-first into the water or create a splash that lands in someone else’s eyes.

As soon as I’m in up to my hips, the powerful buoyancy takes effect and my legs are involuntarily drawn up from under me until they rest flat on the water’s surface. I giggle like a child along with my peers at the wondrousness of it all. We all knew this would happen—it’s the most famous thing about the Dead Sea—but somehow we couldn’t quite believe it until we felt it.

The water runs down my skin. It’s not as greasy as I anticipated, but there is something different about it, an entity within that I cannot name. The Dead Sea is said to have healing powers—more scientifically, its high salt levels are reported to be good for the body and the skin. I try to let it envelop as much of me as possible. With extreme care, I dip my chin into the water and splash a little on my cheeks, wary of getting it in my mouth or eyes.

I attempt to stand again and find that the pull is even stronger. The sea demands its inhabitants stay horizontal. My legs are yanked up behind me. I flail like a fish on land to keep my face out of water, right myself, and settle on my back again. I resolve to stay sitting or lying back if that’s what the sea wants. My hair dips into the water, and when it dries it will be hardened and caked with salty residue but I don’t care.

It’s odd to feel so high at thirteen hundred feet below sea level. The Dead Sea is named for the lack of life it fosters (not even plants can make their home within), yet I’ve never swum in water that felt this alive.

I look at a young woman standing on the beach, her entire body covered in black mud. I’ve heard of this before, the Dead Sea’s famous mud and its many therapeutic uses. Everyone in my group is too shy to ask the woman where to unearth the elusive substance. We’re still so new to this country and uncertain of who speaks English. Besides, she appears almost too regal to approach. The only person wearing the coveted coat, she stands tall and lithe and confident, gazing out at the sea like some sort of goddess.

We have only an hour here in the sea before we have to leave. I’m told I wouldn’t want to stay in the water any longer than that, that stewing in so much salt for long would pickle me, but it’s more inviting than I could have imagined. I’d like to stay on my back in this mystifying place that defies physics. Perhaps I could sleep and drift all the way to Jordan.

The sad truth, of course, is that the Dead Sea is disappearing. It shrinks by a shocking meter per year. Attesting to this fact are myriad sinkholes—a result of freshwater pooling and dissolving the ancient salt deposits—dangerously infiltrating much of the land around the sea. When my group first poured out of our tour van and walked to the edge of the hill, our guide informed us just how much had receded.

“This, right here where we’re standing?” he said. “The water reached it ten years ago.”

We were silent except for a few exhaling in amazement. Standing high upon a hill, we couldn’t even see the edge of the shoreline from where we stood. It was still a few minutes’ walk before we reached the water.

In ten more years, most of us will be in our mid-thirties—not so far away as we’d like to believe. How much farther will the water have receded if we return then? Floating now in four or five feet of water, I wonder how much deeper this spot must have been a decade ago.

We’re told it’s time to go. I rise from my supine position, reluctant, wishing I could stay just a bit longer in my otherworldly, mineral-rich habitat. I remove more and more of my body until undiluted gravity takes over again, no uplifting force suspending me from the ground.

I wonder if the sea has changed me in some way—my skin or my health or my mind. I doubt if I will ever feel such a sensation again, short of returning here, which I already yearn to do. I try to absorb every last step in the water, knowing some of what I touch may not be here this time next year.

Dancing back over the hot rocks to my pile of belongings, I find a stray piece of salt crust broken off the larger formation. I run my fingers against its grainy texture, bring it up to my nose to sniff a faint brininess. I take my wedding ring back out of my bag and tuck the piece of crust in its place—a souvenir for my husband, who collects shells, rocks, and sea glass from all of our beach trips.

I’m taking this small token back to him to spark his memory of a Dead Sea deeper and wider than mine.