by Yitzhak Nir
He smiled hesitantly. His voice was low when he reached his hand out and finally said in English, “Hi! I’m Jerry.”
He once again felt grateful for the presence of the mustache and the elegant gray toupee.
She took his hand and shook it steadily: “I am Li-Lan,” she replied in Hebrew.
He felt her warm palm and her long, attractive fingers around his own.
“Are you a tourist?”
“No, sir. Thank you saving my money from unclean waters. I am diplomat. Embassy of China!” she gestured with the hand clutching the falafel bag to the south, toward the small river that flooded Ben Yehuda Street.
They stood there for several long seconds, her hand in his, the eatery’s small cloth canopy providing some protection from the wind and rain. He felt that his hand had a will of its own and that will was to keep holding on to hers.
“So,” he attempted more English. “You are a diplomat.”
“Yes… yeah. I am the economics and commerce attaché for you. China-Tel Aviv,” she replied, smiling, in a lovely sort of English-Hebrew mixture, switching rapidly and with extreme grace between the two.
Her hand tightened slightly around his, seeking no retreat from the polite handshake.
“Really? I mean, really?” he attempted a transition into Hebrew as well. “How long are you here for?”
“Seven year now I living in Isalia. Israel.”
He liked her flawed pronunciation, the pliability in her r’s and l’s.
“Do you come to Momo’s often for lunch?” He tried to hold on the moment, make it linger.
“Yes, sure. I love falafel. Momo’s is best! “
“Do the Chinese like falafel?” He regretted the tastelessness of the question the moment it left his mouth, even before the full idiocy of it managed to sink in.
“I am not ‘The Chinese,’ mister! And I like falafel very much!” she instantly fired back, her eyes narrowing into embrasures, defiant and challenging.
She eased her grip slightly but did not yet withdraw entirely, like a beloved child that’s been insulted but still wishes to play.
Trying to capture her gaze, he blurted, “Maybe I can see you here again?” in an attempt at damage control.
“You seem like a nice guy, mister, but I need to go. Short break, I eat and have to go back my office. A lot of work…” she said, slowly untangling her hand from his but stretching her lips in a brilliant porcelain smile, her brown eyes slightly widening.
A sharp pain was now stabbing at his back, cruelly radiating all the way down to his left foot.
...Shit. That’s what you get for forgetting about the rehabilitation department for long enough to try and impress a gorgeous woman… don’t go jumping into puddles unless absolutely necessary, you jackass! But he was still grinning at her smiling eyes, at her lovely mouth.
She turned her back to him and headed south, toward the embassy further down Ben Yehuda Street, her free hand gently waving goodbye.
“Do you have a mobile!!?” he tried to call after her, unsure as to whether he should be yelling or whispering.
“Try Google, mister! Embassy of China, Department of Economics and Commerce!” And after several steps, she graciously added: “Good luck, Mister!”
The wind swallowed her voice as her long legs carried her away from him, coat billowing and hair tousled by the fierce wind.
“A raven, shining in the rain,” he noted, in awe.
“May I see you here again, Li-Lan beautiful?” he raised his voice in a nearly hopeless attempt to reach her.
“Maybe!” She tossed back, glancing at him smilingly, and her voice disappeared into the storm. Another brief wave of the brown paper bag above her head and she was gone, melted away in the rain.
...Gone forever...? He was already missing the sensation of her hand in his, the warmth he had felt just a moment ago. “Google, huh, pretty woman?” he muttered quietly. Witty. And beautiful. And Chinese… he summed up with some disappointment, mostly at himself.
For a moment he nearly forgot about his position and his duties, wishing only to run and catch up with her, like a child, and start from the beginning.
With his heart longing for her and his hands full of falafel, he signaled the occupants of the Škoda and turned west, toward the corner of Nordau and Nahum Street, ignoring the pouring rain, the distant thunder of the waves, and the salty, seaborne wind.
What Is Seen From a Distance
At sixty-two, the prime minister started smoking again, in secret.
Even now, a year and three months after she was elected, after her experienced predecessor had unexpectedly retired from the political arena, the ground still felt unstable under her feet. Tamar Raguan-Berger, this morning, was concerned about her low rating in the polls. She woke up tired, as usual, and as usual craving nicotine, still unaware of the violent events that had taken place so near her office.
She sunk into her black couch, which she had insisted be brought all the way from her modest home in the northern town of Ma’alot to the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem.
She exhaled a sigh and lit a cigarette.
Alone in her office, she hurried to open the window and turn on the air conditioning: I can’t have anyone smelling it and getting suspicious. Sima, least of all...someone might think it reminds him of Golda Meir, may she rest in peace... God, that’s all I need. And this was a risk already, simply by virtue of being a prime minister who is also a woman...
At meetings and official functions, she would proudly declare, “I gave up smoking twenty-five years ago!”
But in her secret drawer, a pack of Kent Slims lay. “Just for emergencies,” she assured herself and Sima, her bureau chief.
Her husband had been living a separate life in London for several years now; her daughters were grown, busy with their own children. Sima, who was like a daughter to her, was the only one she still confided in.
The prime minister drew a deep, sensual enjoyment in each drag, inhalation and exhalation. She loved the smell of the match and the tobacco and the burned flavor of nicotine. She would pull the heated smoke into her mouth, where it would gently bite at her tongue and palate. She would then breathe in through her nose, her lips still sealed, and finally exhale swirling blue ribbons back out into the world. She would slowly succumb to the numbing sensation, the pleasant heaviness in her limbs and head, soothing her frayed nerves.
Tamar Raguan-Berger was deep in thought. If she were to look out the window toward the Knesset building, she would see the fading, brown cloud of ruinous smoke, rising slowly above the seat of Israel’s legislative body. But she saw only the delicate plumes of bluish smoke rising from between her fingers.
The Iron Lady of her party, a sharp, outspoken, and unapologetic troublemaker, was now bearing - casually, almost unconsciously - the crushing weight of responsibility.
Never, not even when she was the commander of the “Bahad 12” women’s army training center, or the head of human resources department for the entire IDF, had the weight of her duty ever felt so massive, so complex and demanding, as it did now, sitting in the prime minister’s couch.
She had no real enemies in the military, only those who envied her and those who desired her. When she thought of the sometimes aggressive attempts to court her, many of which would fall under the modern definition of sexual harassment, she did so with composure and peace of mind. She recalled with fondness the hard slap she awarded the man who would later become the head of the intelligence corps. “Apparently, I was very attractive. A woman should be able to stand up for herself. Not every friendly pat or idiotic remark is harassment.” she surmised, with some satisfaction. “And you know what Sima? Some of the bitches exploited the momentum to cross one bridge too far by destroying more worthy men’s careers. But anyhow, it would be such a boring world without men,” she’d sometim
es tell her bureau chief quietly in private.
The media was perpetually following some hostile accusation or other that had come to light, and she would respond with the appropriate shock and indignation; although she often wondered if the accusations were dishonest, she accepted the massive change taking place in the world. But in the privacy of her home on Balfour Street, she examined her reflection in the mirror, wondering: Do those men, those commanders and high-ranking officials, still desire me now, at sixty-two?
She had also made a habit of wearing high heels. “We need to distance ourselves as much as possible from the image of our last woman prime minister,” she explained to Sima when she’d promoted her to be her personal assistant. “I remember how we saw Golda Meir, back then in “Bahad 12”: her clothes, her famous orthopedic flat shoes, which we called ‘Golda’s shoes’ and her smoking habits…”
It wasn’t until she’d begun to stand out, first within her own party, then in the media, that she first sensed the eyes of hungry wolves stalking around her. Now, in her not-yet-warm faux leather couch, holding the highest possible position she could strive for, she clearly felt the presence of those who sought her downfall - from without, but mostly from within. But because she had no skeletons in her closet, she strongly felt that the “corruption wing” of her past is “empty and fireproof”, as she’d often expressed.
“...Matters seen from here - can’t be seen from a distance…” she would often hum the beautiful, old love song to herself, quietly and privately, when she was in a good mood.
But this morning, despite the cigarette, she was not. Not at all.
She’d had just over fifteen months in the country’s most coveted position.
“Coveted? Do you think being prime minister is fun? You have no idea. Think twice, think three times, before you trample one another on your way to the top,” she would scold the politicians, young and old, ambitious and doggedly subversive, who would swarm her doors at every opportunity.
* * *
She received an urgent phone call from her military secretary, and a bitter wave of memories rose in its wake. She was pummeled by his first reports on the car bomb at the Knesset vehicle access gate.
The director of Hadassah Hospital sounded impatient and tense when he gave her his succinct report: thirty-seven wounded some in critical condition, and at least eleven dead. The report from the new director of the Shin Bet was equally grim.
She took a last drag of her cigarette, stared at the lipstick staining the yellow filter, and angrily threw it into the glass of water on her desk. The remains of the peaceful morning she so desperately needed were dissipating in the chaos of the ruthless reports, like smoke through her window.
The hiss of the extinguished cigarette butt and the vague, slightly repulsive smell of the act flung her back to the fifteenth of May 1974, to Nativ-Meir High School in Ma’alot, her hometown.
She remembered the yelling, the terror, and the smell of fear. Her own fear.
“The main thing I remember,” she would often say, “is the smell. This fear came with a distinct set of smells: sweat and urine, at first, and then the strong scent of blood and gunpowder.”
At night her mind would often return there, to her sixteen-year-old hostage self, imprisoned in a classroom in the northern town of Ma’alot, lying on the floor with eighty-six of her peers. There were no adults to be in charge.
They lay there in the small classroom, having been herded and shoved in there by the three terrorists from the PFLP.
The first of the so-called bargaining attacks.
There were no toilet breaks; the sour stench of urine hung in the air. They had no choice in the matter. Fourteen hours of paralyzing fear, megaphone-enhanced yelling and men in kufiyahs, wielding grenades and AK-47 Kalashnikovs, screaming at them in Arabic.
And then - shots fired.
And in their wake came the cries of horror and pain and the awful smell of blood and gunpowder.
The Ma’alot Slaughter was a failure, not an accident. A painful, piercing reminder of the Yom Kippur War, a reminder of the euphoric arrogance, the hubris and the inherently Israeli “trust-me-and-everything-will-be-fine” attitude.
She was well aware of this. “Never again! Not on my watch!” she’d sworn, time and time again.
* * *
The prime minister slowly drifted back from her memories.
“Sima!” she called out, “the meeting with the chief of staff, the air force commander, and the heads of military intelligence and the Mossad, postpone it! Not going to happen today.” With some hesitation, she added, “And tell Dahlia to give her boss my sincere apologies for postponing. Gershon was really looking forward to showing off the job he’s done with the Mossad ever since my predecessor left him in charge…” she spoke in a low voice, as if to herself.
“And ignore the smell. You smelled nothing, Sima!” she concluded, with the reproachful tone that came with knowing that she isn’t fooling anyone.
“Naturally, ma’am. I smelled nothing.”
“And stop calling me ‘ma’am.’ Summon an emergency meeting with the State Security Cabinet. And get the military secretary and the director of the Shin Bet in here, by noon at the latest - I want to discuss the need for an official address to the nation before the meeting with the cabinet!” Quietly, almost to herself, she added, “I can see the headlines now.”
Maybe it’ll be better to settle for a Facebook post… or just Tweet the necessary characters, like the president of the United States does…
“Of course, ma’am,” Sima dutifully replied. “I’ll prepare your new schedule immediately. Should I move the meeting that was supposed to take place at the Mossad to our own conference room?”
“Yes. Ours. And none of this ‘ma’am’ nonsense when it’s just the two of us. It’s ‘Tamar’ to you, is that clear?”
She took a deep breath and her voice was low when she spoke again.
“Oh, Sima, my dear Sima, you’ve picked the worst possible time to serve your people…” she said, ponderously, and glanced through her office window at a patch of clear blue sky - soon to be conquered by the angry storm clouds, rising from the lowland plains.
Adam
The green wicket was unlocked.
Gershon opened the door that led to an old but impeccably whitewashed stairwell, and started up the ninety-year-old staircase. A small Bauhaus masterpiece, he marveled, from back when they bothered building worker-class housing in Palestine...thirty-eight handsome stairs, cast in gray concrete and white gravel and sanded beautifully smooth by hand. Don’t see that kind of artistry anymore, he muttered to himself, climbing toward the apartment of his friend and confidante.
He reached the second floor, limping on his left leg, the sharp pain in his back still making itself known, and stopped in front of a timeworn wooden door painted in a cracked brown. Beside it a cracked doorbell hung from its two remaining electrical tendons.
A yellowing, half-peeled label announced:
“Ben-Ami”
He knocked four times on the wooden door using the code that the French resistance and Allied forces used during World War II, based on Beethoven’s famous, four notes: the opening of his “Fifth” symphony.
“V for Victory,” he said, and knocked again their code.
“Aha’lan, welcome, Gersh! Come in!”
Adam opened the door. They shook hands and embraced in a long hug.
“Hi, Ben-Ami. Still refusing to grow old, huh, man?”
“Drop it, Gershon. I’ll take that as a compliment. But man, that is a great look for you! Mustached George Clooney!”
“Yalla, Ben-Ami, close the damn door and keep it down, huh?”
“Aye-aye, sir! Coffee? Cigarette? Is it cold out?”
“Not so much, but god, the rain you get so close to the sea – it’s really coming down out
there. The wind nearly blew me away. Coffee it is, Adam. Turkish, no sugar, flat teaspoon, large mug. And you should really stop smoking,” he added, handing Adam one of the still warm brown paper bags.
“I brought falafel from downstairs. I’m guessing you have no more food here than you usually do.”
“Good. I woke up hungry today. Coffee’s on the stove. Grab a seat on the couch, I’ll go put some clothes on.”
Still in underwear, a gray T-shirt and slippers, he disappeared into the bedroom. His long white hair was tied into a majestic ponytail and his meticulously trimmed sailor’s beard framed his light-skinned face.
“Adam the Beatnik!” Gershon would affectionately call him. “I have plenty of enemies,” he’d often say, when his humor fell toward the self-deprecating. “When you get to be my age, you have many acquaintances, but very few real friends. And the latter are becoming rarer all the time…”
Adam Ben-Ami was one of the latter, however, and Gershon loved him from the moment they met: an orphan of the 1967 attack on the INS destroyer Eilat, who loved the sea, and loved to paint. As a child he dreamed of commanding a destroyer, but the navy’s destroyers had long since been decommissioned, becoming gigantic lumps of scrap-iron laden with flourishing coral reefs.
When Adam was summoned to the air force flight course, he calmly went. He asked for no one’s permission, as an orphan of war was expected to, nor would his mother have dreamed of refusing him if he did. At the kibbutz they all shook his hand.
He was tall and thin, with an aquiline nose prone to pimples, strikingly light hair and reddish-gray eyes hinting at some degree of albinism. He was a natural pilot, good at keeping secrets, fiercely cynical, unafraid to champion the unpopular opinion. His character and skill soon earned him the respect of his fellow trainees, who nicknamed him “The White Man.” But even when he smiled, the veiled sadness never seemed to leave his face.