by Tamara Avner
Mother of one, a twenty-two-year-old son named Yotam, who now lives in Japan, selling agricultural equipment to the Japanese.
She dearly misses Yotam, Shaul too. In fact, her longing only grows and grows. While her memory fades and fades.
Works as a social worker for the Jerusalem Municipality’s Welfare Department.
Keeps up that lithe and boyish body of hers through a strict vegan raw food diet, as advised by Dr. Ann Wigmore. Once a week she goes on a juice cleanse, sipping mostly on wheatgrass juice and never shirks from an enema when her body demands one.
She stands on her head for thirty minutes every morning and spends the rest of her time practicing Zen meditation on a special cushion that helps her lower back pains – no mantras, just checking in with the here and now.
A certified Reiki master, she no longer uses this method. Instead, she treats physical ailment with therapeutic touch and chromo therapy.
Recently, she started taking courses in Theta-healing, which really shows all the other kinds of healing who’s boss.
Sculpts in clay, mostly feminine figures, mothers and babies.
Every Thursday morning, she attends a Qigong class in Mevaseret, near Jerusalem.
She has few clothes in her wardrobe and no jewelry of any value, save for two gold rings: her wedding band and her engagement ring.
What little cash she has on hand, she keeps in the nightstand drawer – roughly four hundred US dollars and two hundred and fifty Euros.
The rest is soundly invested at her downtown Bank Leumi office, in a varied investment plan which includes securities, trust funds, foreign currency and savings accounts.
Lives in East Jerusalem, in Wadi Joz, in an apartment she rents from an Arab man, who owns the building and, for no more and no less than forty-five hundred Shekels a month, rents her three-bedroom apartment, that has a roof balcony facing Mount Scopus and another balcony facing the old city.
Has blind faith in both the universe and her Arab neighbors. Never locks her door, except at night.
Recycles her laundry water and uses it to flush the toilet.
Has no scruples about one day, should the need arise, getting cosmetic surgery, but at the moment, the universe has nothing but good karma in store.
Most of her books are about spirituality, and she also keeps some memorial books around.
On Fridays, she goes to the weekly demonstration at the Sheikh Jarrah garden, to protest the appropriation of Palestinian houses in the neighborhood by settlers. Sometimes, she even takes part in the more hardcore demos in Bil’in, protesting the erection of the wall with her friends: Gideon, Sharona and Hesky.
One humid day in the deadly month of October, maybe even on the exact date in a different year, a certain Oded Stenger came knocking on the Solomons’ door at seventeen Ha’asis Street in the picturesque neighborhood of Ein Karem in Jerusalem. The knock came at ten o’clock at night, after he waited for several seconds outside the door, so as to give her (and him as well) another moment of grace. Yotam, the son, opened the door; his mother appeared behind him and it all dawned on her right away. Shortly afterward he started banging her regularly and this went on until the present day.
I present to you: our very own Levite’s concubine. The most respected widow in all the IDF, she has both the Chief of Staff and the Prime Minister personally phoning in every Memorial Day to offer their condolences and personally wishing her a happy new Jewish year every autumn. She is perpetually invited to attend the annual torch-lighting ceremony on Mount Herzl but always politely declines, probably because they haven’t yet asked her to light a torch herself. It is this esteemed next of kin who – whenever some law is proposed concerning any change regarding the enlistment of bereaved brothers, the requirement for parental authorization for volunteering to combat units, protocols for informing the families of the deceased, as well as anything else you could imagine – always gets called up by reporters and interviewed by the various media outlets, although, as she put it, she would rather avoid all that commotion.
And one final tidbit, to spice things up:
When they were sitting Shiva for her husband, with dozens, even hundreds of visitors, the corps arranged for women soldiers, in white and blue uniforms with little black aprons tied around their waist as a sign of profound mourning, to walk around between the various guests assembled in the Salomon’s garden, offering soft drinks and biscuits to the consoling throng who were besides themselves with grief.
And how exactly do I know all these things, you ask?
You’ve already heard plenty about my access to digital IDF records. So that’s one failsafe source. Still, it doesn’t account for all the juicy details, let alone the downright loopy stuff.
Second, as I already mentioned, me and the mistress hooked up at some point – more about that later – so that I got to hear a lot of it at first hand.
And third, I have my ways.
The army had a pretty good idea about the package it was getting when Zvika-Israel Aurbach was enlisted in July of ‘73.
Weighing in at 202 pounds on the day of enlistment.
Height: five-foot-nine.
Twenty/twenty vision.
Lungs in good condition.
Twelve years of schooling.
At the bottom of the diagnosis sheet it said, “talks funny”.
“Excessive spinal curvature in the upper back” (he’s my brother, alright).
Military profile: 72.
He started a three-month basic training course for the physically deficient at Training Base 4 and never got to finish it because war broke out.
Good for you, Zvika, a nice piece of fresh kosher meat.
The personal belongings form listed the following items:
One military ID, one civilian notebook, one dog tag, several pebbles, one pair of glasses, one toiletry bag, three short-sleeved shirts, four long-sleeved shirts, eight pairs of underwear, seven undershirts, empty envelopes, letters, one Exacto knife.
The last document was a copy of the medical report citing the cause of death.
It was signed on October 13 by a Dr. Leonid Polansky. Cause of death: a 6 mm bullet to the head. Entry wound behind right ear; exit wound on left temple. In Dr. Leonid’s Polansky’s own handwriting it said “suicide”. Place of death: Unit 367.
I went over these papers again and again.
Do you know this feeling when something’s not right and you can’t quite put your finger on it?
Supposedly, this was everything: the personal belongings that were returned to the family and put straight into the box, some of them even matching what I found in his drawers; him talking funny; the gentle spirit who couldn’t stomach the atrocities it has seen and decided to end its body. There it was, black on standard issue white – he committed suicide one week after the war started and both the military and the army Rabbinate let it slide and went ahead and buried him with everyone else. Still, my criminal mastermind was telling me that something wasn’t quite right.
One other thing came rapping at my chamber door. What the hell did “the Vengeful Jews” mean, in the letter Aner showed me?
I was sweet sixteen and had no answers. Not even a lead.
It was easier just to leave it all behind and go on with my life. I concentrated my efforts on school and on daydreaming about every guy around. Dad had already retired by now and was spending the whole day walking around the house in his underwear and eating copious amounts of fruit (watermelon included), with or without water, mostly out on his balcony and avoiding sausages as if his life depended on it. And Mom? I have no memories of her from this period. She was just some obscure figure which occasionally materialized in my room to pick up the dirty laundry, which was always in a big pile on the floor together with the clean laundry I would toss out of the closet. She was just this woman that I met every now and then in the kitchen or on my way out, next to the shrine. So I packed up all my suspicions in a little bag and buried them deep in my occipital
lobe, where they hibernated peacefully until I met Oded.
One Thursday morning, wearing a pair of loose white trousers, I eagerly presented myself at the Ying-Yang center on the very edge of Mevaseret Zion, right on a ridge facing the mountains around Jerusalem.
The Qigong instructor, Ziona Baruch, welcomed me with light in her eyes and sent me off to settle the bill in the side office.
One class for 70 shekels, a monthly subscription for 250, six months for 1300.
A little fountain was trickling in the waiting room and the water sounded like the smacking of lips. Pots with bamboo and bonsai plants were placed along the northern wall. Indian music was playing in the background, giving everything the arousing air of an oriental temple.
Did you know that you, the only living bi-pedal beings in this universe, were designed to use your erect posture to join heaven and earth together? Did you know that only by collecting Qi from the ground with your hands and connecting it to the Qi in the heavens you could realize the greatest human and transcendental potential for joining mind and body?
You didn’t. And neither did I, until I started shaking my entire body all over the place in order to unblock my obstructed meridians every Thursday morning, all the while keeping my eye out for Ruth Solomon, who beyond a doubt was the top student in our class and every single one of the girls knew, of course, of her pedigree in terms of both blue-blood and bereavement.
As early as the third class, I started employing clever flanking tactics to make sure I got to partner up with her for lung and liver tapping exercises, which detoxify both body and soul.
There we were, tapping each other’s back and chest and offering a big fake grin when we were done.
By my fourth class, after spending several intense days gathering material and information, I was ready to launch my ‘Operation Barbarossa’.
Come zero hour, I collapsed, tumbling to the ground right under the Salmon’s nose.
I made sure to add a few convulsions on the mat before finally opening my eyes.
The Salmon was standing over me, gazing at me with her pair of cow’s eyes in mock concern.
Lift up her legs, she shouted at the other girls who come flocking around me like so many hens.
And get her some water.
“Are you okay?” and again, “are you okay?”
“Yes, I don’t know what happened… I was fine and then, all of a sudden… these thoughts… these memories…”
“Just take it easy. Everything’s fine. We’re all good”.
“It’s just that today is my first anniversary without Yoni. He died a year ago, he was a soldier…”
I sat up. “Thank you, I really don’t know what came over me, why I’m sharing this with you, I was just so overwhelmed”.
The Salmon put her arm around my shoulder.
“I know. I understand”.
“No, please, I’m sorry that it had to come out on you. I’m really sorry…” and I started rising to my feet.
And who but the eel herself solicitously walked me over to the waiting room sofa, handed me a glass of water and then made a cup of instant coffee, two sugars. You gotta hand it to those social workers. Add a pinch of widowhood, a new-age dash of healing the world, don’t forget to sprinkle some narcissistic desire to let everybody know about it, and you have the perfect nurse, so empathic and supporting, so eager to reminisce about bereavement and bravery.
My cover story was all squared away in my head.
My name is Iris Dabush-Lanker, resident of Rishon Lezion. I was trained as a pharmacist, but I left work after my catastrophe. My husband, Yoni Lanker, a Deputy Battalion Commander in the Paratroopers Brigade, was killed last year during Operation Cast Lead. A single bullet pierced his bulletproof vest and went straight through his heart. No children. I was widowed at thirty-two. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been spending more and more time at home, alone. To be honest, I don’t really see the point now that Yoni is gone.
I handpicked each and every detail about Captain Yoni Lanker from the memorial website maintained by the commemoration unit at the IDF Rehabilitation Division.
The same goes for any personal details about his wife, the forlorn widow who is ripe and ready for an older, more experienced widow to take her under her matriarchal wing and shower her with some of her own joie de vivre and humanitarian exuberance. These, I collected from the Ministry of Interior Affairs’ website and from a news piece about her that I found online. Well diddly done.
And Oded?
To the naked eye, Oded and I were two iguanas, basking in the sunlight.
To the naked eye, we were playing our favorite word games to keep from touching all the real things that were boiling beyond our bodies. He did everything to avoid the task he was assigned and was yet to complete.
Our text messages were still drenched in love, oozing bodily fluids and as deceptive as our impressive I.Q.s could make them. I kept them in my cell phone’s “saved” folder and here are a few that I still remember from before they confiscated my phone.
Longinging.
Flutteringing.
The earth is only distance. I am under your skin.
Staff meeting – so banal. I know you can’t spell banal without…
Cease texting. I’m home.
Secondary engine searching for body to land.
How’s your box?
When will you come open my box?
En route to Jaffa with the investigation records between my teeth.
You between my legs.
The best is yet to come, kiddo.
One time, we talked on the phone for almost an entire hour. I remember it because I was sitting in my car, after skipping the office for the day so I could go chase him up to Nazareth just to catch sight of him for thirty seconds as he left his car and disappeared into the halls of justice, in quest of his prosaic truths. I told him about this Mercedes that drove into the HQ the day before. It stopped right next to the door to my office and when I went out to see what they wanted, its tinted windows were rolled down and spilling out came Aviva Avidan’s rendition of Fruit of Your Garden at full volume.
I leaned down and looked inside. A woman was sitting there. She had her hair gathered in a band, a prominent jaw line and huge sunglasses.
She didn’t have any legs.
She was driving the car with a kind of joystick that was set up next to the steering wheel.
She turned down the music and said all kind of things. My mind wouldn’t focus, my entire being was fixed on her no-legs. Finally, I heard her saying, “and if you don’t bring him out this instant, I don’t know what I’m going to do to you people. He is my life, the apple of my eye, he is everything to me. He’s my son and I want to see him, right now”. And in the background, Aviva Avidan’s lamenting voice is ripping apart the car’s chassis with an hour goes by, a day, a year.
Of all the sights and memories I have from that stinking prison, that one hit home the hardest. That legless mother who spared no effort just to get into the prison with her handicapped Mercedes, who had as much fight in her as a she-tiger keen on getting the last word in.
Afterwards, I told Oded, she came to thank me for getting her son out so she could have a long talk with him in her car, behind the tinted windows. They smoked together and she talked with her hands with such passion and he kept silent and hugged her and kissed her on both cheeks.
“A mother”, she told me, “can only be as happy as her least happy child”.
I thought about the child I could have had with Oded, about the void it left in my unsown womb, cracking open a gaping chasm full of darkness and phantom pains.
I still remember how Oded listened to my monologue as it was gushing and bubbling out of me for minutes on end, like milk boiling in a pot, and when I finally came up for air, he told me, “to love so much you could die, baby. Love so much you could die, right? Babe?”
And that’s precisely, to the letter, what I was trying to tell
him throughout that entire hour, as I was staring at him leaving his car and walking up to the Salmon’s apartment, after having followed him all the way from Nazareth to Jerusalem.
And that’s exactly, to the letter, what I’ve been trying to make you see.
The glitches in the system are starting to choke up our natural flow.
Gila has become particularly sensitive lately, she has these cycles of suspicion and indifference, but this time, it seemed that even she could feel the earth moving under her feet and Oded often had to go out to the balcony for emergency lull-calls, his soft voice uttering sweet high-pitched nothings into the receiver, while I was biting my nails off inside my apartment planning some sweet revenge to exact on my man, who was expending the delights of that soft tongue of his on someone else.
Gila I can handle. One night, when he was taking a shower, I spotted that Salmon-tart’s number flashing on his cell.
He ran out to pick it up and went right out to the balcony.
I carefully stepped up to the kitchen window to eavesdrop.
“But you were home when it happened?”
“And are you okay? Did he hurt you?”
“How old did he look?”
“That’s terrible. How’s the place? Did he take anything?”
“Well, that’s no big deal, it’s just money”.
“Yes, I understand, it’s unpleasant, Almond-cake, but you never wore them anyway”.
“Yes, of course. But what can they do with your computer?”
“Do you have any back up?”
“About me? About us?”
“Okay, never mind it now. I’m sure they’ll be able to find it. When is the police coming?”
“It’s going to be okay, teddy-bear… Everything can be restored, I bet you have other copies of…”
“Yes, I’ll get there as soon as I can, just try to relax for now, make yourself some tea…”
“In a minute, pookie, I’m on my way out…”
I faced him and opened the balcony door with my right hand, my bandaged left arm was pulled tight against my body.