Disarmed

by Izzy Ezagui

  Lunch is parched and overcooked. Burnt rice and sticks of something that might be ground beef. Can't eat anything. I offer up my portion to the biggest of the bunch—a recruit who looks startlingly like Arnold Schwarzenegger. They soon take us out to the buses that will bring us to the Gibush. “Hey, you ever seen Predator?” I ask the big guy.

  “Get to the choppah!” he shouts good-naturedly, in a terrible impression of the Governator.

  They corral us all into a courtyard, where we all simultaneously hush. All of the draftees who signed up for these three days of affliction, all hoping for the same reward, continue to amass into an olive-drab throng behind us. “Man,” says Ahhhnold.

  “Yeah. You're all so damn huge.”

  Ahhhnold says, this time in Hebrew, “Muscles don't mean endurance. They're not looking for biceps. They're looking for soul.”

  Before boarding the buses, the boot sergeant makes each of us drown on yet another canteen. All I can hear is retching and the splatter of possibly-beef sludge and stomach acid on the pavement. And then the flies. I, however, hold onto every last drop, aiming to keep my temperature within the strict parameters despite what is obviously turning out to be some full-on desert flu.

  The transport we ride in is more cattle car than bus. The commander sits in a separate compartment up front along with the driver, while the rest of us are packed into the back with no means of contacting them. We rumble into the desert.

  Try drinking eight liters of water in a single morning. Then get on a bumpy bus crammed with fifty other guys who've done the same. I don't know if the commander really can't hear us vainly bashing on the roof, waving out the window, and shouting—or if he's just having a wee bit of fun while we all nearly burst in the back. Maybe the whole thing's some sort of psychological test. But after a few panic-stricken minutes, we all really, really need to piss as soon as possible. But where?

  There are two options. One is out the window. Fortunately, the road near base is scarcely traveled. But getting that height is going to require teamwork, and no one's ready to risk taking friendly fire this early on in the service. Option two is in a bottle, and then out the window, a feat that can be completed with a lot less indelicacy. We decide together that option two's at least marginally civilized. So we turn the back of the transport into a relief station. Many recruits are close to tears by the time we finally rig a system. There are only two bottles on the transport, one Coke, one Fanta. They remain in constant rotation. Their contents—sometimes faintly yellow, but mostly clear—are repeatedly flung out the window just so the bottle can be refilled seconds later by another dancing recruit.

  When the storm of shouting, pissing, and hurling finally subsides, I try to remember Jonny's tips and go over them for the remainder of the ride south to a base called Mitkan Adam.

  The most important was this: “During a few of the most difficult exercises, they're going to ask for volunteers to prepare the food. Don't be one of them,” he warned. “It's a test to see who will take the easy way out.” Not me.

  The only solution is to kick serious ass in the Gibush and then get my dog and kick serious ass in combat.

  But first I yell, “Bottle!” The sopping plastic orange soda bottle hits me in the ear from behind, spraying blended urine over my chin. “Thanks…”

  Two bottles later, and all three hundred of us are kipping out at night beneath a massive hangar slathered in bird poop. Jonny warned me not to get too cozy, and to wear my boots to sleep. They'd shock us awake to kick off the Gibush. Half of us have our toes out, and the grossly tangible stench of so many feet is thick enough to walk on.

  What can I say about the next three days? Only isolated images and senses, scraps of dialogue, and general impressions come to consciousness. In the spaces between, the blackness of exhaustion and hopelessness:

  None of the tryout instructors ever shout. These reservists give all their orders, even the most pressing, in deadpan voices just above a whisper. Far more menacing. Contrast that to the blaring horns over the megaphones that wake us up whenever we try to fall asleep.

  Hauling sandbag-laden stretchers through the night desert. Screaming calves, dying thighs, the rough-edged pole of the stretcher plunging into the meat of our shoulders.

  Those eerie commands. Sprinting a hundred meters over and over again under a punishing sun. Fifteen men at time, half pushing, half dragging, a massive, heavy, awkwardly bundled canvas tarp the size of a circus tent from one side of a one-hundred-meter marker to the other. This tarp serves no function or purpose beyond breaking the spirit of young men. This task, like many, impedes all forms of group cooperation and individual coordination.

  Our sedate taskmasters ordering “Tzeh” time and again, and forward we go like dogs let off the leash. Each of these commanders once had a devoted canine partner they spent hundreds of hours training and fighting beside. We recruits have not yet earned our place among those dogs—let alone their masters. The vast majority of those who try out never will.

  Grinding sand in my teeth. Sweat stinging my eyes. Watching many giants fall. First ten minutes of the first day, first drill, and I'm ready to give up. Already.

  Ahhhnold hunches his hulking shoulders in defeat. “Are you sure, Recruit? Are you absolutely sure?” his instructor asks in that irritatingly calm manner. My own lungs are straining. I'll never make it.

  “Yes, sir,” he mumbles dejectedly, staring down at his boots. “I'm done.”

  “Yes, you are, Recruit.”

  We've been charging back and forth through the desert for less than an hour.

  By the end of that very first day, nearly one hundred fifty recruits, who signed up with bluster and pride, call it quits. All this does is increase my odds.

  My strength rises from the weakest part of my nature. My resilience is built on the broken dreams of others. But whatever it takes, right?

  The longer we go, the more likely the recruit will stay. It's just like actuarial tables. If you survive drill one, that makes it all the more likely you'll survive drill two, and so on, exponentially. So, technically, that which doesn't kill you really does make you stronger. It's a cold comfort while you're digging your own desert grave.

  A piercing wail wakes us survivors mid-REM that first night. With boots laced tight, and eyes still glued mostly shut, I haul ass toward the stretchers outside. I know this drill.

  There's an ambulance ahead, half hidden in the tree line. Those rigs mean medics, and medics mean the little machine they shove in your ear. On the pretext of needing to piss, I hide and wolf down a gallon of water. “Is there anyone who feels unwell?” asks an instructor robotically. “The medics are going to take all of your temperatures for safety precautions. And then we'll all play.”

  Mother…

  I manage to lean away from the device so it doesn't contact the molten lava roiling in my cranium. I keep my mouth open—a Jonny tip. I think cool thoughts. The pool back in Aventura. The winters in Brooklyn. Penguins. “Pass.”

  This hike is twice as long and twice as fast as the prior one.

  Two hours of sleep, then we crawl. “If you're in the middle of the pack, you're in trouble,” said Jonny. “If you're behind the pack, you're in trouble. Basically, if you're anywhere but the head of the pack, you're in trouble. The final four in any drill spells trouble.”

  I'm in trouble.

  The sand is soft and notched, like the waves of a frozen ocean. But within the first minute of crawling on this choppy surface, you realize why they call it “sandpaper,” and why it's able to blast through paint and stain and anything. Blood seeps right through the sleeves of our uniforms. One of the hardest parts of crawling is keeping your head up. Your neck gets stiff after just a few minutes.

  Are these other competitors with their scrunched-up faces and flayed elbow skin my comrades—or my enemies?

  “Yalla, just a few more meters,” some random recruit cries out.

  “We can do this,” another voice replies.

>   Each man yips his oaths of encouragement as though we're a pack of wolves hunting together. I don't have the breath to contribute. But I do appreciate the camaraderie. I understand the challenge is to get my pack its quarry.

  A guy named Oz is in my pack. Oz is in trouble. “Are you experiencing difficulty, Recruit?”

  They all sound like the HAL 9000 computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  “Is it time to throw in the towel?”

  “Can we get you a popsicle, Recruit?”

  I can see he's about ready to crack. Oz is for sure going to be in the last four to finish this drill. So I slow my pace—let him slink past me, and take the bullet for him. Seems like the right thing to do at the time. He knows what I'm doing, and mouths a silent “Thank you” as he drags his weary bones past.

  I don't understand the instructions for the dune drill. Fortunately, it looks like it doesn't require much thinking. I can see the monstrous dune out of Frank Herbert's universe; I can see the heavy sandbags heaped at its base. It seems the goal is to carry a bulky sandbag up and down the hill as many times as possible before time runs out, a measurement they purposefully fail to disclose. So, how hard do you work? Are they looking for speed, quantity, what? I'm spent. I'm done. I'm bloody. I'm probably going to crap blood. “We need two volunteers to prepare lunch.”

  So, so tempting. But I remember Jonny's edict.

  Two extremely relieved recruits take their leave for the lunch-prep shade. Good-bye forever, boys.

  My fever's peaking now, I can tell. I can feel a strange wave of cold creeping up my chest. “Are you unwell, Recruit?” Practically a whisper.

  “No, sir.”

  “Tzeh.”

  Boots sunk into sand. Shoulders offended. Elbows sensitive as eyeballs. The uphill slog. The awkward burden. The downhill charge. Lungs full of sand and agony. One time. Two times. Three times. Four. Guys have died on this tryout. Where do I sign up for that?

  On the fifth, a tiny sound.

  Clink.

  My ears perk up the instant I hear it. In fact, all activity on the dune comes to a halt as we each turn and stare at the instructor who stands below. He's a burly guy with a shock of hair sticking up from his collar. He holds in his grip a perfect, glowing, sweating can of Pepsi. The sound was him cracking it open. It's so quiet in the desert now I can just pick out the fizzing of foam. Or is that flies? He takes a big sniff. “Mmm, who does this soda belong to?”

  It's a trap.

  “No one? Anyone can have it. Any recruit. Just come down here and take it. Just come down, take it, and walk away. Why continue suffering? Just end your misery. Be the Pepsi Generation.”

  I'm hallucinating. Fatigue and fever and the oasis of cola…I see myself stripping naked—Metallica's playing—and swan-diving into that can for a swim. Fifteen seconds pass in silence. No one moves a muscle. If not for our ragged breathing, the desolate training grounds would sound a lot like I imagine Mars can sound, when the winds aren't whipping.

  All eyes are on that bright Pepsi logo gleaming in the sunlight, completely alien to the barren and colorless landscape.

  One by one, we recruits turn back to our burdens. We continue to hump up and down the steep incline, pain etched on our faces like the forces of time.

  I can't go on much longer. It's simply too taxing. I'm standing now, unmoved, head bowed, eyes closed. So, of course, he chooses me. The instructor and his sacred aluminum chalice are now both inches from my face. My sandbag is dumped at his feet. I cannot, will not, move from this spot. If shade should suddenly appear, if a crevasse opens up in front of me with clear, icy mountain water, I will not have it in me to tip myself in there. I'm in real trouble. I'm about to fail again.

  A chorus of instructors converge on my position now. They surround me. And, with their eerie composure, they begin to buzz: “Can I help you back to your sleeping bag, Recruit?”

  “Or do you need an ambulance?”

  “Ice cubes, Recruit?”

  “Slice of lemon?”

  The keeper of the can tips it a bit, and Pepsi bubbles on the sand. He says, “You really look like you could use a refreshing beverage.”

  What will they think of me? God, what are they going to think of me if I pack it in?

  A tear chooses that moment to forge a path down my dirty cheek. I'm not crying, I don't think. My exhausted body—possibly ridden with Screaming Flyshit Influenza—is acting without my consent.

  Major Tuft places the Pepsi can right under my nose. I can't help but inhale deeply. What a rush. Ineffable. Riding a saddled great white shark through a black hole only half captures the sensation. I really am very, very sick. And very tired. And thirsty.

  And then I hear a voice. My father's. “Izzy, don't you think there will be plenty of time to drink cola once you make it into the Special Forces?”

  What will they think of me if I give up?

  Utterly distressing that the only emotion powerful enough to carry me over this finish line's going to be shame. Not pride in my actions. Not some deep, Zionistic fervor. Not even a full understanding of how important my service will be to Israel and the future of the Jewish people. Just bare, naked shame.

  My whole spine groaning, I bend forward and heft the sandbag back onto my shoulder. When I do so, a rivulet of blood from my left elbow travels down into my armpit. “What are you doing, Recruit?”

  “Yeah, why are you leaving us?”

  “Dr. Pepper's more my speed, sir.”

  “Who is this Dr. Pepper?”

  Now I demand motion of my body. For the first time in my entire life, I know I will finish a challenge that I set for myself. I might not have finished school; I might not have raked in a fortune at any job; and I didn't get to be a paratrooper, but I'm going to finish this drill. So what if it's shame pushing me over the line?

  I survive the dunes. I carry the spices. I ride the sandworms of Arrakis till they roll over, defeated, and show me their tummies.

  I sleep. Meanwhile, my white blood cells are losing their epic battle with the micro-predators that have invaded me.

  But only a day to go. Each time the instructors order us to crawl, the grisly scabs on our elbows reopen. I succeed in pushing through. Something might be seriously wrong with me, but if I'm going to die, it will be on the road to the finish line. Just because I cannot bear the thought that I promised the world and myself I'd make it, and I might not.

  So I succeed because I'm too ashamed to fail. Right now Ahhhnold's probably passed out with three empty cans beside him, and I'm here. Because he was willing to give up. And I'm not.

  And suddenly, it's over. I'm done. The final whistle blows, and the Oketz Gibush is over. I count among the one hundred forty recruits—less than half—who survived.

  Now I'm in the exit interview. After sitting outside an inconspicuous trailer for hours, cross-legged, body and mind as numb and blank as the shifting sands. “Have a seat, Recruit.”

  Jonny warned me how crucial these last few minutes are going to be. “The final meeting has to go perfectly.”

  Sure. The math: one hundred forty recruits finished the hellish trials. Only thirty-five open slots. That's—well whatever the odds, they're not good.

  There's a box of store-bought pastries on the desk. Multicolored sprinkles. My stomach weeps. “Have some cake.”

  Another test?

  “Thank you, sir.” My voice is gravelly from the desert and my illness. “But no, thank you.”

  They're just being nice. That was rude, Izzy. Strike one.

  “Do you think you performed well these past three days?”

  No, I think. “Yes,” I say. It's all I can do to suppress a coughing spasm.

  “Any injuries we should know about? We need to know for our records.”

  Instinctively, I lift both my arms to show them the nasty scars that have encrusted both of my elbows entirely, little blobs of bright blood oozing through as I bend them. “Just these.”

  “What are you refe
rring to, Recruit?”

  “Where? Where is your injury?”

  This reaction is so disorienting that I actually glance down at the perfectly obvious wounds still leaking onto my fatigues, just to make sure they haven't spontaneously healed like stigmata. “These. Right here.”

  “Where?” I scoot closer. “Where are your injuries, Recruit?”

  Suddenly, I understand, as though someone's pulled a cord and dumped a bucket of freezing water on my head. “Oh, look at that,” I say. I smile weakly and with mock surprise. “I thought I saw something, but it's gone. Sorry for any confusion.”

  “Good, Recruit. No worries, then.”

  “You may go, Recruit.”

  I say thank you and head for the door. But before I get there, I hear these final words lobbed at me: “Say, Recruit. The IDF has nothing but respect for those who volunteer from abroad.”

  “Uh, thanks.”

  “But…how do we know you'll see this through? Stick around? Maybe the going gets tough, and you bolt, you head straight home for the beach or your pretty girlfriend. How do we know?”

  Pretty girlfriend? Wish I had one of those—and a ready answer. But I'm not sure I'm actually supposed to answer. So I smile politely and bow out.

  I should have taken a piece of flippin’ cake.

  Back to Kfir's training base. My commander, who must approve my seeing a doctor, makes me wait three days, implying I'm a wimp who just doesn't feel well after the grueling Gibush. “What makes you think you're so special you should see a doctor when every other man in Second Platoon has to go back to duty?” He looks at my mates. “Perhaps he's experiencing some anxiety about his new condition in the world. Perhaps his head hurts because the IDF fell on top of it like a sack of shit. There's nothing physically wrong with this man.” I'm in a constant cold sweat. I'm croaking. My skull is pounding. I'm suffering delusions. But I'm not a wimp.