The sheep barn on Kibbutz Gonen, destroyed by the 1958 Sharkia

Though not generally a forgetful person, I obviously can't recall all the dramatic events I ever witnessed or experienced. But there is one that remains firmly embedded and etched in my memory, as assisted by being the subject of my first Israeli newspaper article.

As a member of Kibbutz Gonen in Upper Galilee over fifty years ago, I lived in a part of Israel where a powerful east wind known as the “sharkia”, a word derived from the Arabic “shark” [east], regularly whipped the Hula Valley two or three times a year.

In those days damage wrought to crops, property, and sometimes human life, by the shrieking, violent wind as it swept along quantities of debris and clouds of rich topsoil in its path, was extensive. Only flat, reinforced concrete roofs were regarded as immune from possible wreckage, and anyone walking outdoors was at risk of being struck by sheets of flying metal, roof tiles or chunks of asbestos.

A huge “sharkia” storm in November, 1958 led to my initiation as a newspaper reporter. I reported the event and its ramifications in a feature that I managed to submit to “The Jerusalem Post” after traveling by bus from Kibbutz Gonen to Haifa, where I sent the article from the paper's local bureau posthaste to the editors in Jerusalem. It appeared in the paper on November 24, 1958. Soon after, I received an encouraging acknowledgment from the features editor, the late Philip Gillon.

In the article, I recalled previous wreckage “in the great sharkia of a year and a half ago when the roof of our sheep barn took off with a great, splintering crash while we milked the sheep; we found bits of that roof and sundry milking pans two days later at the other side of the valley, five miles away”. Kibbutz  Ma'ayan Baruch suffered even more when a subsequent “sharkia” left snarled wires and a resultant short circuit which ignited a fire that nearly burned the entire village.

Five decades have now passed; my debut as a feature writer is a distant memory but I still have the old press clipping about the fierce, whistling “sharkia” wind sweeping across the Upper Galilee panhandle at breakneck speed and wreaking havoc in its path. And I still have photos of our dislodged sheep barn roof and of myself with the sheep.