I Am Ariel Sharon

by Yara El-Ghadban

  At first you’re wary, even brutal. Your tone is more severe with me than it is with the other soldiers. But once we’re alone, your attitude changes so swiftly I’m flabbergasted. A guileless warrior, you’ve never been a very good actor.

  Ah! Uri’s little ministrations — how it flummoxes you when the young journalist, a bit too cockily, looks me up and down when we’re in headquarters. I swear, my love, it occurs to me from time to time to encourage him, if only to get a rise out of you. The other soldiers are quick to warn him off:

  — Uri, you’re better off staying away from the commander’s sister-in-law!

  But it works the other way, doesn’t it? He steals you from me. I must be satisfied sharing you with Uri and the entire country. Poor Uri. Your stroke ends up killing him. Dead less than a year after you went into a coma — as happens with old married couples.

  On the military base we believe we’re being so discreet, you and I. We’re blind to the bemused expressions of the other brigadiers. Deaf to their whispers. Out of respect for you they stick their heads in the sand, when truly the whole world knows about our love even before we know it ourselves. For several months, we avoid the inevitable. But the inevitable always arrives.

  The desert.

  The war.

  The disaster.

  It’s no coincidence, my Arik, that we find ourselves in this cave in the Sinai, surrounded by these mountains. How often has the Sinai almost taken you from me? And yet, without the catastrophe of Mitla Pass, where would we be today?

  1956. A sad year even before the fatal day of October 31. The doctors inform you and Gali that you will never be parents. I begin to imagine us together. I even imagine Gali asking you for a separation. It’s in her nature to sacrifice herself. Who am I to stop her from being who she is? I see us marching on — you, eventually Commander-in-Chief and the Minister of Defence, why not? And me slowly rising up the ranks of the information sector.

  After three years of marriage, Gali’s belly begins to swell. The whole castle-in-the-air crumbles in a pile of dust. If it weren’t for my birds and my art, I’d go insane. At night I listen to Mozart to hide my distress. Just before dawn, in the hour before I have to leave for headquarters at Tel-Nof, I watch the starlings for an hour with the binoculars I stole from you. The Suez War heats up. The British set a trap for the Egyptians and we are the bait. I’m not afraid of the beginning of the attack, but of how it will end. It’s the war of last chance. I make sure I’m responsible for the indexing and organizing of the photographs transmitted by our scouts and spies on the ground. For you, my commander, my oxygen, my reason for being, I would pick every flea in the desert. Are we not accomplices? Two soldiers in the same fight? Are we not facing in the same direction together? You don’t have to explain or justify a thing to me.

  Death is death. War is war.

  If we want to win, we have to sink our teeth into the task.

  If we want the land, we have to tear up the fruit trees along with the weeds.

  Lions eat their young.

  Wild boars trample everything in their way.

  Only the strong survive.

  She detests this view of the world, Gali does. She obstinately sets about finding reason in the lives of her psychiatric patients. She believes in the Utopian discourse of our Zionist forebearers. Refuses to consider what must be done in the name of this Utopia. Refuses to recognize her role and responsibility in its realization. Is it that she understands, in the end, but lacks the courage to go on? And am I awful for thinking that?

  The war, like her death, makes us closer. I’m ready to kill every Arab in the world to be by your side. I would follow you, my love, to the Gates of Hell. To the Gates of Hell, I follow.

  I can hear you snoring. Good, darling. Sleep. Some things we can only accept under anaesthetic. Quick. Eager. Impatient. That’s what you are when confronted by your anguish. The very idea of anguish unnerves you.

  — Anguish is a luxury, you keep repeating, endlessly.

  I say “you,” but to be honest, I’m the same. I have to become ill for us to slow down and face our fears. When the doctor uses the word “cancer,” you frown at him as if he’s some sort of traitor. You don’t even let him finish his diagnosis. What kind of cancer, you ask? Where’s the tumour? Its progression? What’s the prognosis? Hopeful? Hopeless? Uncertain? None of that concerns you.

  It’s winter, 1999. An unusually cold February. The final year of the millennium is barely underway. The idea I won’t be there to mark the year 2000 is, for you, simply unthinkable. The doctor’s explanations roll off you like water off a raincoat. You want a solution: this is how we’re going to proceed. You want the only words that matter: lung cancer is nothing to be concerned about; all we have to do is —

  But the words you yearn for don’t come. The doctor, fearing the wrath of the most rancorous man in Israel, recommends a specialist in New York. We leave for the United States like those dreamers of a former age embarking for the New World. There, where life can start afresh and miracles fall from the sky.

  During the entire the trip you rail against the educated Jews of the day who’ve not lived the miracle of Israel. Doctors rendered complacent by their comfortable lives. No longer even trying to make the effort. They don’t believe in the impossible, but content themselves with the way things are! You make a list of initiatives for the new Israeli millennium.

  — This will be priority number one for the Knesset! you declare.

  A whole suite of remedies for the laxity that drives you crazy. The apathy and self-satisfaction of the victors who destroy empires. The resignation that turns something as banal as lung cancer into an insurmountable obstacle.

  When the American oncologist repeats the same diagnosis, and advises us — with a sort of empathetic expression verging on pity — that we should continue treatment in Israel, you remain silent. At a loss for words. At a loss for everything, even anger. Ariel Sharon has finally met his match.

  I’ve known for a long time that I will die of cancer. Before we even land in New York, my love, I know that soon I’ll be leaving you. But I don’t have the courage to tell you. The idea that I will die before you brings me comfort. Not to have to attend your funeral. To have to live alone, like your mother. To have to remake myself without you. To wonder who I am, who I might have been had I not loved you.

  I’ll no longer have to fight against Gali’s and Gour’s ghosts. Or Uri’s friendship, and the confidences you share as two comrades in arms. Or against all the young soldiers who idolize you. Or my own jealousy of all who love you.

  I’m even jealous of those who hate you! What is hatred but another kind of love? I’m jealous of your certainties: that only the present and future matter. That to cultivate the land is to vanquish it. That whatever is deracinated must have needed to be torn up. That there’s nothing to regret.

  On New Year’s Eve, our house at Sycamore Farm catches fire. It’s a sign: one month, two months, three months? Like the century, I will expire.

  All my life, I’ve been living on time borrowed — from my sister, from my nephew, from the soldiers who have died under your command. From the nameless peasants struck from history. Is this the fate of all women: to turn around and contemplate the horror in the wake of men’s march towards history?

  During my last days in the hospital, your worried look weighs upon my swollen eyelids. That piercing gaze that refuses to shift for fear that death will take it by surprise. Life is draining from me, and you scold me.

  — You must fight, Lily. Fight! Fight! What is lung cancer to you? You’ve survived much worse! We’ve nurtured a country, you and I. That fool of an American said you wouldn’t live to see the new century. Well, here we are! It’s March already, Lily. March, 2000. Don’t you see? This is no time to give up! When have you ever surrendered to the enemy? Tell me!

  You become furious when
ever I bring up my imminent death. You refuse to listen to my wishes — snapping back at me, before I even finish my sentence:

  — When you’re well, you can do all that yourself.

  I didn’t get well, my love. I died like any other woman. You planted anemones on my grave at the top of our hill on Sycamore Farm.

  I’ve been snuggling up to death for ten years. And I’m waiting. Here in this red cave, rocky, crystalline. I’m waiting for you to finally let yourself go so that we can be together again. In the land of the living it’s 2010. You’ve been asleep for four years, Arik. I’m tired of waiting. I’ve begged the woman-voice to bring you home to me.

  — Rare are the ones who survive the stream of their conscience, she warns me.

  What if you liberated yourself from your body, Arik? What if you gave yourself willingly to nothingness? If you broke free from the land of men. Their wars. Their desires. Their violence? If you dared to plunge into the Gehenna of women. Then would you come back to me?

  For you, I’ve cut off a lock of my hair. For you, I offered the woman-voice my body. For you, I became a rock in this cave. The limestone water washes over and shapes me. Four years since your stroke. I’m no longer the same as I was. Not that it matters, she kept her promise.

  I know you’re terrified. Weak. Naked. Forsaken. A slave of your body. Without the binoculars you use to spot the enemy at night. I know you’re terrified, my love. I was too. I still am, a bit … Forgive me, my darling, for tearing you away from yourself.

  So that I could see you again, I made a pact with the ghosts. I entrusted my memory, and the memories of all women, to the woman-voice. And so that you’d listen to me, I gave her my voice and the voice of every woman. So that you’d be able to rest near these stones, I gave her my soul. I had so much more to tell you. Cancer carried me away. If I tell you my secrets, will you stay here with me? Or forge your own road? Would you leave me here in this cave to erode into the Sinai?

  Whatever you decide is not important, my love. Know that I will always love you.

  Now wake up, my Arik.

  Wake up.

  ARIK

  Something is tickling his cheek. Has he collapsed at the feet of death? Is it death caressing him like this? Arik strains his eyelids. Forms take shape in the darkness. Familiar features. Parts of faces. Dark hair tied up in a chignon. Pronounced eyebrows. Oval chin. Nose protruding over luscious lips. An intense gaze concealed by oversized sunglasses à la Brigitte Bardot.

  Lily!

  Is he dreaming? Is it her hand brushing his face? A strand of her hair? He must absolutely not open his eyes. Lily might slip between his eyelids. He wouldn’t be able to feel her sweetness on his cheek anymore. Or press his body against hers — he knows now, he’s certain — the warm body sleeping close beside him is his wife’s. A body so desired, so loved. He’ll look and see. And if Lily isn’t there, he’ll be alone in the semi-darkness. The prickling on his cheek will have been no more than the wind. Or worse, his own breath. And that would be the end. Once you look, it’s impossible to imagine anything other than what you see before you.

  Eyesight is murderous. It kills remorselessly. It turns a human being into a predator. Twin orbs level in the middle of the face, synchronized for a better fix on the prey trapped even before it’s caught. When we fix our gaze, everything that isn’t the target disappears. Tunnel vision, the English call it. The rest of the world clouds over. There are only two beings on Earth: the eater and the eaten.

  Arik always keeps his eyes open. He’s a lion. A tiger. A hyena. Irises in the same place, focused on the same object. One and the same face. His own. Wolves. Condors. Eyesight kills. He learns this truth on the day he peers through a pair of night-vision binoculars for the first time and sees red silhouettes stumbling about in the darkness, unaware of the danger. He observes them the entire night, his enemies’ position given away by the heat of their bodies, glowing like embers in the night. One signal from him and his soldiers would mow them down. He feels, in the moment, a surge of utter satisfaction, and subsequently he never goes anywhere without his binoculars. Never closes his eyes again. When the vision of one eye is impaired due to a detached retina, he does everything he can to hide the fact. For fear of letting himself be caught unawares. Of being surprised by a hunter with sharper eyesight than his.

  A predator. The child of a predatory country. He makes this his vocation. Beauty. Life. Music. Smells. Tastes. Rocky hills and smooth plains: these are all dangerous seductions. Comforts proffered to cattle before the abattoir.

  1952. As a young commander, Arik sets up an ambush against the Jordanians. Between the 1948 war that made Israel a reality and the war of 1967 that made of it a hegemonic power with its own colonies and colonial subjects, the country’s borders are porous. Uprooted, the Palestinians mount a resistance from neighbouring countries worried about the insatiable appetite of the new state hungry for conquest. Whether out of pity, guilt, or political strategy, they let the Palestinians carry on.

  Arik secretly envies the Palestinians who infiltrate the border kibbutzim. And the more he envies them, the greater his need to destroy them. Their resistance spreads. Their incursions, of little consequence at first — cattle and donkeys stolen from the settlers — intensify. Sabotage. Arson. Ambushes that are occasionally fatal. Obstinate in defeat, they sow confusion and fear all along the borders. They are like irritating insects, repeatedly swatted but refusing to die. Insects that leave no one in peace. They ruin evenings on the verandah, that portion of the territory thought to have been tamed, cleared of wild fauna and flora, of all those persistent indigenous plants that spoil a well-kept lawn. These insects belong to the night — and the night, like the territory, belongs to them.

  Arik understands this from the very start — that he has to master the terrain and incorporate it if he is to rid its indigenous elements of their indigeneity. Pull the rug out from beneath their feet. Chew up the land centimetre by centimetre. Erase their native footprints. But how he envies them their damned indigeneity! Their gift for being one with the land. He envies the audacity it inspires. The sense of belonging. Of inalienable attachment. These peasants transformed from one day to the next into guerilla fighters and revolutionaries. He even envies them their reputation as terrorists. The legend of them. Their myth of them. Them. So small. So vulnerable! He would like to be a terrorist himself. To taste this audacity that only the vanquished know.

  However, on this day in 1952, he must content himself with taking on the Jordanians. An enemy of the second tier, a prey that leaves his hunger unassuaged. Whatever. He’ll make use of them to hone his hunter’s instincts. He heads towards the Jordan River, near a dilapidated bridge, sees a tiny Jordanian police station on the other bank, and a few figures in the shadows. Putting his weapon down, he signals to them from a distance, requesting a meeting. Mollifying his aquiline features as much as he is able, his back stooped, he feeds them a tale of cattle stolen from the Ma’oz Chaim kibbutz. He asks for their help, the sort of co-operation between adversaries over a mundane matter that allows each to recover a bit of humanity and civilized behaviour. A way of saying: look, I’m not an animal. I did not choose to fight a war. I’m just obeying the orders of my superiors.

  In the moment, standing together amid the ruins of the bridge, the two sides are no more than neighbours sharing the same river. So convincing is Arik that the Jordanian policemen, themselves peasants before joining the army, are immediately sympathetic. Arik licks his lips, like a fisherman alerted by a pull on the net. It’s too good an opportunity, the ruse is ridiculously easy. The fish is coming to him.

  Under the pretext of discussing the problem of vandalism and theft along the border, he brings them to the Israeli side where they can exchange pleasantries and discuss strategies in the shade of a large acacia tree. For a moment, they are no longer enemies. The tension in their bodies relaxes, the suspicion in their demeanour ab
ates. Their formerly curt and careful replies become more and more expansive. Their conversation is agreeable, almost convivial. They share what they have to drink and, peasant to peasant, give each other tips on the best way to raise cattle.

  They’re appealing, these policemen. Arik feels bad lying to them. His lapse worries him, and he lowers his antennae. The ones that sense how refreshing drinks are when shared by chance companions. The ones that amplify the outbreak of shared laughter. The ones that pick up the common odour of men’s sweat. That absorb the moist warmth of a reassuring palm on the shoulder, of a hand shaken as a sign of friendship. Anything that stirs the slightest suggestion of compassion, he annihilates.

  Predator. He needs a clear view and two quarries offer themselves up to his line of sight. Two precious pieces in a game of power he’s determined to win. They’ll be useful as ransom to obtain the release of Israeli soldiers who, a few weeks back, made the mistake of infiltrating territory under Jordanian control and getting caught. Thanks to the overconfidence of the police officers — thanks to his own mendacity — he would prove himself as a military commando. No one would question his hunter’s instincts anymore.

  On that day, another reality was revealed to him. Seeing kills. Kills hearing. Kills touching. Kills smell. Kills taste. A clear view would be his weapon and his compass. One after another, Arik deletes his childhood reminiscences. Of cool naps on hot afternoons. Siestas in the shade of the wagon after ploughing. The comforting taste of his mother’s cooking.

  He is a predator. Predators don’t shut their eyes. They don’t hear the calls of starlings. They don’t count butterflies. They experience no delight in the buzzing of bees among flowers. Predators seek neither love nor friendship, neither humanity nor civility. Predators confiscate these indulgences, offerings to gods and emperors.

  As a teenager, he is hurt by his mother Vera’s coldness, and the detestation of his neighbours. But as an adult, he laughs at such things. Follies that deserve nothing but scorn. The grief of the vanquished has no place in history. Arik is a conqueror, was born to write history. After the binoculars are in his hands, after the trick he played on the Jordanian border is successful, after the astonished silence of the Jordanian policemen confronted with his rifle is forgotten, after he has uprooted the acacia tree and those who met under it, everything that unsettles him is silenced, and the bright colour of the sun is no more than a spotlight shining down upon the enemy, facilitating his tearing them to pieces.