This is freezing, I think as my left foot dips into the unwavering water belonging to the world’s largest hypersaline lake. The landlocked body of water is a translucent pale green-white, humming only to the breeze. My right foot follows my left, and slowly step by step I’m waist deep in the crystal clear Dead Sea.
Goosebumps collect on my arms and legs but adrenaline-fueled exhilaration takes over. I tap the tip of my tongue with my thumb, and the salt invades my mouth, making my lips pucker. The salt stays and gives me cottonmouth, as my brother laughs at my expression, even though he’ll do the same thing in a few minutes and make the same face.
The salt-littered air sharpens my mind as I walk through the water, becoming more buoyant as the bottom gets deeper. I dip down to my neckline. One rule of the Dead Sea: don’t put your head under. Your eyes will burn for weeks. Slowly, I let the layer of salt on the surface floor sweep my legs under me, and my body and back become suspended, floating on weightlessness. My slippers slide off my feet and float.
The sky is cloudless, a bluer blue than the sea’s blue, the sky only invites the sun. From here, Israel, surround the mountains of Jordan, Egypt, and Syria. Among all these countries amidst tumultuous times, the air is so still and the sound so silent I forget where I am.
I lie among the dead until my arms shiver my senses back. I stand back on my feet, which takes effort. My steps crunch the chunks of salt and slightly scrape my feet as I return to the shore, skin dry as dirt and smooth as silk, shimmering in the two-p.m. sun. I walk to the hotel, a simple tourist attraction, where people from all over make their way to the most famous lake on Earth.
The hotel with floor-to-ceiling glass doors and windows has an indoor pool consisting only of water straight from the Dead Sea itself, except in here, it’s heated. Steam rises from the pool’s surface up to ceiling – the effect of a steam room. I look at the people floating in the restricted, overcrowded rectangle, mostly elderly women and balding men chatting away. My brother and I (ages 14 and 20), are the youngest people here. The Dead Pool folks frolic as we peer through the pool entrance doors and the serene Dead Sea sparkles a halo, just outside, all around them.
