by Nick Frost
My Jiminy Cricket is now sober too, he’s really cross and shouts at me, ‘Chop-chop, dickhead, back to shore!’ That guy’s always shouting at me.
I turn and begin my swim/doggie paddle/terrified bounce-run back to the beach when the second thing happens.
Under the water an unseen entity brushes against me. Something of enormous size and power. It is massive and it is silent. I don’t or can’t move and plips fall out of me. The top of the thing brushes against my chest, the base of the leviathan brushes against my shins, for a moment we have full body contact, it glides through me. I feel the scales on its flanks, big as saucers. It’s so big and powerful that the current it creates when it pulses its tail and glides off picks me up and spins me further out to sea, away from the shore and to a place where I definitely cannot touch the bottom. I’ve never been so frightened.
I’m going to either drown or be eaten by a monster, they’ll find nothing of me but my fat head on an Israeli lake-beach and it’ll have a little crab living in the eye-socket. I don’t want a little crab living in my eye-socket. Not yet. I’m treading water, panicky, terrified. Jiminy punches a button on a panel in my control centre. A flash of an idea. ‘Swim, you fucking dick!’
I explode into action and doggie paddle back to shore. I beach, exhausted, gasping, frightened. I check myself all over and find I’m fine although the ring I wear, a ring my dad gave to me, is gone. It’s a beautiful green-and-black signet ring with flecks of fiery red and it was now lost at the bottom of the Sea of Galilee. Maybe the ring falling off my finger was tariff enough for Neptune that day. I’m bummed but totally alive.
***
The second time on kibbutz was different from the first. Not worse necessarily. It’s all about the people. Obviously different people give off different kinds of vibrations. Some are nice, with a pleasant frequency, you yearn to be in the company of that person. Some are high-pitched, twangy, jarring; it warns you subconsciously to stay away.
It’s like dogs or bees or rats picking up the scent of cancer or landmines. People have no control over the vibes they give off. It can’t be disguised by a shallow smile or a pat on the back, you just sense it, it’s a gut instinct and it should never be ignored.
At that time and generally, volunteers were a tight-knit bunch. We knew each other, we loved and looked after one another. It’s how it was, how we liked it. There was little or no trouble. When new volunteers showed up it was usually in small groups, ones, twos, the odd three. People generally made the effort to integrate and we embraced that and they were then part of the gang. Easy. There were no cliques and although you’d naturally get on with some people more than others, we all generally got along.
This changed one day and it affected us all. The vibes got dark. Four boys, mates who’d known each other a long time, pitched up. They were already a crew and had no need to make the effort to blend in. I have a very well-tuned aggro-sensor and it went off the moment they showed up.
Over the days and weeks there was a certain amount of natural cultural osmosis. They softened slightly, or at least appeared to soften, they made friends, sort of, but I never trusted them. Their vibes were rotten, they made me feel like a hen in a fox coop. The primal-fear alarm bleated every time they got close.
Before coming up to us in our mountain kibbutz they’d spent a couple of days in Tel Aviv. Apparently they had ‘befriended’ a kindly Israeli man who offered to let them crash at his place. In the morning before their hung-over host was awake they opened his closet and decided to take a shit in all his shoes. Who the fuck shits in a man’s shoes?
I got on with everyone on kibbutz. I liked everyone and hopefully most people liked me. I worked hard, I was loyal, I was funny, and I liked making people laugh and generally people like laughing. All these likeable qualities had sadly put me firmly in their cross-hairs.
Out of the four, one was nice. He was good at heart and he knew that I knew it. I could see that he was using kibbutz as a way to start again perhaps, try new things, and meet new people, distance himself maybe. One of them was on the fence; on his own he was fine but with the others and a drink in him he changed. The other two were different. The one who was their self-proclaimed Boss was cunning, volatile and violent; he was a controlling bully trying to keep a crew together, a crew that perhaps had seen that maybe there was another way. A way that didn’t include shitting in the shoes of a kindly stranger. The other was an ex-junkie, very paranoid; he could be controlled, manipulated, have his will moulded, have his mind fucked with by the Boss. To be honest, I didn’t mind the junkie. He was all right. We got on and when we worked together he laughed a lot. The Boss had a problem with this. I sensed he knew his control was being diluted by volunteer life. Culture, art, music and laughter can do that really easily. His hold over them was loosening, and he hated that loss of control. The Boss was unpredictable and he frightened me.
One Friday night at the disco I’m having a slash, Bossman comes in and starts pissing next to me. He’s happy and smiling, banter ensues although I’m always guarded. As I zip up and leave, this aside takes place.
‘Oh, mate, meant to say, Junkie wants to see you.’
‘Oh, right. What’s that about?’
‘Dunno, he was just looking for you.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Downstairs. You should go and find him, it seemed important.’
Lots of smiles and nods from Bossman. I leave and head downstairs. I find Junkie sitting in the corner on his own in a booth. I go over and sit down. He’s different. Pissed, stony-faced. My alarm goes off. His opening gambit sends a red pulse up my feet and into my ears.
‘Bossman told me you’ve been telling everyone that I’m a fucking queer, you fat cunt.’
Oh dear. He is nervous and jangly, his body jerks involuntarily, he looks down and my eyes follow. In his hand is a Stanley knife. I’m fucked. He’s going to open me up, I have no doubt about that and I have no doubt I’m not his first.
What follows over the next twenty minutes, a twenty minutes that seems to go on and on, is some very quick, clear talking. An honesty and a truth he had not been expecting. He tenses and wants to cut me twice during this conversation. I can see the battle inside him. Eventually I talk him down. I see him soften, see his eyes change and I know I’m going to be okay. He retracts the slicer and sticks it back in his pocket. I get us a beer each, we clink and it’s done. Inside I’m crying. I breathe a secret sigh of relief.
I look at Bossman and see that he’s livid. His plan to get me wasn’t meant to go down like this. It reinforces to me just how dangerous he is. I feel like someone has just tried to assassinate me. Junkie’s failure to carve me up sets off a chain of events that’d lead to the senseless assault a couple of weeks later of a quiet Swedish boy. That boy did nothing to deserve being fucked up. I don’t know what happened to kick it off, I don’t think with people like that anything needs to happen. The bent perception of an insult is often the only thing needed to spark off a kicking.
The police come, an ambulance, but he refuses to press charges. It’s too late though, the Israelis have seen enough and they’re expelled. Two leave and two, Good Heart and Junkie, can stay. Over time they’re assimilated, they become like us. I hope they stayed that way.
***
From time to time during my extended stay in the Middle East there was a little armed conflict. Obvs, I lived on the Lebanese border. Sometimes security got beefed up for one reason or another, more tanks and jeeps than usual would rush around. Sometimes shots would zip overhead, bright tracer rounds pinging off into the night. I’d been at a safety briefing once where I was told that if I received packages that smelled like almonds (Semtex, the plastic explosive, smells like almonds), I should stick it in a bucket and alert security. I was glad Mum never sent me that marzipan.
Sometimes on a Saturday I’d be sitting outside on the lawn, chilling, smoking, whatever and I’d watch jets and assault choppers, heavily laden with missiles, r
oar overhead, quick and very low. Thirty minutes later they’d head back, unladen and very high to avoid enemy surface-to-air missile batteries. I quickly got used to the sound of jets tearing overhead smashing the sound barrier. At first that noise sent the fear of god up me but, like most things, you get used to it. It was exciting to me.
One morning I had a special work detail in a new orchard working with a volunteer called Steve. He was sleazy as fuck and probably thirty-five, which is pretty old for a volunteer, and he emitted a Gary Glitter kind of vibe I couldn’t ignore. Steve always had some kind of tummy bug or a boil or explosive diarrhoea. He had a thick sheen of sweat dripping off his heavily receding hairline, and his smoker’s cough, and his need to hawk out ball after ball of smelly brown phlegm only added to his sexual allure.
They dropped us in a field, a shadeless brown rectangle fifteen minutes from home, and left us. To find out we were the only two people working in the orchard bothered me. Steve gave me the willies. Still it was hot, the sun was shining and the work was honest and hard so who was I to complain. We had our polystyrene cube filled with cold water and we had our tools. It was all we needed. Steve and I sat and smoked a ciggie and eventually began our day. We dug holes in the ground and popped saplings into the earth. Digging, planting, watering, so sweet. I would’ve rather been on my own of course but I wasn’t so what the fuck. Crack on, big boy.
Later that morning a formation of attack helicopters roared overhead, whatevs. It wasn’t unusual but I’d always stop what I was doing and look up, it was exciting. The choppers entered Lebanon and attacked a convoy of vehicles. In the vehicles were the leader of Hezbollah and his extended family. I didn’t know this though. I was planting apple trees with Steve who was doing a series of really dribbly guffs. I heave. I hear pops and rumblings – it’s not Steve, it’s the sound of tanks and artillery on the move. This is normal, normal to me anyway.
Steve tells me the dysentery he contracted in Cambodia has returned. He limpjogs off and does a noisy shit. I heave again. I understand more than most that if you have to go you have to go. I get it. The problem I have now though is we’re in a big field, there’s no cover, no big tree or ditch to do it behind or in. There’s nowhere to hide. I’m forced to watch sweaty Steve, throbbing boil on his neck, hanging off a young sapling grunting out jet after jet of broige liquid terror. I want to die. After five minutes or so I’ve seen enough, I have to turn around. I cannot watch another plip. I close my eyes but I could still hear it. I can still hear it.
From the security fence a very loud siren begins to wail. I’d never heard that siren before and it unnerves me. Steve joins me, rubbing soft earth into his hands to de-clag his slim, hairless fingers. They are stained brown, it could be tobacco, although it didn’t taste much like tobacco.
While we look north into Southern Lebanon the siren continues. Probably just a drill. I see a small shape arcing high into the air – to quote my darling Jimi Hendrix it’s ‘a giant lipstick and pencil tube shaped thing’. It’s silent and quick and beautiful. Clearly it has somewhere it needs to be. It’s a missile. It passes overhead and drops beneath the horizon into Northern Israel. Thud. A concussive boom. An explosion. Then another.
All over the sky from the north I now see similarly shaped things heading our way. This is Hezbollah’s response to the convoy attack. Steve and I instinctively lie down in the field. We have no other plan. The Israelis will come to get us, right? While we’re lying there we have a cigarette, why not, nothing else to do. I don’t feel afraid at this point. My fear comes later, much later, maybe twenty years later, to be honest.
This shit is too trippy to be afraid. It was more unbelievable than fearsome. After thirty minutes or so an army jeep roars into the field, angrily sounding its horn. Eyal, who is Yael’s husband and the kibbutz’s head of security, jumps out, he’s a handsome bugger and definitely not to be messed with. He has a cheeky grin and likes to laugh so we get on well. He motions for us to run to him. I finish my fag and scarper.
We’d been the only two volunteers working on our own and we’d essentially been forgotten. When I get back to the kibbutz I’m cross, I also find out they’ve decided against serving lunch, I don’t understand. I kick around the car park fuming, grumbling about being hungry. A rocket screams overhead. Eyal shouts at me to run and get down into the volunteers’ bomb shelter. I kick my heels and walk at my own pace. What a helmet.
When I shuffle into view of the shelter the Israelis shout at me again! Twice in one day. How rude, I’m hungry! They’re amazed at my stubborn moody shuffle as missiles rain down all over the north of Israel. I’m ushered into the shelter, I continue my grumble about lunch.
The bomb shelter deal was this: if it was an air raid we’d be put into the shelter. If it were an incursion by terrorists we’d have to go to our rooms and lock the door until an all-clear was given. The logic behind this was simple and stark. Terrorists could kill more of us at once if we were all in the same place. There was brief mention of a bag of grenades being stuffed into air vents.
The bomb shelter was a thick concrete square sunk thirty feet into the ground, dusty stairs led to the outer giant steel door lined with heavy rubber seals in case of chemical attack. That led to a small chamber on the left and a storeroom on the right, this led to another massively heavy blast door, through this the bomb shelter proper. Our home for the next two weeks.
On the walls around the shelter hung metal bunk beds, suspended from thick chains and stacked three high. There were probably thirty-two or so bunks in all. The rest slept on mattresses on the floor. It was fun at first, novel, but that soon wore off – fifty people in a damp dusty shelter getting bombed by Hezbollah gets old really fucking quickly.
Despite the bullshit and bravado we were afraid and nervous. Outside, rockets thudded into the holy earth, inside we’d hear the concussive thud and the sound of dust raining onto the crispy polythene outer shells of our sleeping bags. No one sleeps that night. The next three days were bad. The IDF move heavy artillery close to our position. It was no longer just Russian-made Katyusha rockets heading south, it was now also the relentless thump thump thump of the IDF’s merciless response heading the other way.
Again sleep proves difficult. I lie awake listening to the boom and counter-boom of the exchange. I think someone got killed in the next kibbutz over. We were lucky. One or two degrees clicked either way on the rudimentary sighting mechanism and it could’ve been us. It could easily have been us.
The days pass, we rally, our spirits lift and fall. The nights are still shit and weird but during the day we are allowed to leave the shelter and go to our rooms or work inside the kibbutz a little bit. Sometimes the sirens would begin again and we’d be forced back underground.
There’s a security meeting one afternoon to review the situation. If the Israelis were serious you could guess the situation was serious. The Israelis were serious. They spoke about potentially evacuating us south to Tel Aviv. There was a murmur from the volunteers, not one of us wanted to leave. We were all really close and needed to see this through together. The kibbutzniks never forget that. We were treated differently after the war.
At night when all seemed quiet, me and some of the other boys would creep up the dusty concrete stairs and sit outside on the roof of the shelter smoking. One night we watched a missile streak overhead, its engine burned hot and blue across the night. We watch in silence, the engine flickers and the flame dims. It falls from the sky some way across the horizon. A silent flash. A thud and it’s done. We finish our ciggies and decide to go back inside.
This sustained bombardment is bad for my nerves, everyone’s nerves. A decision’s made, the Israelis move us south for a couple of days, relieve the tension. Our work boss, Michel, the laidback afro-cowboy, invited a few of his faves to ride in the VW Caravelle with him. Sweet, I loved those Caravelles. With Michel at least you could be guaranteed a nice bit of reggae on the radio. What you need during a bombardment is some ‘Bam Bam
’ from Sister Nancy, it’s good, it helped.
We leave at pace heading down the side of the Bekaa Valley on a hairpin-heavy road onto the baking valley floor below. The Bekaa Valley in the north of Israel is the northern limit of the giant fissure, which eventually travels south and becomes the Great Rift Valley. It’s amazing.
Once we’re down Michel pulls into a petrol station to fill up. We all get out of the van and following the Israelis’ lead smoke ciggies right there on the forecourt. I love a lack of health and safety. I smoke and casually drink a cold Kinley, it’s a kind of Fanta. Michel pays and leaves the shop. The moment he exits the air-raid sirens sound.
A forecourt packed with smokers filling up their cars empties in twenty seconds flat. Some people run towards the nearest shelter. Others speed away heading south. I panic slightly, we all panic slightly except Michel who pats his pockets looking for a lighter. Do we run to the shelter? Do we run into the vehicle and flee? I’m essentially standing on top of a concrete box filled with thousands of gallons of a highly flammable accelerant. I don’t feel comfortable standing here.
Michel, who’s the most unflappable man I ever met, is now stood looking at something in the middle distance. He casually flicks out a ciggie from his soft pack and lights it up in one smooth motion.
‘Guys, come to see.’ He points north as his lazy, semi-closed eyes scan the horizon, it’s the most animated I’ve ever seen him.
‘There!’ He points at something, sure enough a long, sleek, black pencil, with a very basic computer and a nose packed with high-explosive, sharks over the lip of the valley. It skims the geography with no effort at all. It’s beautiful and deadly and I can’t take my eyes off it. It ghosts its way towards us before swerving left, jinking hard right and slamming into the road we’d just driven down ten minutes earlier.