Ch.1

On my eighteenth birthday I boarded a plane and flew halfway across the world. I was far from everything i had known and was comfortable with, and shot directly into an entirely new environment and lifestyle. I wanted to learn more about my own cultural identity and religion.

When i made the life changing decision to take a year off right after high school to live in the country of my Heritage past, i knew i was making the decision to open my eyes to a side of my life i have never yet encountered.

I was on my way to Israel; a country full of controversy. It was a land continually watched like a hawk by the media and the world as a whole, and from the outside, many had warned me of the dangers Israel had been faced with in the past, and is faced with in the present: the first and second Lebanon war, Intifada, terrorist attacks, and present continual threat of bombing and war.

I had been to Israel three years prior, in the same summer that happened to land during the war with Hezbollah in 2006, but even then I had known the country to be beautiful and active. Israel didn't allow herself to be held back by the dangers around her. The country was riddled with white Jerusalem stone, speckled with light cream, green, olive leaves, and enrobed in an everlasting light blue sky.

I had fallen in love with the country then, when i had gone with my family of 5: mother, father, and younger brother and sister. We had staked out an apartment in downtown Jerusalem, (which i later learned was an extremely expensive area to live in), and together we had walked through the colourful and busy shook (day-time market place); it was always full of fresh fruit and vegetables; small holes in the walls represented stores, which projected out into the aisles itself. Bright scarfs and bags framed the outside streets, and the aroma of baked goods and sizzling meat embraced all who entered.

I wasn't afraid to start my new journey, not with all my memories of Israel still hovering behind me, but rather i was excited and nervous to enter this new life half alone.
When i turned 18 on a plane, above the outline of Italy and Rome, below me on a delicately placed Earth, i sat there debating more topics than whether or not i should purchase alcohol for the first time, and without knowing where the next eleven hours of my life would take me exactly, i found it extremely hard to shut my eyes.

For most fresh- out- of- high school students who chose the same path as me, usually they hope to become better versed in their Jewish education, become better acquainted with their cultural identity, and maybe become an expert in hookah smoke ring blowing, but for me, there was something a little more nerve racking to discover.

Within the small boundaries of a country my culture calls home, i knew there existed something much more binding to me than the smell of hookah on cotton, because for me, a past i wasn't very well introduced to, called the land i was visiting home. The individual i had always known as a fairy tale character, very much existed, and lived a life separate from my own; his name was Shlomi Devos and he was, is my biological father, and entirely unknown and foreign to myself, but whom i had wished to find. For the next 9 months of my life, Shlomi Devos would become my personal exploration, and i wouldn't stop searching until i found who i was looking for.

This is the journal of a girl who moved to a land she hoped to learn more about, and the start of a soul searching journey that never ends, but thus begins, the continuous search for Shlomi Devos, my biological father.