by Izzy Ezagui
Then, one night, when I'm halfway to age five, even though the smell of spiced spinach has begun to waft into the living room, my father doesn't burst through the door. He doesn't come home at all.
I stay in the entrance hall with my blocks, building something I hope will make him beam. And no matter how hard my stomach grumbles and my taste buds tingle for my favorite dish, I don't ask my mother to wrap me a spinach tortilla. Something about the way she paces the kitchen since that phone call earlier holds me off.
When she's nervous, she pulls out the broom and sweeps. Just this morning, I “helped” her with the chore. “Want to help me sweep again?” she asks, and before I can respond or even nod my head, she says, “Sure you do—but this time, you have to use the broom and dustpan. No cheeks.”
I try that for a few seconds, then I get on my hands and knees and begin sucking at the floor in front of me like a street sweeper. “Ah, not again, Izzy!” This time I manage only to find a wad of lint. “Never mind about the sweeping, honey. Go back to your Legos.”
What a fun night this is turning out to be. Eventually my mother feeds us. Then, instead of insisting on bedtime, she lets me stay in the hall and play with my action figures long after Jasmine's down for the night.
I'm half asleep as my father passes through the door, but I notice it's more of a hobble than a burst. He flashes me a smile, but all I can see are the two gleaming, silver crutches he uses to ease his body over toward me and my evening's work. He tries to bend down and join me as always, but the effort draws out a shudder and a few winces. I'm not used to seeing his face like this, and it does something to my stomach. From the ground, his whitewashed cast, heel to hip, looks larger than life. He looks like one of Vader's Stormtroopers halfway through donning his white, plastoid armor. “That's quite a skyscraper you got there,” he says, using one of his crutches to right a stray corner block. “We'll make a builder out of you yet.”
My mother wants to tuck me in, but, after a bit of whiny negotiation, she lets me crawl into their bed, where she's propped my father on pillows. “But only for a few minutes.” I can't take my eyes off the cast. “Shattered in thirteen places,” he tells her. “It was the scaffolding. What can I say—they didn't build it so well. And all that rain didn't help any. They say it was three stories I fell—but it only felt like two.”
With both of my hands, I massage his cast. I want to make his pain go away. The texture of the plaster hurts my fingers, but I don't stop kneading. “You're making it feel so much better,” he promises.
Next thing I know, I'm waking up in my own bed somehow. I run into my parents’ room even before rubbing the night out of my eyes. My father is gone. “Your Dad can't sit still,” my mother says from the closet “Not even if his leg depends on it. Would you believe he went to work today? Left before you woke up.”
She takes me along for grocery shopping after breakfast. And that's when I see the elaborate spider web of ropes my father set up on each floor to help him navigate up and down the stairs. So, yeah—my father is Spider-Man.
MY LEFT FOOT
September 2008. It's only halfway through advanced training up north in B'kaot, and I've already decided to smash my foot. The only question is—left or right? I suppose I lead with my left, but either way, after it's done, I won't be marching anywhere soon. Except home. I've thought about it, and this is my sole solution. I've put out of my head that this is exactly what cowards have done since the beginning of time. Right now I've got only one thing on my mind: getting home fast, crutches or otherwise. Of course, actually going through with this plan will require the endurance of extreme pain. It's a classic conundrum, Amir's version of the catch-22: The pussy longs for home so severely he's willing to break his own leg. But because he's pussy, he can't quite muster the guts. Pussy boys don't possess the intestinal fortitude to follow through on their big plans. But without seeing this task through, pussy boy cannot go home.
Maybe I can find someone else man enough to un-catch my 22.
It's the week leading up to Rosh Hashanah—Jewish New Year. The biblical name for the holiday translates as “The Day of Shouting/Blasting.” There'll be plenty of that as bones crunch.
I remember Lieutenant Fuks came up to me that Sabbath a couple of months ago when I first got the awful news from home about my father. “Why the long face?” he asked. This was only the third time he'd spoken to me since the start of advanced training, so I must've really looked like crud.
I told him, vaguely, what they did to my dad. He said the Israeli military might be able to help. I told him, specifically, that the American government was accusing my father of pocketing millions of dollars. He sputtered, which was the first outside confirmation I'd gotten about the absurdity, the hopelessness, of my situation at home. I also hadn't known that Fuks was even capable of sputtering. Based on the severity of the accusations, he said, “Sorry, looks like your dad's on his own. But I guess you knew that.”
I moped around base for the next few weeks, stunned. I completed my drills and exercises without talking to a soul, barely noticed the live ammo whizzing by me as we fought the cardboard enemies who held the higher ground. Everyone assumed the language barrier had gotten my tongue, little appreciating the gravity of my woe. A wall had been built especially for my family, seven hundred feet tall and made of ice, just like the one that bounds the northern border of the Seven Kingdoms. Everyone else on base was focused on hurtling over our puny, seven-foot training number in full gear. But the Ice Wall at home was insurmountable. Heads were bound to roll.
Not that the hurtles in advanced training were so puny. All the nonsense in basic training about discipline, routine, and responsiveness took a back seat to the actual, difficult combat training: long marches, challenging shooting ranges, and weeks drilling in the field. All of this served as a decent distraction. I might have been the only soldier who found himself in the paradoxical situation of preferring the purgatory of advanced training to the hell of real life.
Now we've spent the week at Yad La-Shiryon, the Armored Corps Memorial Site and Museum at Latrun, twenty minutes outside Jerusalem. The British-era Tegart fort includes one of the world's most extensive tank collections, with a theater where our commanders opened up a free channel of communication about the morality and values the IDF expected us to uphold for as long as we wore the uniform.
We also learned about heroic tank squadrons of the past. I was struck in particular by one badass, Lt. Zvika Greengold. The reservist got off his kibbutz couch on Yom Kippur 1973 after hearing Israeli fighter jets streaming overhead, which was unheard of on a high holy day unless something real was going down. Zvika scanned the frequencies on his military band radio; heard the frantic reports of Egyptians attacking Israeli positions on the Suez Canal to the south; hitched a ride to a vital crossroads; commandeered two bombed and bedraggled British-built Centurion tanks hastily ditched and unmanned in the corner of a base full of wounded IDF troops; radioed Brigade HQ, and informed them he intended to lead a “tank force” in a battle against the five Syrian armored tank divisions—more than two thousand Russian-made T-62s. Talk about Greengold and Goliath.
Owing to the massive demobilization for the solemn day of fasting, Israel had only about 188 tanks total defending the perilous gateway in the Golan Heights. Zvika commanded from two to a max of some sixteen tanks, and he had to keep switching out as more and more of them took fire. Too soon, the “Zvika Force” was dwindled down to one tank. For thirty hours, despite shrapnel wounds and terrible burns over half of his body, despite some of his comrades ditching and turning tail, Zvika single-handedly held off the invading forces. Without the lieutenant, Israel might have lost the Six-Day War. For his inconceivable bravery under fire, Zvika Greengold stood proud as he received the Medal of Valor.
Many years later, during the weeks leading up to Yom Kippur 2008, I would not be standing proud like Zvika. In fact, I wouldn't be standing at all. Not once I broke my own foot.
W
ith Rosh Hashanah coming up, we'd all be granted four full days at home, days without marching, days without patrolling, but most important, days with our families, which everyone needed desperately. Maybe no one more so than I did since I received the news of my father's arrest.
Well, we wouldn't all be granted those days. Back on base, we have to decide amongst ourselves which two of us will stay on-site for the holidays. Two recruits from each company must remain on the training base at all times to prevent any theft of military gear—more on the questionable value of that later. We were reaching the end of the week, and so far we had only one sacrifice. It's Oren, the guy who's still rail-thin, no matter how many snacks Fuks rams down his throat. Fuks revoked his leave after he busted the poor kid playing Snake on his brand-new iPhone 3G while he was supposed to be on guard duty. “And next time,” promised Fuks in a cool monotone, “I'll shove those thumbs straight up your ass.”
Time's running out now to make a decision about the second sucker who'll have to remain. So, one afternoon, we assemble in a platoon-sized circle. Each person gives his reason for not volunteering. Some of the reasons are legit—parents calling it quits, an opportunity to make some shekels on whatever contractor job, “troubles” with the girlfriend. Others are idiotic: “Don't wanna.” Or, “I couldn't give less of a damn about you guys, so why should it be me?”
And then it comes my turn. The sun is burning all our faces, causing everyone to squint. What can I say? Remembering Fuks's reaction, I don't want to tell them that my father's been put in prison for supposedly stealing $18 million. That if I have to stay, my mother and sisters will be spending the holidays alone for the first time ever. No Ta. No Izzy. Neither man nor puss to hold down the fort. The wound is too fresh to poke like that. I opt to stay silent. What are the chances it'll be me anyway? Omnipresent entities don't let that kind of thing happen—God, no.
The Circle of Confession clearly isn't leading anyone to volunteer. Then Oren, who's getting bored and, anyway, has nothing to lose, suggests a lottery. “Sure. Everyone puts their name in a helmet, and the person who gets picked out first stays on base. With me.” As though a weekend with Oren is adequate recompense for missing out on leave.
This kind of lottery's been banned by the IDF since forever, I suppose because we should all be clambering to volunteer to support each other and the greater cause, blah blah blah. For lack of a better option, though, Fuks turns a blind eye. He tells us that brass frowns on lotteries because they don't really give the chosen soldier the option to decline.
So Fuks waits for us all to agree before we toss our names into the helmet. Some are more reluctant than others, but there they are, thirty-five crumpled slips of paper. Seriously—what are the chances? One in thirty-five. I got this. I feel safe as we all peer into the sea of white shreds, and Oren, who's milking his fifteen seconds of fame, slowly reaches in.
Two minutes later, the other soldiers have shuffled back into the barracks, and I stand there under the glaring sun, in disbelief. My name, IZZY E., materialized out of that heap as though God were deliberately screwing with me.
A couple of days later, I watch as all the other soldiers don their dress uniforms and leave giddily for the holidays, for home. Some of them are empathetic—“Sorry, bud. I'll drink a Goldstar in your honor. Maybe two.” Others spout obnoxious words as they leave the bunk—“Check your karma, dude. You musta really pissed the Big Guy off.”
After I snap myself out of the immediate funk, I start to contemplate ways of getting myself home. By the time night falls, the base is a ghost town. Oren's off playing Snake on his bunk while I spend the first hours of the holiday guarding the perimeter. I need to get home. They're alone right now. And it's my fault. I try to drum up the guts to break my pinkie with the stock of my rifle against the concrete wall. Can't see it through.
I spend the next day fantasizing novel ways of wounding myself bad enough to get sent home, but not so bad as to cause any permanent damage or too much pain. I could smash my front teeth in. “Came out of nowhere, Sarge, a brick with the Syrian flag!” I could gouge my leg with a kitchen knife—Whoops. Aiming for the PBJ and hit the ACL.
It's not until the next day that I discover the courage and then the opportunity to go home to my family in their hour of need. Oren and I fall under the command of a sergeant major. We don't even know his name. He's a bully, a mouth-breather with a bulbous belly. We call him Master Sergeant Soprano. But this career soldier can't bear the idea of any of his men napping idly on base, playing Snake, or playing with his own snake, as it were, in the empty barracks. So instead, he has us cleaning up the many parade grounds on base. And for the last three hours, he's ordered us to lug massive chunks of sidewalk from one place to another. Each slab must weigh almost a quarter ton. It takes all our strength in tandem to heft each block. It starts to feel like an absurdist prison camp, like something out of Kafka or one of the Russians.
Oren and I break from our slave labor, and I break down and confess to him my dilemma.
“Prison? Damn. For how long?” He stubs a half-smoked Marlboro Light against the heel of his boot, then tucks it behind his ear.
“I don't know. But my mother's freaking out.”
“Oh, sure.”
“Look, I need a ticket home,” I tell him, feeling the heat creep to my face as I speak the words aloud. “It's important.”
“No sweat. So what's on the menu? Broken nose?”
“Settle down, Oren. I'm fugly enough without your help.”
“Right, the ears. So what are you thinking?”
“Introduce one of those big rocks over there to my foot. It'll swell up. We can say one of these giant concrete turds fell while we were moving it, as ordered.”
“Yeah. That's good. They'll have no choice but to send you home.”
“Right.”
“Just promise you won't forget the hero of this story, Izzy. Promise you'll tell your grandkids that it was ol’ Oren, your bestest, bestest pal who saved—”
“Damn, Oren. Fine. Just do it.”
“All right, all right. Which foot then?”
“The right, I guess. No—left.”
I look around for witnesses. Nobody here but us chickens. I lean on a light pole for balance. I thrust out my left foot and commence cringing.
Oren stands beside me with a smooth stone in his double-handed grip. It's nearly the size of a volleyball, like the one I won years ago for holding my breath in the pool. I hold my breath again now. “You sure about this?” he asks. He's tipping forward from the heft of it, skinny dude that he is. “You ran this whole scenario?”
I nod and grimace. To his credit, Oren doesn't flinch. But when I see the rock hurtling toward my fragile foot like a comet tracking dinosaurs, my instincts take over. I jerk my leg out of the way just in time. The rock leaves a little crater in the hard earth beside my twitching leg. We stare at it. Oren's got a dumb smile on his face. He scratches where his butt should be, for what seems like a long while. “All right. I see what went wrong here. You need to look away. Then you won't know when it's coming.”
“What—have you done this before?” He shrugs, and after relighting his cigarette, he lifts the stone again. All I can think about now is military law, and what happens if the truth about this comes out. I'll be heading to prison, just like my father, because, for the next few years, my body isn't my own. Every inch of this generally useless piece of equipment—including the left foot—belongs exclusively to the IDF. And damaging military property is a grave offense, tantamount to attacking the State of Israel. So, worse than going to war with myself, I'm warring against the entire entity I swore to defend. I'm seconds from becoming a traitor. But what about loyalty to my family?
“I'm gonna count to five so you can get ready, so it's not a complete shock. Ready?”
“Go for it, man.” I shut my eyes tight. All black. Oren takes in a deep breath, ready to serve me the volleyball. I'm holding my breath.
“OK, on five.
One…two—”
I hear the sickening crunch before my brain can register pain. The black behind my eyelids morphs red and piercing white. Then comes the rush of adrenaline, mercifully overwhelming the pain. “Do it again!” I hear a voice shout. It's my own voice, but I've retreated somewhere far away to cower from the gremlins crawling out from cracks in the concrete.
“Sure?”
“Just do it!”
Kkrrunnch!
As I scuttle back inside myself, I find I'm writhing on the ground and moaning. Above me, Oren's smiling with that cigarette dangling, satisfied he's done me and the world a solid. I have the presence of mind to recognize how true this is—and what a chance he's taken to help my family. He could be court-martialed, too, for deliberately damaging military property. “You're a—thanks, Oren.”
“Anytime. You need another limb busted, hit me up.” Oren tosses his Marlboro Light into a clump of bushes that we just labored to clear of butts two hours ago. “Now what?”
The whole lower half of my body is one big throb as Sergeant Soprano arrives on foot to check up on his chattel. He looks down at me but addresses Oren. “What's with him?”
“Sir, one of the concrete slabs fell on his foot.”
The sergeant major's shirt, I notice, is partially untucked in the front. From the ground I have a clear view of his belly button stuffed with an odd-tinted lint. Hands on his hips, he surveys the scene, breathing like a leaf blower. Yep, there's the slab. There's the injured private. The foot. I can tell he, too, plays out the whole scenario in his head. I can smell something burning. He takes it to its rational conclusion—which will be his injured ass. I see his face turn from vague concern to outright hostility. “You need to be really damn stupid to drop a sidewalk on your foot!” he rants. “I mean—you're supposed to move 'em—not drop 'em on your goddamn—”