I SAID no again when Yaniv asked me to do cars for a bit, and then he told me a dick is like a boomerang.
“A dick is like a boomerang,” he said. He was chewing gum like a dumb cow, but he was a boy. “You understand?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t understand.”
“You know what it means to throw a dick at someone?” Yaniv asked. “It means that you are showing you don’t care about them.”
I had never heard this expression before. There were so many expressions I never heard before I joined the transitions unit. Hyperbolic, Moroccan, so many inane forms of speech.
“Well, I actually don’t care about you,” I said.
It was true. I hated him, and on mornings like that one when I was not so tired, I hated him even more than I hated myself. I hated the way he chewed gum as he high-fived the people he knew in the cars. I hated the way he would kiss all the girls who would let him on both cheeks. I hated his cologne and that he plucked his eyebrows. I hated that he wore a giant golden Star of David around his neck and that he sang Mizrahi music to himself and always talked jokingly about how much he hated our officers and his blue beret and of how he guessed that this must be his messed-up destiny. I hated that he smiled and that despite his whining I would sometimes catch him enjoying it—he loved bending down and sticking his neck inside windows and chatting up the drivers, and he did not understand the difference between horror and honor or he did understand but didn’t care. He lugged his neck as if it were light.
“Well, that’s why the whole point is that a dick is like a boomerang. You throw it at someone, and it comes right back at you,” Yaniv said.
When I saw him smiling and sticking his neck down a window later that day, I thought about telling. I knew everyone would hate me for it, but I actually thought about telling my officer, who was walking between the cement barricades and the cars and must have seen Yaniv sticking his neck in cars, chatting and kissing babies and taking figs and olive oil bottled in used Coca-Cola bottles. The officer saw everything, but if I told, he would have to do something; he would have to. If I were an officer, I would never let one of my soldiers violate regulations like that. The regulations we learned in boot camp said that we must always place our guns between our bodies and the open windows of the Palestinians passing through checkpoints. That the Palestinians had to put their IDs and papers on the hood of the car and then close the window as the soldier approached to look through them. No one followed that, but at least they didn’t kiss babies, and they didn’t lie about their bad backs and—
I truly might have told on him except Fadi was back. I saw him nearing the head of the line and I knew that he was hoping I wouldn’t be the one who would call him to approach the barricade. I watched him lower his stare and scratch his nose and kick the sand and hope for someone other than me. But I was also watching the other soldiers and delayed the man I was checking by looking long and hard at his ID until I saw that it was about to be Fadi’s turn and that all the other soldiers were still checking IDs, and then I called for him.
He looked me straight in the eyes like he did not know me at all or like he wanted me to die, but I knew I knew him and the sum of him.
This is how I knew: he did not have a plastic bag. I had been right in imagining what I had. His wife had not given him pitas the night before. He was wearing the same button-down shirt, and his face was marked with edgy sleep. He reeked of sweat.
It was not that I believed that all the things I imagined happened in real life; it was that I thought that maybe it would be better if I did believe them, and I was not crying, and I wanted to keep being less tired.
I watched Fadi walk away after I gave him back his ID and papers. A contractor with a cigarette in his mouth put a hand on Fadi as soon as he neared, and I could see Fadi’s body flinching, how much wrong was in that very touch, how he wished he could punch the man, or scurry, or revolutionize his life, but he couldn’t.
I knew that that night I would fall asleep thinking about Fadi coming home and punching his wife, Nur, just one punch to the jawline and then Nur’s calm.
I SPENT the weeks prior to my draft trailing after Mother, who was holding the list of supplies the army had sent and comparing prices across stores, in outlet malls that were placed hours away from our village up north. Seven pairs of olive green socks. Sunscreen. Toothpaste. Enough sanitary napkins for two months. Mosquito repellent. Twenty sturdy rubber bands, to hold up the bottoms of the uniform pants.
My huge backpack, the one our high school gave to every graduate, was printed with the blessing “Go in peace, dear graduates. We are here for you and we will always love you.” The backpack was packed and ready for the morning to come.
Mother and I took a bus to the Haifa drop-off spot, where another bus was waiting to take all the northern kids to Tel Aviv, to the central sorting base, where we would get the military equipment and our assignments for the next few years.
Girls with too much makeup held signs with painted hearts and kisses. These girls were crying and hugging and screaming to their friend as she climbed on the bus. “Read our letters only once the bus pulls away! We love you, babe!”
A boy kept trying to get his girlfriend to stop kissing him. She was teary and her nose was dripping, but she would not stop kissing him even when he had to get on the bus. One boy who wore a yarmulke brought his whole family. Really, that must have been the entirety of his family. All grandparents. All aunts. All uncles. All and all. They were crying. But also clapping. All of them.
I had thought about telling my friend to come, Yael, but I didn’t, because Yael was more my only friend who was not yet drafted than my actual, true friend. Because I was not a girl who had friends. I had a herd of retarded girls who followed me around for most of high school, but I never quite saw the need for friends, and I actually liked that it was only Mother and me that day. It was as if it proved my suspicion that friends are frivolous at the end of it all.
Mother kept on humming a song I had never heard before as we stood in the parking lot and waited to hear my name.
“Stop it!” I shouted, and then Mother started to cry. She was nervous because I was her last child; because I was her weakest.
Mother stopped crying right before I was called to get on the bus. “It’s going to be Ok,” she told me. “Everyone does this. These will be the best years of your life,” Mother whispered. She held my face in both hands.
“I am fine. I am sure I will be home for vacation in no time,” I said.
“Yes,” Mother said. “Yes,” she said, and she didn’t let go.
“I need my face, Mother,” I said. “I need my face.”
AND THAT night, the night after Fadi came to the checkpoint with no pitas, Fadi came to visit my head without me even trying.
“I won’t go,” Fadi said. “Don’t make me go to work again.” He was on the floor of his kitchen, sobbing.
“You are not a teenage girl,” Nur said. “You mustn’t cry like that. Grown men don’t cry like that.”
Fadi stood up. He watched Nur chop onions for the weekend casserole. “I won’t go,” he said. He was choking on his words. “My life should be more than this. Avi the contractor said he bought his son a new bike this week. He has a bike, and he is a quarter my age. I never had a bike. This isn’t fair.”
“Who do you think you are? Do you think you are some spoiled Israeli boy? You are a Palestinian man and this is your life. This is what we have to do,” Nur said. She wiped her neck with the dishcloth, and this disgusted Fadi. He had noticed wrinkles around her neck, hanging, useless skin that was not there when he agreed to marry her, and this disgusted him more.
“Who is ‘we’?” he asked. “There is only me. And I know who I am. I won’t go.”
“Oh, but you will go,” Nur said, so knowing and old and chopping onions.
And when she smirked he could feel his fist clenching and he threw it for the blow—he felt his knuckles grazing the blade of the kn
ife and tearing as his fist was in the air. Nur held up the knife, but Fadi didn’t stop, and he punched her, just once, one punch to the jawline.
“I CAN’T throw a dick at you,” I told Yaniv the next morning. The sun was not yet seen, and I had woken up less tired. I had woken up with enough energy to look at myself in the discolored mirror in the bathroom caravan. I hadn’t looked at myself in months. I had grown accustomed to washing my hands with my eyes planted at my feet.
“What?” Yaniv asked. He had his arm around one of the Ethiopian girls who was also assigned to check cars. They were pouring packets of sugar down their throats and singing Mizrahi music into the defenseless sands ahead.
“I don’t have a dick, so I can’t throw one,” I said. I was so not tired I decided to mess with him for pleasure. I knew this would drive him crazy. It amused me that he would actually believe there is anything in this world he could understand that I didn’t.
“It’s an expression,” Yaniv said. “It’s like, not for real. It means showing that you don’t care, you understand?”
“No, what do you mean? Do you not know that I don’t have a dick?”
“Gosh,” Yaniv said. He breathed in. “It’s … it’s an expression. Don’t you understand?” he stretched out his arms, imploring. He was clearly goaded because he didn’t even notice that he shoved the Ethiopian girl a little.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You are stupid to say something that makes no sense.”
“But … it’s an expression,” Yaniv said. It was clear by his pouting and rapid chewing that he was searching for words that had never been his. Words like “literal” or “representative” or even “figure of speech.” I let him search for what was not at all there until it was time for the gates to open.
Fadi didn’t try not to get me as his checker this time. He didn’t try anything. I didn’t even notice him in line, and there he was, placing his ID and papers on the cement in front of me like he didn’t even know me. I made him wait before I took them. I pretended to look at Yaniv, who was hunched down and deep in chatter with a Palestinian inside a car. Cars began to honk; he was holding up the entire line.
Then I looked and then I saw and then I was afraid, but only for a second.
I expected it, but it still truly scared me for a minute when I saw it. Scared like someone had just convinced me I was God, or already dead, or on fire.
Fadi’s knuckles were wounded. Cut. Blood had crusted on them.
“Did you hurt yourself?” I asked.
“Yes,” Fadi said. “I hurt myself.”
THE SORTING officer who placed me in military police was right. It was a common misconception that every soldier who wore a blue beret spent her service days giving out reports to soldiers who wore their uniform the wrong way while using the public transportation. I was placed in the transitions unit of the military police, the one that had nothing to do with military attire and everything to do with IDs and checkpoints. Still, it was a very common error, that instant fear of blue berets. When I took the train home on my very rare weekend vacations, other soldiers hushed when they noticed my blue beret. Then they ran away. I felt like an ogre or an Iraqi dictator or like I was ugly, which I was—I was ugly, wearing that beret.
There were nice things about it, though. There was always at least one soldier on the train who ran away and thus effectively gave me his seat, even when the train was jammed. I always had the quiet I needed to read my TV Guide or American novels. On school trips I never had quiet on the bus. Everyone always wanted to know what I thought we should do about a girl who stole someone’s boyfriend, or for me to make sure Yael let everyone copy her homework, because we used to be friends and I was the only one she still kinda obeyed. On the train, as a soldier, I never had to worry about anyone’s problems or weigh in on gossip.
One really cool thing that happened because of the blue beret is that one time a soldier, a boy, wept when he saw me. He must have had a bad record and knew that he was wearing something wrong, missing something, and so he cried and ran, cried and ran faster.
There were some, few, nice things about the blue beret, but none of these things meant having friends. None of these things were things I could imagine in my head before I fell asleep.
THAT NIGHT, after the morning Fadi told me he hurt himself, I imagined that Fadi was now sleeping on the straw doormat outside the front door of his house. I imagined that his Nur had changed the locks on him and that he had to pee in the street and that he stayed awake till two in the morning so he could pee because he was so ashamed the neighbors might see. He was so ashamed of how much it hurt, that humdrum, human urge, and of the relief he felt when he finally did pee. Of how empty he felt afterward. As if he had emptied out who he was and all he had to show for it was a puddle of urine and a doormat for a bed and a locked door. He woke up to a three-legged dog peeing on his face. He only got one hour of sleep, but it was time to start walking toward the checkpoint, and he did walk, and as he walked he thought that his whole life was his fault, but I knew that it was actually mine, that I was the one who was imagining these things for him, and I felt a tad guilty about bringing him so low, but I also fell asleep within minutes of imagining, and that was a blessing. I had never used the word “blessing” before, not even in my thoughts. People like Yaniv used it all the time, but now it was the first word that came to mind and the only one.
And besides, all of this—the doormat, the locked door, the urine in the street, the three-legged dog—it was only in my head and for my sleep, because the next day Fadi came to the checkpoint driving a car.
I WAITED and waited and waited for him. It was past nine, and I found myself elated by every nearly identical worker who showed me his ID but was not my Fadi. I knew it could not be true but was also convinced that after Fadi had woken up as the three-legged dog was peeing on his face, he had started walking toward the checkpoint but then thought better of it and turned around. That he had decided, for real, for once, that he wouldn’t go. I was not sure where he had gone after he turned around, and I was sure that was only because I had fallen asleep before I could imagine it. I had fallen asleep so fast.
I was happy for my sleep. Happy for myself when Fadi didn’t show up, that there must have been some kindness in my thoughts that I was just unaware of. I was so not tired I had time to hope that I was better than who I thought I was. I felt slightly like I had not joined the army. Like I had not joined the army yet. I looked at Yaniv and tried hard not to hate him. I could see only his body standing on the asphalt because his head was stuck deep inside the window of the car he was checking. I brought up his face, the face I could not see, into my head, and tried not to hate him. He had pointed, bushy eyebrows, like furry arrows.
Then I heard. The scream.
When I saw the red and Yaniv sauntering backward, I didn’t understand that it was blood on his neck. I tried to think of what it was, but I didn’t understand that it was blood. I would later remember that I could see by the way Yaniv flapped his arms as he took a step, and then another, backward, that he did know that it was blood. There was something right then in this world that he understood and I did not.
Yaniv thumped to the ground and ceased moving. There was chatter all around me, but I did not catch the words. The voices of the Palestinian construction workers. The voices of the Israeli contractors. The voices of soldiers. They sounded different from one another but also like they were screaming the same words, words that I did not grab. I looked to the ground and saw my blue beret falling, plummeting, hitting the sand, and I did not know why but my hand reached for it and then froze. I was stuck in that pose, like a child trying to break her fall from a swing forever.
A shot was fired. I did not see who fired it, or where it hit; I only heard it, growing bigger as it passed through the sand and the line and the cement barricade where I was still trying to almost break a fall I was not having.
THE MAN who stabbed Yaniv was Fadi. The shot that was fir
ed at Fadi missed him entirely, and even though he was paler than usual when the officers yanked him out of the car, I knew it was him because I knew him so well. He had seen me through three nights of better sleep.
He did not look at me, not with his chin or his eyes, when they took him. He didn’t know I existed, that I existed in the world and saw things.
His eyes were those of a man nuisance had died in.
I FORGOT about Fadi. I did. And Yaniv. I forgot for a while. I only remembered two days ago. I remembered the ride to the checkpoint, the morning after Yaniv’s neck. My head. I remembered my head. The metal skin of the bulletproof van would not give up on it the whole ride to the checkpoint. Boom and boom and boom. I kept on slamming my head on metal with each spin of the wheels, not learning. I kept on not learning and letting my head approach rest on my right shoulder, only to be banged again.
I only remembered, because of the van, when I came to Tel Aviv two days ago and started looking for an apartment. I had some money saved to start out from the nine months I served as an officer and got paid. I filled out the forms to go to officers’ school the day after Yaniv died. I didn’t want to be just a retarded checkpoint girl anymore. I couldn’t.
At any rate, I finished being an officer a few months ago, and now I am starting life. I obviously looked at the younger Tel Aviv neighborhoods first, the ones that are serviced by those big cabs, you know? The cabs that are actually vans, because the cab driver can take up to ten people and drop them off wherever they want along his route. Anyway, when I was looking for a place I took one of those Tel Aviv service cabs, the number 5, and the ride—I guess it was smooth. Honestly, I didn’t even bang an elbow.
But just an hour ago I leased an apartment near Rabin Square. I won’t be offensive and talk money, but let’s just say that with how much I will need to work to pay the rent, the metal vans can’t be too far from memory. And Fadi. I am paying for this neighborhood because the cabs here are the same as they are everywhere in the world. They are yellow, and cars. There aren’t any of those bizarre van cabs.
The People of Forever Are Not Afraid Page 7