by Izzy Ezagui
August 2011. Camp Dimona near the town of Yeruham in the Negev. The School for Infantry Corps Professions and Squad Commanders is the IDF institution responsible for the training of all the commanders and platoon sergeants of the Infantry Corps. I'm going to get my own command. But, first, we all need to pass the final exam. This consists of yet another combined obstacle course and shooting exercise. After a commander-in-training thoroughly exhausts himself from exertion on the taxing course, he has to run straight onto the shooting range and shoot six shots: three while kneeling and three while prone. They have to hit shoulder-height targets from twenty-five meters away. If they don't hit four out of six, they fail the entire course and need to do everything again. No use diving over and under obstacles if you can't hit the side of an airport hangar from eighty-two feet. With that nerve-wracking prospect weighing on my shoulder, I begin.
And, strangely enough, out of the over one hundred soldiers in my company of potential commanders, I'm one of only twelve to pass on the very first attempt. In fact, I finished the obstacle course in under eight minutes, my fastest time ever, a full 2:40 faster than the first time I took the test as a new recruit in basic training. I hit four shots, for Fuks's sake.
It feels fantastic. All I can say is when a one-armed warrior is flipping mags out of his vest and loading like a ninja, all the commanders, sergeants, lieutenants, flies, and earthworms have their eyes glued on him. Of course, this gives all the other ninety-nine the opportunity to…well, let's say, cut various corners. Just sayin’.
On to the awards ceremony. Independence Day. National TV. Fighter jets screaming overhead in tight formation. Shimon Peres is about to hand out awards to the military's most distinguished soldiers. What the hell am I doing here? I'm all lined up to climb the stairs onto the stage. My mother and Jasmine are somewhere out there in the crowd. My other sisters are watching from home, a few blocks away. My father's still in prison, and I find myself hoping he's found a way to watch this on TV, glean some form of pride from afar. Suddenly, various handlers, generals, and their lackeys encircle me like hyenas, all barking orders at me to roll down my right sleeve posthaste. The other 119 soldiers in formation pretend not to hear. Can't show any arm skin in front of the president—that would be (a) rude, (b) improper, and (c) dangerous, if Peres is as allergic to forearms as the generals make him out to be. Screw all that. I say I don't want to roll down my sleeve. On principle. I won't. Now we're into insubordination territory, too.
“Why the hell not?”
“Because I can't do it alone.”
“Explain,” says a red-faced general.
“First you help me roll down my sleeve, sir. But are you there tomorrow on the battlefield to help me load my rifle? Pull grenade pins?”
“Sergeant, I will help you right now to military prison. You can't be the first soldier ever to receive commendation from the president with your goddamn sleeve rolled up, now can you?”
“I've had a lot of ‘firsts,’ sir. This won't be the first.” I raise my remaining arm in a “take-me-away-Boys” gesture.
They huddle up in a noisy confab. I hear the words “offensive,” “obscene,” and “indecent,” but then I hear “screw it” and “crazy American kid, but I don't want to deal—” from someone who has more important matters to handle. I stand in the line to receive my award, unflappable. I have made it this far without anyone doing anything for me. I'm not about stop that roll now. That's why, twenty minutes later, I, indeed, become the first soldier in Israel's history to ever stand in such a ceremony, to shake the president's hand—with a bare arm. And the world keeps spinning.
MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING
August 2011. To celebrate our graduation from Command School, and my award, I head to a popular club called Haoman 17, in Tel Aviv. A buddy and I are super-smashed from a little “pregame” at his place, so by the time we saunter into the club, I've lost all semblance of inhibition. I have no qualms acting as if I own the joint. I swagger—stumble right up to two girls at the bar and slur, “Which one of you ladies wants to buy me a drink?”
Cue the Twilight Zone script. That brash nonsense actually works. They both buy me drinks. Both! And, suddenly, one of them is sitting on my lap, and I've got my arm wrapped around the other's shoulder. My friend's just watching the entire scene unfold with his lower jaw scraping the floor—I've told him often that I'm a loser with the ladies. So the girls invite us back to their neighborhood for more drinks. Turns out they live in an über-posh part of Tel Aviv, and the girl I'm interested in might happen to be the daughter of a big-shot Coca-Cola exec in Israel. As long as it's not PepsiCo—no need to dredge up memories of the Oketz Gibush. It's also safe to assume her mother is a supermodel.
We're at her house. “Who'd'a thunk it?” I slur. “I meet the love of my life at Haoman 17.”
“Well, I am seventeen! So it's perfect.” The girls both giggle.
Instantly sobered, I grab my buddy and push him down the hall and out the door.
“Dude—you're only twenty-one, you know? It's not like you're forty. And this isn't America, bro—age of consent here's sixteen.”
“Gotta go with my gut and call it a night.”
It's a long, and I don't mind saying, uncomfortable, ride home. I'm glad I didn't stay. Glad I influenced my friend not to, either. He still disagrees, but I think of my mother, my sisters, Yoav, and Rabbi Lior. Being heroic is complicated, I see now; it's extremely multifaceted, and sometimes very subtle. For one thing, I realize that to be “honorable” is rarely connected with being “honored.” Being honorable has to be its own reward. An internal blessing, even without external recognition. You can be a hero in your own life, with little acts of heroism every day. Not holier-than-thou acts—just trying to do the right thing. Always. And if you don't, you work a little harder the next day until it becomes a way of life. You don't have to save the city from a villain. You can be a hero to just one person—say, your son, or even yourself. And that counts just as much as foiling an evil plot to throw the world into chaos and ruin.
If I could just find that one person, maybe I wouldn't feel so terrible inside, so unworthy all the time.
OLD HAND
November 2011. I now hold the rank of sergeant, and I have my own class of thirteen fresh recruits to season, to put through the paces. Fate brings my little unit to a tank base up north in the mountains. “Form a chet,” I order, my voice unwavering. How much fun is this? And how grave the responsibility. They form up, and I take a position facing them from the open side. I shift my Tavor so that it rests against my waist. This creates a necessary barrier, distance between them and me.
I don't have to tell my men that I'm going to do whatever it takes to prepare them for success, to keep them alive. They knew the second they laid eyes on their one-armed commander that I would mean business, that nothing would be handed to them. “Second position.” I join them down on the ground. It's the kind of thing I believe a commander should do.
A hard-looking lieutenant's been watching me. I don't recognize him at first. Then, all of a sudden…Holy…Is that…? I bounce up on my right arm, and stand to greet him.
“Izzy,” he says, striding up to me, his black beret planted firmly over his buzz cut. “Good to see you.”
“You too, sir.”
“I see you made sergeant.”
“And you, lieutenant. And you cut your hair.”
“You gonna let these guys hold second position forever?”
“Dismissed,” I say, and my men collapse, then scatter at the chance for freedom. Ashes in a breeze. “You mean like you did to us?”
Natan looks so different. Not just the bowl cut he's shaved off, but his eyes, too, which had been gentle, now look icy. When he smiles, though, I see he's still in there. And his voice is just as soft as the morning that chaos landed on his family. “I heard what happened to you during Cast Lead. I'm sorry.”
I look down at my empty shirtsleeve and back at him. “That's OK,” I
say. “I know. We all knew it was you who—I wanted to tell you that…”
He brushes me off with a swift gesture that shuts my mouth. The silence that follows tears a hole in my chest. “Sir, we all realized that attack…that your brother…We were all crushed that we couldn't—you know, we couldn't—”
“That's OK,” he says, and that voice brings me back four years, the voice as tender as the first time I heard it. “Please. I know.”
OUT OF HAND
December 2011. My soldiers have just completed their march to gain their purple berets. I've led them sixty-two kilometers through the fields down south. They're still full of energy. I've trained some badass dudes. The unique stench of stale uniform and sweat-marinated human hovers in the cold like exhaust from a generator. I've gotten used to that aroma, and come to enjoy it the way some love the odor of gasoline. It's the smell of hard work paying off. I smile at my long-suffering lot, and say, “You've changed me forever, boys. I promise, I'll down a double-shot of Jack for each of you before my flight touches down.”
Within twenty-four hours of finishing my service, I'm in Thailand. Three years—and that little rough spot in the middle—necessitate severe and rapid unwinding. I arrive in Bangkok on New Year's Eve. I'm going to meet my friend Snoop on the island of Phuket, then we'll head together to our next destination, Ko Samui.
Snoop and I had met on Givati's training base while I was fighting my uphill battle toward reinstatement. He was still a recruit, one impossible to miss: Towering at 6´4˝, he had a heavy machine gun strapped over his monstrous, square shoulders, and a terrible, terrible American accent when he attempted to speak Hebrew. Like me, he grew up in South Florida. We were fast friends.
I land in Phuket around 11 p.m. As fireworks start yowling and popping through the air, I'm on the back of a motorbike taxi, trying to balance with my heavy backpack. The driver's not too balanced, either, as he holds in his left hand a bottle of rum from which he's taking generous celebratory swigs every few seconds. I look up at the “bombs bursting in air” and howl like a monkey. The driver joins in.
When I meet Snoop, he's already wasted. Together we get so fantastically drunk, we lose each other till New Year's Day.
I'm no stranger to alcohol. There was that month in Miami with Ian. Those dangerous nights trawling the streets of Jerusalem when I was eighteen. And well before that, too. Sometimes, there were significant consequences:
Like that time when I was seventeen. Living in New York City and working for Ian Ash's company. I just had my car shipped up from Florida—a teal Mini Cooper. And I wanted to take a road trip. So Brik and I agree to venture to Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where we went to high school after Tucson.
Our second night there, we decide to visit one of the King's College frat parties I used to frequent back in the day (the yeshiva was very stupidly abutting the campus). Back then, you have to imagine a religious sixteen-year-old sneaking out of the dorm and pretending to be a traveling businessman, looking for a groovy time while he passes through town. Only an idiot would believe that backstory. But the local frat boys got a kick out of the eccentric kid who stuck to his guns regardless of the scrutiny, and they loved winning his ten bucks at their weekly poker games. In this manner, I saw my fifth, sixth, and seventh up-close boobs in one of those basement frat parties, all on Saint Patrick's Day when the beads were making the rounds. Ah, youth.
So, we revisit my old stomping grounds, but, alas, the party's “kegged-out.” We drive straight to a Citgo station to buy beer. I attempt to use the sad excuse for a fake ID I've recently procured in New York. “Nope,” declares the butch blonde behind the counter. “Can't sell you with that, hun.”
“I can buy it for him,” growls a massive dude behind me. Despite his hunched shoulders, he's so big he's casting me in the shadow of the fluorescent light above his head. He's way too close to me. He smells like bananas and motor oil.
“You'll need him to hand me the money, hun,” Blondie says to me.
Without a second thought, I hand my knight in shabby armor a crisp $100 bill—one I'd worked hard to earn at my thankless customer-service job—and my $5.97 six-pack of Corona. Transaction complete, we stroll outside, and my new friend, the Incredible Skulk, hands me the beer. But he makes no move to return my $93 of change. “Keepin’ it. Commission.”
Brik is watching all of this unfold from the safety of the car.
“But—”
“Feenin’, too. And packin’. You get me?”
You just don't hustle a Miami Jew. Do I look like a freier to you? “Got a cigarette?”
Surprisingly, he hands me one, and puts the other in his mouth. He lights them both. It's my first ever smoke. Kool Mintrigue. I strike up a chat for two or three minutes—God knows about what; I'm busy trying not to cough and also eyeing the bulge in his pocket, which might be a Glock 19, or possibly a tuna sandwich. I propose a deal.
When he rides off on his comically small bike, it's with $40 of my money. I successfully negotiated the return of the rest.
But I'm still pissed. I just lost hard-earned cash out of sheer stupidity. Brik and I head back to campus. Four of the Coronas find their way down my gullet, and Brik consumes the other two. I start asking random students crossing the quad if they have any expendable alcohol. Most laugh. Then along comes a horde of football jocks. “You guys have any booze?”
“Yeah,” replies a kid wearing a black JanSport knapsack. “But—”
“Yeah, only if you chug!” shouts the shortest of his buddies, towel around his neck. They have no idea who they're dealing with here.
JanSport slides a fresh party-sized bottle of Smirnoff up out of his pack like it's a gold brick and, with a resounding crack, twists off the cap. “Chug, chug, chug!” they start chanting as I upend the bottle. Their chugs soon taper off and turn to, “Dude. Dude…How the . . ?” Meanwhile, their precious alcohol dwindles before their eyes.
JanSport snaps the bottle away, but not until two-thirds of it is already gone. Towel Neck says, “Christ almighty, good luck with that.” I commence to rip off my shirt off like Hulk Hogan, and fall backward into the grass.
And…scene.
The events that follow are relayed back to me the following afternoon, when I finally wake up, by one Aaron Brik.
Seems only moments after I passed out, I popped back up and started randomly hugging coed passersby. The campus “police” (geeks in shorts) soon arrive. When I won't vacate the quad, they call the real men in blue. The ones with Tasers and loaded SIG Sauers.
Brik tells how five of them tackle me to the ground, hold me down, and radio for an ambulance. When it arrives, I refuse to comply with their polite requests for me to say good-bye to the good folks of King's College. So they toss me bodily into the back of the rescue truck.
“Are you going to comply, kid?”
“OK, OK, I'm complying…”
As soon as they turn away, I jump off the gurney and make a comically drunk, stumbling break for it, a blood pressure cuff dangling from my left arm. A minute later, I'm double handcuffed to the gurney and Brik is cracking up in the jump seat beside me. Before the cops slam the back doors shut, one of them looks earnestly at him and says, “What kind of awful friend laughs at a situation like this? Your friend has a serious problem.” Which causes Brik to double over with magnified laughter.
Brik resumes the story: “At the hospital, your hero complex kicked in. Yeah, I guess you wanted to keep me out of trouble or something, so when they asked you if Aaron Brik was your friend, you said, ‘I don't know any Aaron Brik. Run, Brik, run!’ They pumped your stomach, diluted your blood with, like, a million IV bags of whatever, and I was just stuck in the waiting room, asshole, until they finally agreed to release you.”
I wake up the following afternoon, lying face-down on a mattress in our old yeshiva's dorm. How did I get here? I twist my throbbing head to find a rabbi standing over me, shaking his head with disdain. My naked butt and likely some other stuff is
sticking out the back of an open hospital gown.
A month later, back in New York, and just when I think the whole debacle is behind me, I get a call from my father. “Hey, Izzy. You all right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
“Well, I'm looking at a bill from a hospital in Pennsylvania. Five thousand dollars.”
“Uh. Right. Listen, about that…”
Well, here in Thailand, every day is like that. Snoop and I nurse our hangovers with beer all day and then drink all night until we black out. We spend the first week pounding Long Island Iced Teas, then the second week we switch to Costco-sized bottles of wine. So much for daily acts of heroism. At the Kent Bar on the beach, I learn how to play one-handed pool well enough to beat a semi-pro while seventy people are cheering. I get into fights. I streak. I skinny-dip. For the first time in my life, I smoke weed every single night. I'm having a blast.
So I'm twenty-three years old, agnostic, and zip-lining down a mountain in Chiang Mai. Despite the danger, I've discarded my helmet, because “YOLO, bitches!” Surrounding me are ancient temples, drunken backpackers, and little else. I'm pretty sure I know how things will turn out. Maybe…Family. Life. Is there an afterlife? I'll be in a serious relationship shortly after I turn thirty (possibly thirty-five). My fiancée and I will be well-traveled, well-versed in the ways of the world outside of Orthodoxy. She'll dress to the nines so that heads turn when she enters a room. We'll have two dogs—male, female, whatever—that curl up at the foot of our bed. Having canines instead of children, well, that'll make life just a little bit easier.
When Snoop meets his future wife on the beach, I respond to my new position as third wheel by pushing human limits of alcohol consumption. One night, while walking back to the hostel, I hurl my body into the bed of someone's pickup (no idea why) and land hard enough to bend two golf clubs. He comes after me with one of them. I throw our room key over a seven-foot wall and subsequently scale it to retrieve said keys, leaving bloody slug-trails down the concrete from both my shins. I land on my head, and when I come up, I'm face-to-face with a pissed-off, gnarly dog. He starts barking maniacally, slobber swinging from his lips. I snarl back, viciously, then start barking as I slam my fist into my chest. He backs off, whimpering.