Then, one February evening, thay all watched the news together. At the end of the newscast, a smile covered the anouncer’s face, and the broadcast was transferred to Mount Hermon. “As you can see, we’ve got snow!”, shouted the woman meteorologist. The camera roamed around the mountain. Mad’s Mother’s eyes widened, she didn’t believe there could be snow in this place. “Take me there”, she said to Mads in their private language, a broken mixture of Danish and an Eskimo dialect. Two days later, six o’clock on Saturday’s morning, they started heading north. She wanted only the two of them to go – the mother and the kids waved from the sidewalk.
Finally they arrived at a point on the mountain. Soft snow was falling down from the gray sky. Mads’ Mother was whispering quietly in her Eskimo dialect, which does not have a hundred words for snow, but only two: qanik – snow in the air, and aput – snow on the ground. Mads and his mother stood on the aput and watched the qanik. Mads knew, of course, that in Greenland they used to leave the oldest people behind, let them freeze by themselves in the cold, though he didn’t believe his mother would ask him to do that. And she didn’t. When the site was closing, they slowly walked back to the car. At home, everyone was waiting for them, and after dinner, completely unexpectedly, the grandmother sang a song. Mads translated: “Little child! Your mother’s breasts are full with milk! Go and be nursed! Go and drink! Go up to the mountain! From the summit of the mountain you shall seek health! You shall draw life!”

Boaz Lavie, July 2003

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