City of a Thousand Gates

by Rebecca Sacks

  Ori presses his boot into the dry earth, lifts it up carefully to see the imprint of his tread. Then he kicks it all away. Sometimes he sees himself as he appears on the shuddering green surveillance screens monitoring every inch of the country, or at least anywhere it’s hot. He knows there are rooms, isn’t sure exactly where they are, but in these rooms girls with long hair and flat voices stare at screens. They are watching for disturbances, watching for the kind of thing you know only when you see it. They monitor the footage from heat sensor cameras, all over the checkpoints, all over the security wall, all over the north all over the south all over the Old City. All of it is monitored at several angles by these girls, who legally—like, by an actual law—are forbidden from taking their eyes off the screens where he and a thousand other soldiers count off the hours of long afternoons, of empty nights. This is the only job in the army closed to men. The watchers are always, always women.

  A few girls from his scouts group ended up in green rooms. They say it isn’t a bad job. Their shifts last only a few hours a day, then they are free. But it sounds crazy to him. To be forced to stare. If a girl looks away from her screen even for a second, she’ll go to military jail. That’s what he’s heard. Actual jail. Because in the second she looks away, anything can happen: a soldier stabbed, a bomb affixed to the bottom of a bus, a body over the fence, all while the girl is tying her boots or texting her boyfriend. You hear stories about cockroaches scurrying over the girls’ feet: everyone in the room is screaming and jumping up on chairs, but their eyes never leave the screen, not for a second. You hear other stories about guys who visit their girls when they’re alone on a night shift in the green room, and one thing leads to another, as they say, but all of it happens with the girl’s eyes staying fixed to the screen.

  Ori tries to imagine how he looks on the green screen. A small figure in the dark. He wonders who she is, the girl whose job it is to watch him. To watch him. Who are you? he wonders. Who is the girl watching me? Hello, he thinks. You up?

  A moth beats itself against the armory light, creating a convulsion of shadows.

  Ori doesn’t really think about the night at the mall with Meir and Liran. When he sees photos of the dead kid’s face, Ori doesn’t say to himself, Meir did that, my friend did that, I watched him do that. He doesn’t, not really.

  Sometimes he’ll get an image of Meir walking away from him and Liran. The three of them were in the mall that night, wandering around kind of aimlessly, looking at window displays of the same headless mannequins in the same sweatshirts, half-heartedly checking out girls. Were they thinking about Yael Salomon? Butchered in her own home? Fourteen years old? Yes and no.

  They got frozen yogurt in little paper cups with baby-sized spoons. Ori was out of uniform but carrying his Tavor, his lockbox broken again. All night, Meir had been eyeing it like, “Oh, wow, you got the new night-vision scope,” like, “Yo, I hear the shoulder weight is really good.” This from a guy who got an army exemption to play sports. Liran didn’t let it go, like, “What online review did you read that in, achi?” Liran ended up in a tank, which is kind of lame, but he’s cool about it. Says it is what it is. They were leaning against a wall or a counter. Ori and Liran talked about their commanders and their rotations while Meir looked around trying to find something else to talk about. He was the one who noticed first, Meir. He noticed that people were hurrying toward the exit, that there was movement toward the mall exit. Meir walked first, and they followed him, but it wasn’t exactly following him. It was as if they were pulled, all of them, pulled out of the mall, past the revolving doors, past the dinosaur security guard with his useless handgun and his reflective vest, out into the well-lit street. There was a crackling in the night air, invisible but palpable. It reminded Ori of the rapid-fire stun grenades they use to control protests, the way they make the air snap with their vicious intelligence. Every wall, every tree, everything bounced and echoed a single sentence: “They’ve got an Arab.” They were moving toward that sentence. Later, he read that it had been planned by a few guys but the crowd was drawn in spontaneously. When Meir went in, Ori and Liran held back, a quick shared glance was all they needed to confirm, because they weren’t kids. They were soldiers.

  What Ori returns to, sometimes, is Meir’s back as he walked out and away from them that night, as he stepped into the crowd already undulating around the Arab kid on the ground. He joined his body into the frenzied activity that went on for long minutes, long after Ori and Liran had turned together to leave. They didn’t see much. They didn’t see what went down. They heard about it later. Ori heard enough to know that while he and Liran were walking toward the car, Meir was still there, kicking the kid with the others, kicking him until his organs began to bleed.

  Back at the car, Ori and Liran waited in silence until Meir came and sat in the back seat, breathing heavy.

  When Liran turned on the car some whiny, cheesy Mizrahi music started to play. Ori cranked the volume loud so none of them could talk. My beloved, my beloved, my beloved, the song screamed.

  It didn’t upset him. He sees a lot of things, nu. Like fine, when Arab kids throwing stones get arrested nu, fine, some of the keener guys—Moshik especially, that fat psycho—will want to smack them around a bit before handing them off to Shin Bet or to the Cherries, whoever is beating up junior terrorists that day. The guys in Ori’s unit will talk about it later, and Ori will listen and shrug, like, Nu, so you broke his jaw.

  He texts Ima: I’m guarding the armory.

  Miriam saw on Facebook that the Arab, the one from the mall, might have actually been gay—it’s possible his own family murdered him. An honor killing that they are blaming, of course they are, on Israelis. Any excuse they can get for revenge.

  She pokes out a response to Ori: Who are you guarding with? Is that the problem? Talk to me.

  Again, the slow crunch of the jeep startles Ori. Again, the moment of panic—Who is it? Who is coming?—before Ori understands that it must be the Cherries again. They are circling around the base, either on some mission of their own, or because they are fucking with him. This time, the jeep headlights are on as the vehicle approaches, slowly, slowly.

  For a few miserable seconds, Ori can’t see anything but white light. He feels helpless, pinned by the headlights, and in a way it is a relief. There is nothing he can do but wait for this to pass. Sounds magnify. Tires on the gravel, hum of the motor, Ori’s own breath.

  Slowly, the jeep arcs by him. The headlights no longer in his face. He can almost touch the windows of the vehicle, and although his vision is spotty from the headlights that were a moment ago in his eyes, he can see inside the vehicle enough that he’s sure that it’s the same two Cherries from before. This time, the one not driving gives a slow wave. It seems like he’s laughing even if he’s not smiling. Then he’s gone.

  Ori watches the jeep drive away to once again disappear behind the trailers. Even after he can no longer see anything, he hears the tires’ soft crunch. He’s breathing harder than he should be.

  When he looks down at his phone, he sees that Ima is lighting him up with messages. Ori feels the tug of her concern. Using the voice recorder function of the chat, he records a quick message to her: “Ima,” he says into his phone, “I’m fine.” His voice sounds weird, too young and small. As if his voice couldn’t travel in the darkness, couldn’t go beyond the ring of light he stands in, by the bolted doors of the vacant armory. He imagines the Cherries in the jeep imitating his voice, laughing. He erases the recording and tries again, speaking low: “Ima, I’m fine. Go to bed.” He sends it. Then immediately after, because she’ll just keep asking unless he tells her, he sends a second recording: “I’m guarding alone. It’s fine.”

  Miriam shakes Yuval awake. “I’m going to kill that commander!”

  “What? What happened?” His face is scrunched and sleep-blind in the light as he rolls to his nightstand and gropes for his glasses.

  “He’s guarding alone.” She’s no
t yelling lest she wake the girls, but her voice is strained and the octave high. Guarding alone. Where? Where is he? When she tries to picture a Palestinian village, what she sees is a rock overturned to reveal scurrying, leggy insects burying themselves deep in damp, dark soil. They are looking for revenge. For that Arab boy’s death, for history itself. They are going to take her son.

  “What? Where?” He’s putting on his glasses.

  “Guarding alone,” she repeats. “Patrolling alone, can you believe it?”

  “Hold on. Is he guarding or patrolling?” They are side by side up against the headboard.

  She ignores the question. “He’s out there,” she says. It feels true and urgent so she says it again. “He’s out there alone.” She adds, “He could be near a camp. Alone!”

  “But, Miriam.” His glasses are greasy, his hair tufts out to one side. I love you, she thinks, she can’t help it, even though it’s not what she should be thinking right now. He smooths down his hair. Takes her right hand in both of his and presses his thumb firmly on her wrist, like he’s checking her pulse. He says, “That can’t be true.”

  Already she’s scrolling through her phone contacts: Alon Mechanic, Alon Neighbor, although they moved years ago. There! Alon Commander. “I’m calling.” But she doesn’t, not yet.

  “At this hour?” He checks the alarm clock beside him. “Nearly two in the morning and you’re calling his commander?”

  She shifts to face him. She can see the young man obscured by his swollen features, just as she can see the child lingering in Ori’s cheeks and browline. “Yuval, they want revenge for the Arab at the mall. They want revenge, and our son is alone.”

  “Miriam, if he’s guarding alone, then it must be in a secure area.” He’s using army-talk.

  She shakes her head. Guarding, patrolling—the distinction isn’t the point. “Everything is changing,” she says. There’s panic leaking into her voice. Ever since that Arab boy died, something has been creeping out from her peripheral vision, almost like being haunted, some horrible price waiting to announce itself. She says to Yuval, “I have a bad feeling.” Yuval is still holding her hand, so small in his. He rubs his rough thumb over her knuckles. He taps twice, nods. A concession, she knows, to her domain: the children.

  Alon is crazy. No, not crazy. He’s the kind of guy that the army saved. Poor family, absent father. He said as much himself on Parents’ Day: “The army saved me.” Miriam knows the kind of house Alon got out of because she used to visit houses like that, thirty-odd years ago—that doesn’t sound long enough, it should be longer—a lifetime ago, when she was serving as a social worker in the army. Eighteen years old on the bus with her clipboard. That long olive-green army skirt swishing as she climbed filthy apartment building stairwells in the southernmost parts of cities, the smell of rot and damp cigarettes. She was a child, but they were all children. It had been her job to help soldiers from difficult homes get the special accommodations they needed. She advocated for these young men—got them safe housing, pro bono dental operations, reduced army hours. Nobody taught her how to do this. She figured it out along the way.

  She knows before she calls that Alon will pull typical commander power moves, knows the phone will ring five times, knows he’ll answer in the deepest voice he can muster, “Allo,” never inflected with a question mark.

  “Alon.” Say it sharp, but not too sharp. “This is Miriam Lev, Ori’s mom. How are you?”

  “What is it?” Curt, efficient.

  “I just talked to Ori.”

  “And?”

  She plows ahead: “Did you know he’s alone?”

  “Listen,” Alon says.

  Yuval pats her knee. He heaves out of bed and walks, a bit stiffly, to their bathroom. Miriam watches him close the door behind him.

  “Listen,” Alon repeats.

  But he doesn’t say anything, so she says, “He needs someone with him, Alon. You know he needs someone with him.” She is talking fast, she can feel the sharp wet dots of the letters, jabbing him over the phone. She is careful not to raise her voice too much. “Please, get someone else over there.”

  “I’m on patrol,” he says. “Ori is in a secure location.” The way he’s reasoning with her, he sounds like the kid he is. How many springs has he seen? Twenty-two?

  “And you, are you guarding alone?”

  “Giveret Lev, I’m not guarding, I’m on patrol, so listen—” he says, showing his frustration with over-the-top formality.

  “No, you listen! Ori is in danger. When I heard it, I thought there must be a mistake. I said to my husband, I said, ‘There is no way that Alon sent Ori to guard by himself outside a camp filled with Hamasniks.’”

  Alon clucks his tongue desperately. “Nu, Miriam.”

  She has to be careful about this one, but here it goes: “I didn’t know that was legal.”

  Pause. In the quiet, she can hear Yuval on the other side of the door, peeing.

  She goes on. “Really, I could have sworn that it was illegal.”

  “What you’re asking me to do will affect all my soldiers,” Alon starts. She lets him finish.

  She’s called Alon once before. Ori made her promise to never ever do it again. But everyone does it, everyone calls to complain. What kind of mother would you be if you didn’t intervene? There’s a joke that goes around: the Americans have an army of one, but we have an army of mothers. The new immigrants on the settlement have trouble getting over it. “It’s so funny,” Meir Klausman’s ima, Susan, said to Miriam, breathy and chipper on one of their walks. “In the other armies, it’s completely different.” In her stiff-jawed Hebrew, she explained that an army mother in England would never get a commander’s phone number, probably not even know where in Afghanistan her son was deployed. Miriam was bored, thinking, What do I care for some other army? Planning in her head what she’d put in the Crock-Pot when she got home.

  On the phone, Alon is talking about the rotation, about who is closing Shabbat. Yuval walks out of the bathroom. She watches his lips move once he’s in the bedroom. Blessed are you who formed man with wisdom and created him with orifices.

  She keeps her tone low and tender when she says, “Alon.” It’s time to pull back. She’s worked him up a bit; now she pulls back, makes an appeal to the soft spot she’s exposed. “You’re a good commander. You’re fair. We know that Ori is lucky to have you. Please, Alon, help us out.” Make him feel like a big man.

  When Ori checks his phone again, it’s messages from his group chat with Tovah and Avital. “The Little Ones,” that’s what they call their group chat.

  Avital: Ima is calling your commander??!?

  Tovah: We can hear her from our room

  Avital: Tovah go to bed! Ori nu tell her to go to bed

  What Ori thinks: Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  What he writes: Both of you go to bed it’s super late

  Avital: Why did she call him?????

  Ori: Because she’s worried

  Avital: Are you ok?

  Ori: Yes go to bed I have to go

  But already, Alon is calling. Ori doesn’t pick up. Alon messages and Ori reads the preview so Alon won’t get a notification that he opened the message: I know you can see this. Fuck it. Ori opens the message: You explain to Danny why he can’t go home this Shabbat.

  Cus emek, cus emek. Anything but this. Doing push-ups till your arms fall off, closing extra Shabbats on base, cleaning toilets even—anything is better than being the shitboy who steals sleep from a friend. He texts Ima: Why did you call Alon?? He woke up Danny . . .

  The sound of feet on gravel pulls him out of his phone. Panicked because he thinks it’s Danny, and what to even say? Sorry I stole your weekend at home? But it’s not Danny. It’s the jeep, idling a few meters away. Like a cat in the darkness. The jeep with the Cherries inside. Headlights killed. Ori has no idea how long the vehicle has been there, watching him.

  The jeep begins to move toward him again. Again, a windshield like bared te
eth moving through the dark. Again, faces he can’t see, somewhere in there, faces. Only this time, the jeep does not arc past him. This time, the jeep stops just beyond the radius of the armory light.

  Ori waits. He wouldn’t have time to jump out of the way if they accelerated now—no, he’d fly into the gate of the base, broken legs, broken pelvis. Just get it over with, Ori thinks. Why would he think that? A crazy thought.

  The passenger door opens. A Cherry gets out. His jeans are bleached a certain way, tight in a certain way. It looks so Arab, it’s so Arab. He’s got a brandless blue T-shirt with one thick white stripe down either side. He could be darting through an alley in one of the camps. He could be throwing stones to smash Ori’s cheekbones. All he needs is a rag or kaffiyeh tied around his face and he could be one of them, crouching behind a dumpster in flames.

  The Cherry walks into the light of the armory. From the dip of his jeans, Ori can guess he’s got a handgun tucked in the back. Thin torso. He brings a hand to his mouth, removes an unlit cigarette to say, “We hear your ima called.” He’s standing an arm’s length from Ori now, the jeep still in the background, driver invisible, engine rattling softly, ready.

  “What?”

  The Cherry doesn’t repeat himself. Instead he says, “Do you have a light?” He glances down and kind of laughs. Ori realizes he’s been standing with his weapon ready. Standing with his weapon held across his chest. Both hands in position. He’s bumbling now. Brings the rifle down to his side. Pulls out a lighter from his vest, almost pulling out some stupid loose bullets by mistake. The Cherry is the same height as Ori. He leans in to light up, and Ori can smell him. Cologne and sweat. What is that cologne they all use? All of them. He even smells Arab.