She was loosely dressed in a long white silk robe with long sleeves and pale pink silk roses covering the hem. She is a blonde, green-eyed, with wide-flung brows and an open smile. She speaks freely, with a discernible Berlin accent. The accent is somewhat surprising in a Middle Eastern desert, as is her kind of working clothes: she does not wear practical jeans or overalls, but silk garments in pastel colors or, in winter, velvet robes with wide underskirts, adorned with ornaments in silk and lace. The dresses are self-designed and self-made, also the jewelry she wears, gold and big stones, agate, amethyst, lapis lazuli, corundum and turquoise as they are traded traditionally in the region. The artist from Berlin, living in the desert with her husband, writer Chaim Noll, has discovered her Jewish roots and her love to an alternative lifestyle inspired by the history of her people.

(Gretel Rieber, 2003)
An English translation of Sabine's interview with Gretel Rieber is available in the forthcoming book (to be published January 2007): The Desert Experience in Israel, University Press of America, 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, MD 20706 (editors: A.Paul Hare and Gideon Kressel)

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