by Izzy Ezagui
ADDITIONAL PRAISE FOR DISARMED
“A detailed personal account of a young soldier's journey through life, with gripping, gritty details of soldiering and firsthand combat experience—including being wounded in action and the hideous aftermath and struggle of recovery—all of it packed with witty writing that makes it entertaining to read. Ultimately, Izzy Ezagui has shown the world that despite being a one-armed man, or a person with any other disability, for that matter, you can still be a deadly soldier for your country.”
—Keith R. Nolan, deaf former US Army ROTC cadet
“This story of an American Jew who lost an arm fighting for Israel is a Jewish story, an American story, and a human story about young people in battle. A fascinating account.”
—Benjamin Ginsberg, author of The Worth of War
Published 2018 by Prometheus Books
Disarmed: Unconventional Lessons from the World's Only One-Armed Special Forces Sharpshooter. Copyright © 2018 by Izzy Ezagui. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Trademarked names appear throughout this book. Prometheus Books recognizes all registered trademarks, trademarks, and service marks mentioned in the text.
Cover design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht
Cover design © Prometheus Books
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Chapter 1: A Half-Hearted Wave
Chapter 2: (One-) Armed and Dangerous
Chapter 3: Life and Limb
Chapter 4: Arm’s Length
Chapter 5: Raise Your Hand, Young Man!
Chapter 6: Phantom Fuckface
Chapter 7: Forcing My Hand
Chapter 8: Twiddling My Thumb
Chapter 9: Itchy Trigger Finger
Chapter 10: Thinking on My Feet
Epilogue: The Fickle Finger of Fate
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
As a kid, I consumed comics like crack. Saw every superhero movie on opening night. And, like every kid, I aspired to heroism but found my cape always came up short. I mean, how can we mere mortals ever reach the same heights as, say, a Kryptonian with the power of flight? An alien who'd rocket past the stratosphere if he accidently stretched his arms too high while yawning?
But I, like all of us, have at least one thing in common with the heroes we revere in our culture. There's always a villain intent on mucking up the works—you know, just to keep life interesting, just to keep my show's ratings from plummeting. Superman's got his Lex Luthor, his Doomsday. Spider-Man's got Doc Ock, and Green Goblin. Batman has the Joker—that master of chaos—among his Rolodex of rogues.
By the time I turned twenty-one, my supervillain—let's call him Phantom Fuckface (Phantom, for short)—had come into his own. Like all villains, pain had nursed him; trauma had trained and warped him into something ugly. Now he stalked me, obsessed over me, invented novel ways to inflict all manner of discomforts. It seemed his only purpose in life was to destroy me. And how could I stop him? He appeared far more formidable and more enduring. He was such a fuckface.
He'd first revealed himself to me in the desert, in the form of a premonition. It was the night before my injury. He was already stalking his quarry from afar. As soon as he pounced, it seemed like he'd hound me forever, a twisted twin born of that blast. Unless I could somehow satisfy his hunger, his thirst. So first I had to figure out exactly what he wanted from me. And what do all supervillains want? They want what you've got. To possess your power, your resilience, your spirit.
But I didn't feel particularly powerful or brimming with spirit. Sure, I'd experienced stuff, put myself in harm's way at nineteen—and not just for the adrenaline rush. I really believed in something, so much so that I was willing to risk my life for it. Of course, when people say that, they're not really thinking anything bad could ever happen to them. That's the sort of tragedy that occurs to other people, and you send a card.
So, sure, I'd survived something at twenty that most people don't get to experience in a lifetime. I didn't exactly ask for it, but what are you going to do? I was that guy who lost his arm in a mortar attack. I have no idea who I would have been if that had never happened.
Why was Phantom torturing me?
There were times, whole days, whole weeks, sometimes, when Phantom allowed me to focus on nothing other than his own pressing needs, his own desperate appetite. He was nothing if not a glutton. Of course—without my suffering, the ghost of my past would shrivel and die. That's how phantom pain works. The second you stop feeling it, it's gone. Kind of like an orgasm.
So Phantom constantly vied for attention with a persistence I couldn't help but admire. Over time, I began to feel that if I were to slay him somehow, maybe I'd be lonely. After all, without a thriving criminal syndicate, the need for the superhero vanishes, and he might as well become a used Toyota salesman.
DIPPING A TOE
August 2009. The gleaming glass-office complexes give way to stately palms on Ayalon 20—Herzliya's main highway—and we can start to smell the shore, all salt and seaweed. Kobi and I in my silver Toyota RAV4, speeding with the windows open, Phantom in the back seat, kicking back in the breeze to some Black Eyed Peas. “Boom Boom Pow!”
How long has it been since I've gone to the beach? A year? But I've seen plenty of sand, lots of dirt in the meantime. The kind on the Gaza border that sucks at your boots.
Anyway, that was the border where this Fuckface was born. Maybe, I relent, my friend Kobi had it right. Maybe his prescription of a relaxing “day at the beach” will work just as well as the morphine I've recently kicked. I'm tired of drugs, tired of doctors, hospitals, therapy. I'm tired of the omnipresent specter that remained after I gave up a chunk of myself in a tent by that fence—I'm exhausted by Phantom's constant throb—“Boom Boom Pow!”
I hate that Kobi knows me better than myself. It's always easy to see what the other guy needs to do to get happy, rich, beloved by the ladies—it's much harder to see that stuff on your own.
How long has it been since I haven't felt sorry for myself, saw the sun without cringing? The sun that just then creeps out from under high summer clouds. Can I allow myself to enjoy this day at the beach the way I used to, growing up in a suburb of Miami? Or will Phantom darken my sun forever?
Don't forget, with the light comes the rockets.
Yeah, thanks, Phantom. I haven't forgotten.
Our tires chew over gravel as we park. Only after opening the car door do I notice my naked feet. I forgot to wear my flip-flops. First, I traded my favorites for a pair of clunky red boots when I arrived in Israel two years ago after deciding to join the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to take a stand against those who threatened peace, stability, and democracy. I really was that idealistic. At the time, though, I didn't know it was unrealistic to expect I could make a difference. To expect I could never be the guy who gets blown up, the extra in the action flick who tumbles backward exaggeratedly in slow motion, dumb expression on his face. Yeah, that moron was me.
Now even those boots are gone. I don't have anything here I used to consider essential. Not even my dominant arm.
&n
bsp; Sand blown up from the beach has swallowed a swath of pavement in the parking lot, and my heels chafe against the roughness. How long ago did my blisters from those boots abate? Now the unguarded sun has baked the beaten path and threatens to resurrect them. Sometimes walking in this country feels like a trek through the underworld—not the cool kind, filled with lycans and vampires. I've long since stopped searching for shade. Thank Hamas, I think, for making my feet and the rest of me tougher. My pain threshold has—ironically—skyrocketed since my injury seven months ago. Of course, Phantom's no slouch in the agony department: He was forged in torment.
We trudge through deep dunes of sand on a path that soon hugs the waterline. My balance is getting better. A few months ago, at the beginning of my recovery, I'd have been anxious traversing this uneven ground.
Amplified by a megaphone, a lifeguard's voice crackles and drones from a whitewashed tower, reaching the far-flung corners of his domain. “Warning. The tide today is extremely dangerous.” He delivers this news in the nonchalant way an LA waiter might drone back your tapas order. “Do not swim too far out. You will not make it back to shore.”
His precautions bring a forgotten fear back to my attention. I turn to Kobi, walking behind me, and raise my eyebrow. “Dude, it's just the undertow,” he says. “Sometimes it's strong. But don't freak out. We won't go far.”
Just like Phantom: Find a way to ignore the lifeguard and he'll go away. Right?
As if to disagree, he repeats his blithe caution.
Don't swim out too far? As if I have the stones to do that. Even without the succubus of an undertow, I'd be freaked out. Just something about the water now. The Jaws-like scene from the first time I tried to swim in the rehab pool comes flooding back. The grimy H2O, laced with the odor of heavy BO, biting like a great white. Cooped up in bed for weeks, watching a troop of one-legged soldiers wheel themselves up and down the halls of Sheba Hospital in Tel HaShomer, I was so eager to relive the joys of swimming that I cannonballed into the center of the pool. Big mistake. The rehab nurse eyed me knowingly, fingering an unlit cigarette.
I swam in circles for an eternity, trying to find a ledge or handhold. I was a de-winged fly spiraling in a bowl of broth. Would this be my life from now on? Damn. Phantom executed a perfect reverse-inward two-and-a-half with a twist in pike position off the ten-meter platform.
Repressing a shudder, I remind myself I've practiced swimming a lot since then. I've gotten stronger, more resilient. I've learned to compensate for my missing arm, learned to travel in a more-or-less straight line.
But there's no pool deck to save me out there. No hero to jump in and pull me to shore. Well, there is that lifeguard, but he sounds inattentive up in his grand ol’ tower. A tower that's looking far away already. He's probably watching porn on his iPhone.
Standing at the water's edge, curling my toes snugly in the sand, I can't see or sense any obvious danger. It's all so calm.
That's how they get you—
This time it's not Phantom, but my father's voice in my head. He ought to know. Always, always, just when he thought he had things under control—WHAM! Right in the shorts.
The waves barely brush over my ankles. That's the thing about an undertow—just because you can't see the damn thing doesn't mean it won't bite you in the butt—or bite off your arm. Mine begins to tingle.
Kobi and I take the plunge. Neither of us ventures very far, though. We swim out just enough for the cooling waters to reach Kobi's chest—and right above my navel. The average Israeli is half a foot shorter than I am, and not just because I'm taller than six feet. I bend my knees and allow a calm to rush over my body, my head, to envelop me. The sun, still beating on my back, the contrast of hot and cold, reminds me of a past life. Of leaping into the pool at the Bay Club for maximum splash, my sister whining to my mother about the tsunami that followed. My mom liked to watch us from beneath the tint of her stylish aqua sunglasses, one eye open as she soaked in the sun. With my head underwater, I couldn't hear the lifeguard whistle, the other kids howling, or the Backstreet Boys over the PA. The whole world was mine alone, and it whispered, All is well.
Now I drop my head below the water again. Same ocean as Miami, thousands of miles away, many years. A different life. How long has it been since I felt such serenity?
I stand again, shaking my head. In front of me, Kobi splashes around. “Awesome,” he bellows—“no jellyfish!”
No stingers. They usually littered the coast, bobbing in all tides in the shallows, sniffing out a juicy leg for brunch. “Nice,” I say, but then I remember the lifeguard's blasé alert, and I suspect they've all been sucked out to sea. As I concentrate, I realize I can feel the current pulling ripples of sand over feet I have to will to stay planted. “I hate to say it, you curly-haired douche,” I laugh. “But you're right. I needed this.”
“Of course I'm right.” He grins back. “You should've listened to Doc Kobi the first eight hundred times I told you the beach is the best Israeli medicine.”
It's true. The ocean's pulse eases my frayed nerves, unknots muscles I didn't know I had. If the traumatic injury doesn't kill you, the rehab will. That's probably why I skipped most of it.
As I float here, time freezes for a while. Waves lap the shore behind us, marking many minutes. I feel almost…normal. Almost whole.
How long has someone been screaming?
SIDESTROKE
My eyes shoot open. A glance at Kobi finds his gaze directed past me, back to the shore.
“Tatzil otah!” a girl cries out from the beach. “Save her!” She's frantically pointing toward me and Kobi. Who? Us? We lift our three hands, palms up, in confusion. She's running back and forth on shore now. “Please save my friend!”
“Oh, behind us!” Kobi shouts. Out to sea.
We turn toward the horizon. I stand taller to better survey the surface, which suddenly seems rougher, less inviting. Where is this person? Time's wasting. “There!” Kobi points. “Oh, God.” We spotted her at the same time.
Yes, there. Way out. She's flailing, fighting the ocean's grip. She's losing her strength. Has to be. I know that feeling well, and it translates perfectly across the distance.
What happens next is not a choice. It rarely is. You'd think that what happens after you hear a cry for help reveals who and what you already are. It's not like that.
The whole idea behind the military training I just underwent is to short-circuit higher-level thinking. Not that the army doesn't want you to use your brain—it does—just not so much of it that you freeze. In the military, you have to make split-second decisions that aren't really decisions at all, but more like instant adaptive reactions. It has to be this way, because lives are often on the line. You hear about such things all the time. As I write this, some American Marines on vacation in France jumped into action to subdue a heavily armed terrorist on a train. They saved dozens of lives.
There were those “Let's Roll” guys on United Flight 93. All those soldiers and first responders who poured into lower Manhattan on 9/11 simply because they couldn't stand to be anywhere else but in the action, “the suck.” It's a bit of a paradox, I guess. They train out of you too much thinking, and train into you just enough thinking so you don't have to calculate too much when that would stop you from acting. Without such training, cops and firefighters, paramedics and surgeons, and especially soldiers, would cease to be able to perform under the stressful circumstances that define those jobs.
So I find myself not exactly flinging all caution to the shore, not abandoning all I've carried with me to the beach—just not considering any of it. Not considering any of the self-doubt occasioned by my new “mutation,” as I call my injury, perhaps in homage to the X-Men. In this moment, I'm not thinking of myself as less than, as weaker than, as imperfect, or “disabled.” If I actually stop to think, I probably would think only, “Ahhh! Ahhhhh!”
I've never been a badass. The kind of guy I imagine the likes of Chris Kyle (American Sniper),
Marcus Luttrell (Lone Survivor), and Pat Tillman (Where Men Win Glory) were. Even when I still had both my arms. Those humans, for a time, achieved superhuman status. I'm just a nerd from Miami. And now I'm a one-armed nerd. Sure, I'm a combat veteran—but I'm the kind of guy who'd still rather read a good book about extraordinary heroism than suffer the drawbacks of being an actual hero. Bad knees, astronomical insurance premiums, hot girlfriends who stand on the balcony in their lacy undies, waiting for you to swing by on webs for a kiss. Screw that noise.
I'm just talking about calling on a combination of training, instinct, and adrenaline, to respond to a call out of necessity. The key is the response. I learned that lesson one morning seven months ago, January 8, 2009. The day I looked down to see my arm dangling by a thread of my sleeve, and learned the number one attribute necessary to survive is just to keep moving, keep going forward. Even if you have to crawl to the call, then you just crawl. Don't stay frozen. I might have forgotten that lesson for a time. Phantom didn't help my recall any.
But now a drowning girl is calling. So out from my shallow abyss I surge, and, kicking off the ocean floor, I hurl myself toward deeper water, the dark I've been dreading for more than half a year. I swim out toward the call. It might not be elegant. But focused on that call, I find no imbalance. No asymmetry. No swimming in circles. No pain, either. When you're motivated by your mission, Phantoms fade. You've wrestled away their powers.
Still, I struggle to keep my trajectory true. Within a few more strokes, I feel myself—this body—propelled like those jellyfish out to sea, some combination of the girl's desperation and the ocean current tugging me out farther. The undercurrent is potent, a subsea windstorm that carries me like a bundle of twigs through a gushing sewer. Me. Kobi. The girl. I hear Kobi's hands slapping the surface behind me. I know he's there. Just like Amir was, like Jonny, and Lieutenant Fuks, and Oren before him. More on that posse later.
Swept along, but still so far from her. Her head dips under, her mouth gasps for the surface in a last-ditch effort to score oxygen.