Free The Land Agent by J. David Simons Page A

Charlotte
     
    I am replying to your letter number six, which I received this morning. It took three months to get here. This delay between our correspondences confuses me in the details of what we already know and don’t know about each other when we write. I also fret as to whether letters may have gone missing. I try to keep copies of my previous letters but carbon paper is very difficult to get hold of. Please send me some with your next parcel.
    I wish you were here beside me so we could chatter away into the night as we did in the old days back in Glasgow. I miss our flat in the West End, the gas lamps and the tree-lined streets, especially now as autumn approaches and the leaves turn yellow and gold. Here we have very few trees, except for some boring eucalyptus, which stay the same all year round. Those times in Glasgow seem so far away from me now, it is hard to believe the Celia who sits here in the deepest Galilean night writing this letter is the same Celia as the one you knew.
    It doesn’t surprise me to learn you have now become a campaigner for the temperance movement. I can just imagine you handing out your
leaflets on the trams, on the trains and at football matches. All these posters for abolition plastered everywhere. Glasgow must be awash with temperance propaganda on every hoarding and lamppost. But even if you can’t get people to vote for abolition, at least you’re getting the drink trade to take notice. We always used to say what a disgrace it was that public houses were only places for manly drunkenness and petty violence rather than somewhere women like ourselves could go for entertainment and light refreshment. I remember someone telling me back in Glasgow: ‘It’s not your capitalism or your socialism you need to be worrying about in this city. If you’re looking for “isms”, it’s alcoholism you need to be concerned about.’ I cannot help but agree with that statement. Here, we have almost no alcohol – there is no money to buy any. But sometimes the Arab farmers give us bottles of their local drink. It is called ‘arak’. It tastes like liquorice out of a Glasgow sweetshop. They don’t drink it by itself but along with their food. It is very strong. One sip makes my head swim.
    Jonny and I are no longer a couple. I am sure you have already guessed that outcome from my last two or three letters – if in fact you received them. I think I knew in my heart we would not end up together from the moment I arrived here. On our very first day, he took me out to a ridge and showed me what we call ‘The Centre of the World’. It is a viewing point that looks east to Persia, north to Syria, south to Jerusalem and Egypt and west to Scotland. I remember how excited Jonny was to show me this place, all the hopes and plans he had for us, but I remember thinking even then that I didn’t want to be a part of it all. Oh, I know you probably consider me cruel for leading him on, to let him bring me all this way with dreams of a life together. Yet I really did try. We shared a tent for several months. But it was clear to both of us we were not becoming closer but moving apart. We talked about it so much, trying to convince ourselves of something we weren’t really feeling underneath. I think he is happier now we are apart. These kind of couplings are not really encouraged anyway. Of course, there are those who arrived here already as man and wife. And others who paired off to share a tent together and eventually had children. There are five children here now and oh, how we adore
them. But there are some people who feel that to be paired off in a couple is against the principles of equality. That it is not fair a man and woman may enjoy conjugal rights while others may not. But who has time for such things anyway? We are always so exhausted. And even if you are sharing a tent, there are always other people there, behind a strung-up blanket, pretending they are asleep but still listening. It is