by Miryam Sivan
“Lia,” Isabel snapped and continued to scan the horizon of her quiet street for the small white with brown spots body of her favorite Jack Russell Terrier in the world. Where was he? Trapped in her terrors, she began to shake. She was going to lose it. It was the body, it had a mind of its own.
“I hear him.” Lia called out suddenly. “Woody, Woody.”
“Woody, Woody, come here boy.” Isabel screamed. “Woodrow?!”
“It’s coming from back here.”
Emanuel went calmly to the back of the car and opened the boot. The little dog jumped out, shook himself once, then once more, and walked back and forth behind the car. Emanuel scooped him up and brought him to Isabel. But Woody turned his head away.
“How did he get in there?” she asked.
Woody squirmed out of Emanuel’s arms and jumped into the backseat with the children.
“Well, let’s see,” Lia said when they were all belted and Emanuel backed the car out of the driveway. Woody head’s was on the boy’s lap. His legs tucked next to the girl’s. “Probably in his excitement he jumped in, and someone, most likely MOM, closed the trunk and voilà, a lost Woody.”
“But why didn’t he cry?” Uri stroked the dog’s back.
“Probably thought these stupid humans will figure it out. Then he began to make noise when our not figuring it out went on for too long,” Lia said.
“I’m so sorry Woodrow.” Isabel turned around to pat his head. But he ignored her. Pissed off and proud of it.
2
By the time they arrived at the base, nearly all the shady spots were taken in the sparsely planted visitor’s grove. It was early November and still very hot in the desert at noon. Yael waited by the base gate, tired but happy to see her family. They found a bit of shade and laid out their large woven mat.
Yael dove into lunch. After they ate she put her head on Isabel’s lap and closed her eyes. Isabel caressed her forehead. Tucked in loose hair strands. Her dark thick Toledo hair was pulled back in a tight pony tail. Isabel ran her finger along the perimeter of Yael’s ear. Small trace holes remained of her once many earrings. The nose ring too had come out. Army regulations. Isabel stroked her adored second born. Her femininity oddly framed in the masculine army uniform.
Something was up. There was tension in the lines of Yael’s mouth, in her creased forehead. In her voice. Two days earlier Isabel called to ask if Yael wanted her to bring something extra special. Beyond the usual special. She said no. The usual and Woody. Make sure to bring Woody. His body was stretched out on her chest now. His head over her heart. She rubbed the soft fur behind his ears.
Isabel hadn’t given the request much thought. Fact was she hadn’t given Yael any special thought these past few weeks. The pressure of writing piling up coupled with the effort of keeping the demons down left little space in her mind. Isabel assumed Yael was living her normal army routine. But something had changed and Isabel had been remote. Guilt tore at her. She braced herself.
Lia strummed bassa nova chords on her guitar. She picked out some of their favorite Beatles songs. Isabel hummed along and kept watching Yael.
“I’ll make coffee.” Emanuel took out a small camping stove. He screwed on the fuel canister. Uri helped him measure the water and gauge the coffee. They squatted and waited for the water to boil. With a long stick Uri slowly stirred the fine coffee grounds in the bubbling water.
Yael opened her eyes and looked directly into Isabel’s. “I’m being transferred.”
“And?” Isabel did not take her eyes off of Yael’s dark ones. She forced herself to sound calm, stalk of wheat in a hurricane that she suddenly was.
“That’s all. I’m needed for more important work.”
“Where?”
“Nablus.”
“Noooo,” Isabel deliberately held out the ‘o.’ “I don’t allow it.” Her voice rose. Control quickly lost. Not this. Not now. Not any time. “I’m calling your commander tomorrow. I’ll go to his commander. You’re not going to risk your life over there. Not for those people. No way.” Shit. No tears. She had to be firm. Be strong.
“I’ll be providing logistical assistance to soldiers, Mom. Nothing to do with settlers.”
“I don’t care. Our soldiers shouldn’t be there. I want you to stay in our country.” She wiped her eyes.
“Mom,” Yael sat up, taking Woody with her. She continued to hold him close to her heart. “I requested it. I’m bored here. I can contribute more there. There’s real stuff going on there.”
“Real stuff for sure. Real fighting, Yael. War.” Isabel forced herself to speak calmly. “It’s not like going to a pub on Friday night and dancing with great looking guys. There’s shooting. Shooting at, being shot at.”
“Mom, you know I love you and with all due respect, I know it’s war. I’m a soldier.”
“Why don’t you teach karate or krav maga? Those are important skills for soldiers to know.”
Yael and Lia laughed. Times like these reminded Isabel of how little she knew of this country. And its army. Even after all these years she got it wrong. Even after all these years she was an American outsider. All she really knew was what Alon used to tell her. What Emanuel explained. What Molly gleaned from her sons. What Lia went through. And now Yael. And that’s it. Isabel had never been part of the system and didn’t understand its ways.
“That Lia and I know karate means nothing to the army.”
But that much Isabel already knew. When they were going through the draft process, she tried, behind their backs of course, to maneuver them into sports trainer’s positions. But the army had other plans. Isabel had also learned the hard way that one can’t rebel against army officers and bureaucracy as she had against parents, kibbutz life-by-committee, Alon, Emanuel, and a society that continued to try to dictate her professional and sexual life.
“I should have been in a support unit last year when we were in Lebanon. Felt like a fool sitting here in the desert. I am going to do it now.” Yael kissed Woody’s head and looked relieved now that she told Isabel.
Emanuel brought over the coffee in small glass cups. Uri brought a tin of Emanuel’s mother’s homemade rugelach. Hot sweet liquid slipped into Isabel’s body caverns. She always considered herself lucky. Two girls, no combat. She was not ready for this to change. During last year’s Second Lebanon War she felt waves of anguish and relief every day. Anguish at the devastating destruction of homes and lives, at Uri’s terror every time they needed to run into their safe room because missiles were on the way to them. And relief that Lia had not been called up for reserve duty and Yael was stationed in the desert.
Isabel remembered one afternoon when she and Molly came upon a group of female soldiers in Daliat Al-Carmel. Isabel had come to shop for a rug. The soldiers shopped for everything. Low riding green belts and grey guns accessorized their uniforms. Some of the women so small the weapons traversed the entire length of their bodies.
“Soldiers or not, women are women.” Molly laughed as the young combatants faced the alluring commercial strip.
Women in men’s clothing. Women both soft and tough. Isabel lived with these women, was like them to some extent, but still, she didn’t get it. Why would Yael choose to move closer to the zone of combat? Isabel looked into her daughter’s eyes. The orders had gone out. Yael wasn’t consulting Isabel, she was informing her.
“I’m proud of you,” Lia said.
“What did I miss?” Emanuel sipped his coffee.
“I’m being transferred. Base near Nablus.”
Isabel’s breath stopped. Two young men from their town were killed there in the past year and a half. How did parents of sons get through it? How would she? Isabel clung to the hope that by the time Uri turned eighteen there would be peace. The mantra of every generation. Still, Isabel insisted to herself and to Molly it wasn’t just a delusion but a legitimate
hope.
“Well, you’ll be busier than you are here, that’s for certain.” Emanuel poured more coffee into small glasses.
“That’s the point.” Yael laid back down on Isabel’s lap. Purged. Relaxed. Woody tucked himself into her side. Lia asked Uri what he wanted to sing. He requested the usual. Older sister and the little boy sang together in sweet soprano:
Puff, the Magic Dragon, lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist
In a land called Honalee.
Little Jackie Paper loved that rascal Puff
And brought him strings and sealing wax and
other fancy stuff.
Isabel used all her inner resolve to look and act naturally. She stroked Yael’s hair. American soldiers in Vietnam dubbed a particularly loud gunship, Puff the Magic Dragon. Their playmate. Isabel fought the panic. She remembered how Suri sat rigid and worried on shore when Alon took the children into the sea. Water was a world not understood by the orphaned child from the walled city of Kamenets-Podolski. But the Mediterranean had always been Alon’s playground. Yael’s transfer fit into a system Lia and Emanuel understood. They were calm while for Isabel another chasm of dread and chaos tore open. Yael joined in.
A dragon lives forever, but not so little boys
Painted wings and giant rings make way
for other toys.
One grey night it happened,
Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff that mighty dragon,
he ceased his fearless roar.
Tears had to wait. Terror expressed privately. Isabel knew from Molly, from all her friends whose sons did battle, that you were not allowed to show the terror while inside the love smoked. Was it any safer on the roads? Molly asked rhetorically and frequently, especially when Yiftach returned to base, especially when he came home from Lebanon. He never spoke about the Special Forces unit and Molly and Noam never asked. Yiftach came home for the weekend, stayed out late with friends, then slept and ate a lot. In the early morning hours Molly stole into his room and sat by his bed.
“He looks so young when he sleeps,” she whispered to Isabel as she made coffee in the kitchen. Was she crying? “So young and doing war.”
“Molly, you think the old men are going to endanger themselves?”
“I would actually like to see an army of fifty year old alter kakers.” Her voice rose up shrill, flushed with the anger of the impotent. “Netanyahu rushing in from one direction, Abu Mazen from another, Nasrallah and Mashal from a third. Let’s see how far they’d get before kvetching about their hemorrhoids and those stinking boots. They need to sit down a little and can someone bring them a cup of tea. You’d see how fast they’d figure it all out. Easy to send the young to die.”
Isabel took Yael’s hand. She wouldn’t let go. Not now. Not ever. She could only imagine how hard it was for Molly to say good-bye to Yiftach at the bus stop. She kissed him briefly. Gave a tight short hug. Reminded him to call her when he arrived at base before phones were put away. Last year, during Yiftach’s first year of service, Molly came home from that goodbye and fell into bed until her first patient showed up. If none were scheduled, she’d remain in bed until one of her younger children came home needing lunch. Molly mentioned her sister’s kids in London who acted out before they went off to university. They made great messes in their rooms, lashed out easily, and incited battles with their parents.
“Soiling the nest syndrome my sister calls it,” Molly said. “Making home inhospitable so it’s easier to leave. Our kids do the opposite. They hold tight, to home, to us, just a moment longer. And we . . . we . . .”
And then there was that morning last winter when Molly had been beside herself with worry. “It’s so cold. I don’t think Yiftach’s warm enough with that army blanket.”
“So let’s drive to the West Bank and bring him his down blanket from home.”
“Ha, ha, Isabel. He’s freezing his ass off in a tent.”
“Molly, honey, Yiftach goes off on James Bond missions. And you’re worried about his blanket?”
“One thing’s got nothing to do with the other.”
What to say to the maternal protest against powerlessness. Reason was not a factor. Yet wasn’t this the most reasonable worry in the world?
“It’s different with a son.” Molly sighed. “You’ll see when Uri’s drafted. Though maybe, tfuu tfuu tfuu, we won’t need such an army then. Anyway, the whole thing’s harder for us.” She stirred her coffee. “We’re foreign born.”
“But we already lived through Alon and Noam in Lebanon.”
“Husbands are not children,” Molly said. “It’s not that our Israeli-born friends don’t suffer.” Molly laid the spoon down. “But they’ve lived through wars, they’ve served. They’re better at compartmentalizing the fear. Better prepared. We’re totally inexperienced, Isabel. For us a child in a combat unit is a fast lane to hell.”
Isabel didn’t really understand then. Now she did. Within minutes she did.
3
“And besides,” Isabel repeated Molly’s words aloud to herself and to Lia who helped unpack the bags in the kitchen after the long ride home from the desert, “is it any safer on the roads and streets? You can be looking for a dress in Haifa and get blown up. You can be having a coffee in Jerusalem and see God on the concave side of your sugar spoon.”
“She’ll be all right, Mom.” Lia put the bag of uneaten fruit on the counter and walked over to hug her mother. She was Israeli born and better prepared. “Yael’ll learn a lot.”
“I don’t want her to learn a lot.” Isabel cried and buckled against Lia’s tall strong body. “I’m so scared. It’s as if I’ve already lost her. I can’t stop feeling the bullets, the bombs. Lia, I can’t let Yael go there.”
“Shh, Mom, it’ll be fine, please don’t worry so much.”
But Isabel was past being comforted. This news, like Uri’s breakdown in Prague’s Old Cemetery, cued the demons waiting in the wings. She sank to the kitchen floor and sobbed. Maybe Dave was right all along. How could she have come to this country at war, make children, and let them be sacrificed? Was the last laugh on her?
“Why is Ema crying?” Uri entered the kitchen.
“She’s afraid because Yael’s going to a more dangerous army base.” Lia knelt beside Isabel and stroked her hair. “It’s not as dangerous as it sounds. Please, believe me. I was also in combat with Dido.”
Which was not exactly reassuring. During Lia’s army service Isabel managed to convince herself that Lia spent her time training dogs to sniff explosive materials far from any battle. Isabel didn’t know then that canine crews worked closely with combat soldiers. No one, especially not Lia, ever told her differently. Even when Dido was killed by a roadside bomb Isabel managed to remove Lia from the scene. After her discharge Lia told her that as the dog’s handler she remained with Dido until meters from every operation. Including that last fatal one. Isabel was like the grandparents routinely lied to by their children and soldier grandchildren. Who was crazy enough to tell grandmothers that their eighteen-year-old grandchildren were in mortal danger? Stories of routine drills near the northern border quieted everyone. The grandparents liked what they heard and asked no further questions.
Isabel’s stomach lurched. She was going to throw up.
“Don’t be afraid, Ema.” Uri jumped into a karate stance in front of her and knocked over a bag of food. “Yael will get them like this and like that and like this and like that.” He demonstrated his moves and took a rolling pin from the drawer and waved it around like a sword. “She’s going to kick some butt, yeah.”
“It’s not a game, Uri,” Isabel rebuked him sharply. “Now put that away before you hurt something.”
But he was seven years old and had already spun off into his own fantasy. Running through the house with Woody at his heels he made
war cries and mimicked the sounds of explosions. Larger voices and images of the symphony of war scorched Isabel’s brain. Ambulances, sirens, police cars, intelligence units screeching to a halt. A bombed bus like a beached whale mutely mourned its demise. The heavy shoes of the clean-up squads. The screams of the burned. Whimpers of witnesses.
Uri yelled “Aaaaa” at the top of his lungs and charged into the garden. He leaped over two cats and pointed his imaginary gun at two others lounging in the sun. They didn’t budge, impervious to the noise and activity of the child. Maybe he imagined himself a soldier like Molly’s Yiftach, green and black paint obscuring his face as he crept into narrow alleys drawing out enemy fire.
Worn out from the early morning ordeal with Woody, from the drive, from saying good-bye to Yael, Isabel stood shakily. “Lia, can you take care of Uri and unpack the rest, please?”
“Of course, Mom. Go rest.”
She climbed upstairs to bed and closed the shutters. She lay down and, though it was warm, pulled the blanket up to her chin. Woody barked loudly as he ran after Uri kicking up a storm in the yard. Jaim Benjamin told her that German soldiers routinely let their dogs loose when they patrolled the small Greek villages. The dogs didn’t do more than frighten the peasants and luckily couldn’t tell the difference between a weathered Greek farmer and a young Jewish boy who looked like his grandson after months of working in the rocky fields. Jaim wore local clothing and his hair long. And no villager informed on him. They had little motivation. This village, this band of a few families, hated the Teutonic intruders, as they hated the Ottomans before them. The Huns and Visigoths before them. The Romans before them. They wanted to be left alone to grow okra, cucumbers, and tomatoes and tend their goats and olive trees.
Isabel closed her eyes and slid entirely under the blanket. No more light. No more thoughts. No more anything. She focused on breath and started to count from one to ten. Slowly. Deeply. It didn’t work. She broke down at six and thought of Sylvia Baum from Lublin. Ten years earlier Isabel had written her book. On the morning the Jewish community was summoned to gather in the main square, Sylvia’s mother sent her and her three year old sister, Manya, to the neighbor’s. At seven years old, Uri’s age, Sylvia already knew it was dangerous for Christians to hide Jews. She knocked on F Pani Kowalów’s door. “Please take my sister. She’s so little. I’ll manage on my own.” She kissed Manya on the mouth. “You behave nicely and do whatever you’re told.” And began to walk away. But F Pani Kowalów would have none of it. She grabbed Sylvia and told her to come into the house. They’d manage. And they did. The family hid the two little girls for two years. Then they sent them to relatives in a village an hour away. They remained hidden in a barn until the war’s end.