The People of Forever Are Not Afraid: A Novel

by Shani Boianjiu

  I walk back crazed, confused, and knowing. I think I know something new after every shift. The thin metal fence around the base engulfs my body. The signs glued to the fence, reading CLOSED MILITARY AREA, blur. They’ve hung them up so that one glows in red, and the next is black, red, black, red. But with every step I take they become nothing more than letters in all the colors that there are.

  IN THE middle of night, back in the caravan, after eight hours of laughter alone and staring, I call my boyfriend, Moshe, back in the village. He finished his service a year ago. I call him from under cover of a military blanket.

  “We are breaking up,” I say.

  “Is it me?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “It is you.”

  “But I just got a job in the next town over. It’s not great, but by the time you’re out of the army we’ll have something to start with,” he says. “How can it be me?”

  “For sure you,” I say.

  THE VILLAGES around Hebron and even the youth in Hebron itself have grown restless and begun rioting. The entire unit of infantry boys we trained the week before has been called up. They could only spare four or five boys to help us guard the training base. The burden of guarding the base fell on our shoulders, the weaponry instructors, the girls. We had to do eight-eight. Eight hours of standing alone in the dark with nothing but your thoughts and full gear, your weapon loaded. Waiting for the minutes to crawl by like crippled snakes, waiting, waiting, waiting. Then eight hours of haunted sleep in the caravan, where I’d wonder what I had been waiting for all those hours. And again.

  “One of the Hidna boys stole my helmet last night,” I tell Dana in the morning. She sleeps in the bed across from mine.

  “I don’t get why we even have to guard,” Dana says. She gets ready for her shift, sticking her thumb inside the five magazines in her vest to make sure there are exactly twenty-nine bullets in each. “These boys are like rats,” she says. “I swear they’d steal the entire base if they could.”

  “I know,” I say. “And it’s like, they’re kids. What are we going to do, arrest them?”

  Dana rattles a water canteen by her ear, making sure it is filled all the way and makes no noise. “You’re in trouble now,” she says after listening to the silence. “That’s for sure.”

  The door of the caravan of the more popular girls is open, and they have a clear view into our open door. Their leader, Hagar, the blonde, is looking right in at us. Her European face reminds me of Lea’s. She is as mean as her, too.

  “Aww,” she says. “What did the new girl do?” she asks, smiling.

  The other two girls burst out laughing, and I wish the joke wasn’t on me, so that I could laugh too. The girls in my caravan never laugh.

  MY TROUBLE has a name. It’s Boris. And he’s great, he’s great. Well, not great at everything. His unit chose to leave him behind at the training base because he can’t shoot, really can’t shoot. When I told my officer my helmet fell off the hill and I couldn’t find it, he asked why it wasn’t on my head. Then I said it fell off my head. Then he asked why it wasn’t properly fastened. I wanted to scream at him that it wasn’t properly fastened because there is nothing to be afraid of, because our only assailants are kids who would steal lollipop wrappers just so they can lick them, but instead I looked at the ground and waited to hear my punishment.

  My punishment is to make Boris a better shooter. Boris’s buzz cut is so blond it’s almost white. He is exactly my height, a very short dude, but he is also bulky and firm and real. His blue eyes hide behind long lashes. He can’t bear to look at me. “This is so humiliating, commander,” he says as we walk on the sands leading to the shooting range. He is carrying a giant army radio on his back, a metal container of bullets in his right hand, and ten liters of water in his left. I have my weapon on my back, and a coat. Also, the carton of targets and wooden sticks. Chips of wood scratch my palms, like thrill. The cold pinches my nose, and walking by Boris’s side I feel light. Lighter. Elated.

  “You can call me Yael,” I say. “I mean, we are the same age.”

  “I am eighteen,” he says.

  I am nineteen and two months. I was drafted late. It occurs to me that in a few years it will never again be accepted for me to even dream about the body of an eighteen-year-old boy. Then of any boy, really. I will only be allowed to dream of a man. There are nineteen-year-olds who are still boys. Twenty-year-olds too. I think it was after he turned twenty-one that I started noticing that Moshe was not a boy anymore.

  We reach the shooting range that I booked with operations for us. The range is a small roof and a surface of cement. Boris lays down the equipment. He turns his shoulders in their sockets, and for a second it is as if the relief from the weight he was carrying has made him into a child, despite his embarrassment. I talk with operations on the radio, letting them know shots will be fired on range 11. When I turn back to face Boris, I see him lying down on the cement, holding his gun. His body is all wrong. I mean, his body is all right, but it is all wrong for shooting a weapon. The buttstock is not even in the dent between his shoulder and chest. It is resting, flying, somewhere above.

  “Boris,” I say. “Do I look like an ocean to you?”

  He puts his gun down and sits on the cement. “No,” he says.

  “Then why are you getting carried away?” I ask. “There is no need to start on the cement. I am sure you are not that bad.”

  Boris laughs. He laughs for a long time, his teeth showing and his nose twitching. “I really am that bad, though,” he says.

  We step ahead nonetheless, away from the cement and into the rocky sand of the shooting range. “I don’t like practicing on cement,” I say. “It is not realistic. Wars are not fought on cement.”

  I tell Boris to first show me what he can do on his own. I plant a stick in the ground and hang a fresh carton target, shaped like a green soldier, fifty meters ahead. Then I show him something small. I stand facing him, then take his hand in mine and place it at the dent between his shoulder and chest.

  “Press around here,” I say, “and pretend like you are swimming in strokes.”

  He doesn’t argue. He does as he is told. My fingers are a little wet from the sweat of his body. I keep my hand on his, touching. “Now stop when you feel a dent or a hole,” I say.

  We move together until he says, “I can feel it! I can!”

  “That’s where you should put the buttstock when you shoot. It’s is the best place for your body to absorb the recoil.”

  We spend a minute kicking away the copper bullet shells that litter the ground.

  He lies down on the ground. Excited. “I’m gonna give it all I got, commander,” he says in a voice nothing like the one he used before. That’s how quickly, how physically, boys can flip.

  “How about you give five bullets to the heart for now?” I say, and stick in my earplugs.

  Boom, boom, boom. Boom. Boom.

  I tell him to stay behind as I go and check his target. I run fast, aware that he is watching me, waiting, waiting but also watching me run.

  There are no hits on the heart. I check the entire central mass area, but there are no hits there either. Nothing on the head. Nothing on the legs.

  I run back, trying to hide the look of surprise on my face.

  “Your weapon is just really not calibrated,” I say.

  Boris is sitting on the sand, holding his cheek in his big hand. “Oh, it’s calibrated,” he says, confident, gloriously confident, yet cheerless.

  I bend over and lift his weapon off his back. I don’t lie down. I put the weapon in the dent of my shoulder, standing. I tell Boris to step back and put his earplugs back in.

  Boom​boom​boom​boom​boom.

  I run ahead to check the target. Even though it is hard to be accurate with an M-16 while standing, I hit all the bullets right at the heart. They are less than ten centimeters apart. I contemplate calling Boris to see what I’ve done, to impress him, but then think better of it
. This is not what he needs.

  I run back to him and he looks at me, knowing, yet still somewhat hopeful.

  “You are much smarter than me, actually,” I say. “I changed my mind. Any good trainer knows that in order to achieve perfection, you have to start from the beginning.”

  “Cement?” he says.

  “Cement and no bullets. We are gonna dry hump for a bit.”

  It’s what practicing shooting a gun without bullets is commonly called, but I also said it to embarrass him, yet he is not embarrassed. He is not looking at me. The boy’s eyes are on the goal, and he sees nothing but. As I unload his weapon, I notice that he is practicing his swim stroke, his eyes ahead, finding that dent again, making a mental note of it in his mind. He doesn’t even see me or the sand or the hills in this moment, and his focused eyes are fantastic, unreal, not for me.

  AT NIGHT, back in the caravan before another eight-hour shift, I call Moshe again. I call him upon waking, from under cover of a military blanket.

  “We are back together now,” I say.

  “Is it me?” he asks.

  “No,” I say. “It’s us again. Aren’t you listening?”

  “Good,” he says. “Because I’ve already started looking for an apartment for us. The market these days. It takes years.”

  Once, he was fourteen and I was twelve. Once, I was afraid. He was not. Now we both are.

  I SPEND two hours out of my next eight-hour shift thinking about Moshe, about how he is a man now, and how that is what nature is, or time, nature and time, and soon my thoughts loop.

  Nature and him and him and nature and. On the third hour, I think I see boys running, glowing in red, on top of the hill. Small figures holding large squares. I blink, and they are gone.

  When I get back to the caravan, I land my ammunition vest on the floor with a thump, and it wakes Dana.

  “Haven’t you noticed?” she asks.

  “What?” I say.

  “Hagar has been telling everyone the village boys have ripped the ‘closed military area’ signs off the fence.”

  “What do they need them for?”

  “The officer said they sell the metal. That metal sells for melting. But listen to this—they only took the red ones. Isn’t that weird?”

  I cannot help but laugh. These little crawling boys have no qualms. They are not afraid. And now they have begun stealing our base.

  “It’s not funny!” Dana says, her whisper louder than a shout.

  “It is sort of funny,” I say. “I mean, I bet the boys stole only the red ones to be funny.”

  Dana doesn’t get it. Her boyfriend is twenty-seven. They met when she was a senior in high school. She never knew him like I know Moshe; she never knew him as a boy. She is rubbing vanilla oil behind her ear, on her wrists and neck. This is because her boyfriend likes vanilla. He told her that once. She rubs it on her skin twice a day, even though he is so far away and cannot smell her.

  She asks, “Why would they care about being funny?” but I don’t even try to explain. I take off my military boots and climb onto the field bed with my uniform on, so I have more time to sleep before I wake up to train Boris. How could I explain to her that boys don’t care about being funny, that they just are?

  I don’t explain it to her. Instead I wake up when she is still asleep and take the little glass bottle of vanilla oil and put it for safekeeping in the pocket of my pants.

  BORIS HOPES we’ll start the training with actual bullets this time, but after we set up, I take his weapon from him without a word and unload it. He lies down on the cement, and I hover about him, correcting his body.

  I make sure that his left hand is at a ninety-degree angle and that his palm lets the gun rest on it without strain.

  “We are working with bone here,” I say. “If you work your muscles, they’ll shake.”

  As I adjust the angle of his hand, I can feel his pulse and smell industrial soap.

  “Don’t break your wrist!” I shout, straightening his right hand, the one holding the handle. “We talked about this yesterday.”

  I kick his legs, hard, so that his left leg continues the exact line of the barrel and his right leg is spread apart, making a forty-five-degree angle. His butt clamps with every kick.

  When I lean down and show him how to splatter his cheek on the buttstock, starting up then down until he is on target, I feel the softness of him, his pores with no hair.

  I place a coin on the edge of his barrel and lie down right in front of it, holding my head up with my hands.

  I tell him to look at me. “Aim for my eye,” I say.

  He slowly clicks the safety, then presses the trigger.

  The coin falls, hitting the cement with a tiny rattle.

  “Again,” I say. “We’ll do this until you are stable.”

  I place the coin back on the edge of the barrel. I lie back down. He closes his left eye. His right eye looks into mine through gunpoint, circular and intending and blue. He presses the trigger.

  The coin falls.

  “Again,” I say.

  “Again,” I say.

  “Again.”

  I am going to do this all day. I’ll do it until it’s time for my shift. I’ll do it even longer. The hell with the shift, the hell with everything, again, again, again, and then—

  He presses the trigger and the coin stays on the barrel. The only part of him that moves is his left eyelid. Our eyes are staring right at each other, and we are silent.

  “Again,” he says, barely moving his chapped lips.

  The coin falls, then stays, then falls, then stays, then stays, then stays.

  I keep my eyes on his the whole time, but as soon as I let them wander I notice that his left elbow is wet, bleeding into his shirt from holding the gun for so long.

  “You are ready to shoot,” I say.

  I put five bullets in his magazine. We shoot from the flat cement.

  Three out of five! I swear! Two in the legs, but still, I swear! I run back to the cement after checking his target and load five more bullets in his magazine. “How did I do?” he asks.

  “Again,” I say, as calmly as I can, but I can almost feel the joy buzzing from my cheeks and into his blue eyes.

  Boomboomboom.

  “Stop!”

  Boom.

  “Stop!” I kick him.

  Four boys have crawled onto the range, under Boris’s fire. They are dark and small and elastic, moving faster and faster on the ground like lizards, collecting empty bullet shells in their plastic bags—fast, lit, their movements as exact as acrobats.

  “What is that?” Boris asks, still lying on the ground.

  “Boys,” I say. “They are stealing our bullet shells. I mean, actually stealing bullet shells.” Bullet shells are not even real metal. Even in Israel, they could probably only sell them for five shekels a kilo. I can’t even imagine. It’s brilliant. It is hysterical.

  I know I should not smile, but I do, and with the smile I blink, and when I open my eyes again the boys are gone.

  “Palestinian boys?” Boris asks. “How could we just let them go?”

  “They are just boys,” I say. “They steal things from our base all the time.”

  Boris gets up from the cement, and for a second we are standing very close. I smell the copper of his blood and his unwashed scalp.

  “Tomorrow I’ll teach you more things,” I say. “Secrets, tricks.”

  Boris straightens his back and nods, like a gentleman, holding himself as tall as he can, the muscles of his neck shaking, loose.

  AT NIGHT, back in the caravan, before another eight-hour shift, I call Moshe.

  “We are broken up,” I say.

  “Now, I know it isn’t me this time,” he says.

  “No,” I say. “It is you. Aren’t you listening?”

  “Good,” he says. “If it’s me, then that’s good. I never worry about me. I worry about you.”

  He is the only boy I ever kissed. Moshe. I have
been kissing him since he was a very young boy, and I was even younger.

  BORIS AND I move ahead to shooting from sand and rocks, an unsteady surface. Before we start, I tell him to give me his hand. Mine is more coarse. Though I am his height, my hand looks in his a lifetime smaller. I take his right index finger and explain.

  “The lowest third of your finger is called the ‘Indifferent.’ It is not perceptive enough to accurately push the trigger. The top part of your finger is called the ‘Sensitive.’ It is too vulnerable to remain steady when you press the trigger.” My breath releases fumes into the cold air. My nose drips a tiny drop into our hands, and when I look up Boris’s white smile hits my eyes.

  I look down again. “And this part,” I say and pinch the middle part of his finger, “this part is called the ‘Hammer,’ and this is the part you should press the trigger with. This part is perfect.”

  “I never knew there was a part of me that’s perfect,” Boris says. His eyes are beaming at my words, just like Dan’s did once when I was very young, when we both stood by a bench in Jerusalem Street. His hand moves in mine, and I cannot tell if it is the cold or intention. I hesitate.

  “Well,” I say. “Now you know.”

  We stand silent for a minute, until at once we both pull away. The hills of Hebron loom above us like monsters and the sky feels larger, further away when I look up at it, as if we are at the very bottom of an ocean.

  “Hey Boris,” I say. “Have you heard what they are doing behind the new mall in Jerusalem?”

  “What are they doing?”

  “Your mom,” and with that I kick his leg, making him fall to the ground, hearing him laugh before he even hits it. A glorious laughter, deep and uncontrollable.

  He shoots and hits two out of five. I run back from marking his target, and without a word I take the magazine out of his weapon and make sure it is unloaded.

  “Get up,” I shout. “Take your earplugs out.”

  I am sure the two bullets he hit are his first two. After that, he kept on moving out of position.

  I point the gun in the sky and bring it close to Boris’s ear. There are small yellow dots of dirt in his inner ear, and this makes me love him. Love him more.