World Cup Wishes

7

APART FROM THAT picture with Amichai, on the roof, I don’t have any photos from the Intifada. I don’t think I felt that what we were doing in Nablus, in Jabalya or Raffiah would ever merit nostalgia. Perhaps that’s why I don’t have any good friends from the army. Ofir’s father, for instance, would get together with his mates from the Armoured Corps three times a year, and he’d start getting excited about their meetings a month beforehand. Churchill’s father has three friends from the Paratroopers, and one of them paid for another’s operation abroad not too long ago. I think that for them, and for many of their generation, the army was the breeding ground for friendship. And with me — just the opposite. My friends are from before the army. And when I happen to see someone who served with me in the territories, we say as little as possible to each other, and I think we both flinch inside. True, it might be that I’m the only one who flinches, and perhaps it’s all because of my tendency to always be in the opposition — Amichai, for example, still has friends from the army, and if you ask him, he’ll tell you a completely different story about the Intifada, a story of the brotherhood of fighters, of thwarting terrorist attacks and kill-them-before-they-kill-you, and he’d say that the army gave him Ilana and saved him from his gloomy family and the role he was forced to play in it, and those three years were the first time he felt he was able to live since his father died –

But I’m the narrator here, and I want to say that there are too many moments in my army years that I’m not proud of, and the lowest ebb was during the 1990 World Cup, in an unplastered, raw concrete building on the outskirts of Nablus.

Not even my friends know about that moment. And I didn’t want to mention it here either — I’ve been so taken with the spotless image of myself my words have created — but this confession has been knocking on the door of this book for quite a few pages already, and it’s blasting out of me now like a bullet.

We were supposed to stay on the roof of that building in Nablus for three days, but in the end, we stayed three weeks. They were supposed to bring us food once a week, and they brought field rations. We were so tired and hungry there that at some point, I started looking at the other nine soldiers who were with me and wondering which of them would be tastiest if we cooked him. And I had no doubt that if it came to that, I would be the one to cook him. The nine guys with me on the roof had done all their training together, and I was sent to join the company a week before we went down to Nablus, after I’d been kicked out of the officers training course. All of them — I wasn’t sure how — knew I’d been kicked off the course because I fell asleep during a lecture by the training base commander, and they enjoyed yelling ‘Good morning, Freed!’ into my ear every time they thought I was drifting off. Also, they gave me the hardest shifts and deliberately came late to relieve me, they shared the few special treats they received among themselves and never offered me any, and they made fun of me for writing too many letters to my girlfriend.

I didn’t have a girlfriend. But when they asked me who I was writing to, I couldn’t admit that it was to Churchill and Ofir, so I made up a girlfriend named Adva, who was stationed at an intelligence base on the Egyptian border and missed me so much that I had to write to her every day to calm her down. I hated the fact that I was lying to them. I hated those long observations in a futile attempt to identify hostile children. I hated detaining the night-time arrests in strange houses. Scared shitless. I hated the vulgar jokes. And the racist jokes. And the fact that, at one point, I was the main teller of those jokes.

But more than anything, I hated myself after the game between England and Cameroon.

It was Doron’s idea. He was the one who said, you see that house with the TV set? How about we go in there, do a small search, and while we’re at it, watch England— Cameroon?

I remember that I smiled. I thought he was kidding. But then Commander Harel himself asked, England— Cameroon? When does it start? The broadcast starts now, Doron answered, the game in half an hour. Commander Harel said, that should be one hell of a game. Then without another word, he began cleaning his gun in preparation to move out. And that’s how, in unspoken complicity, all of us except the guy on guard duty, took our weapons and combat vests and headed out in two columns to the parallel street and the small house that had a blue light flickering in its windows.

*

As I begin marching now, beside that Yuval, the soldier, I immediately sense that smell of the territories, which most closely resembles the smell of a sweatshirt on the morning after an all-night camp-fire. I see a Palestinian flag waving from the power lines above us again, even though we made them take it down the day before. I see the black slogans written on the walls and torn fragments of burned tyres. And I feel the sewage flowing between my feet, muddy and reeking and sticking to the soles of my shoes. And, as if more than ten years hadn’t passed, that fear begins to pound inside me, the fear that someone would drop a breeze block on us from the roofs, or a fridge.

The few people who were out in the street began walking faster then and looked at us: children two or three years old were still looking at us with open curiosity, but the fear was already visible in the eyes of the four-or five-year-olds. I glanced away from them and looked down at the shoes of the soldier marching in front of me, trying to convince myself that what we were going to do now wasn’t necessarily terrible, and perhaps something good would come out of it and we’d find ourselves sitting and watching the game with the family that lived in that house we were marching towards, and for ninety minutes, the barriers would fall and we would no longer be occupier and occupied, stoner and stoned, Jew and Arab, but just people. Watching the World Cup together.

*

But from the minute we pushed the door open, everything went south.

The family into whose lives we had burst was watching a quiz show on TV and didn’t understand why Commander Harel was demanding so insistently that they change the channel, what did that have to do with searching the house? My brother’s son, he’s from Jordan, the father tried to explain, he … ya’ani … he’s on this quiz show … that’s why it’s so important for us to watch it … it’s over in a few minutes … please, sit down. The father’s explanation sounded reasonable, and his tone was straightforward. But the commander thought otherwise, and for no reason, slapped him hard. His two sons, who, till then, hadn’t said or done anything, stood up and went to stand at either side of him, and then Doron pointed to one of them and shouted, hey, that’s the bastard who dropped that breeze block on us yesterday!

Within seconds, a God-awful commotion began that ended with all the objects in the living room, except the TV — vases, pictures, bowls, lamps — shattered. The boy who had dropped the breeze block on us (or perhaps it wasn’t him?) was standing handcuffed in a corner of the room, his right arm twisted. Doron had twisted it, exactly as the krav maga instructor had taught us in a lesson a week before. I remembered their panting as they struggled, and the muttered incantations and curses of one of the old Arab women that came later. I remember that we pushed her and the rest of the family with our rifle butts and our hands into a small side room.

Then we fiddled with the dial till we found the game.

*

When I say we, that includes me.

There were extenuating circumstances. Of course. I was a kid — what’s nineteen? A boy! And I was just following orders, naturally, what can a soldier do except follow orders? Even Rabin himself said, ‘Break their bones’, the Rabin of the Rabin assassination! So what could a boy from Haifa do? Anyway, I didn’t raise a hand to anyone. I swear! When Doron was beating up that boy, I even pushed (too hard? too eagerly?) the old woman and the children into the side room so he wouldn’t beat them too. And another time, in Jenin, a Palestinian who was hit with a rubber bullet was lying in the middle of the street and my commander told me to leave the bastard there, let him die, but I screamed that I was a medic and had to treat him, and I kneeled next to him and managed to stop the blood that was spurting out of him so rapidly. I was able to stop the bleeding and save him, and I didn’t care that, afterwards, the whole unit called me Yuval-bleeding-heart and Yuval-the-leftie, and I didn’t care that I was confined to the base for insubordination.

*

But I too sat in the living room of that family from Nablus and watched England — Cameroon. And stretched my legs to rest them on an armchair that wasn’t mine. And I was glad when England evened the score to two-all (I think I was so excited that I even stood up). I too ate the pitta and hummus we took out of the family’s fridge. And agreed that those Arabs really knew how to make hummus. I too heard the sobs of pain coming from the handcuffed boy. And the pleading of the women to be let out so they could go to the toilet. I too saw Commander Harel walk over and turn up the volume so all that noise wouldn’t bother us.

I too wanted to stay a while longer, when the game was over, to see the replays of the goals. And a little longer than that, to hear the post-game interviews.

*

Only later, when we went back to the roof, did I have an attack of nausea when I thought about what I and the guys from the company had done and about that damned World Cup, and I tried to tell myself that it had been a one-off moral lapse, but I knew it wasn’t, I knew that, over the last few weeks, I’d become as brutalised as everyone else there. I kept twisting and turning in my sleeping bag that night, unable to find a position in which my conscience could fall asleep. Suddenly, it seemed to me that there was no way out. No future. It was as clear as the dark night to me that no one would ever come to relieve us. That I was going to stay on that roof, with those people, my whole life. And that the curse that the old Arab woman had muttered before we pushed her into the room would haunt me my whole life.

I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag and went to a far corner of the roof where no one could see me. I took small, Charlie Chaplin steps until I was standing right on the edge. I looked down to the street and thought, what would happen if I jumped now and ended it all?

Ofir can make his movie, was the bitter-sweet answer that surfaced from the depths of my memory. After all, I had promised him that if none of us died in the army, then I would.

I looked down again. This building isn’t tall enough, I said to myself. With my luck, I might stay alive. Paralysed.

*

Dear Bro in intelligence, I wrote to Churchill that night, holding a torch in one hand and a pen in the other.

I don’t understand what I’m doing here. I don’t understand who’s fighting who. I don’t understand any more what’s behind the word ‘I’. I don’t understand what the difference is between me and an animal. I don’t understand how I got to this. I don’t understand why I insisted on hiding my asthma so they’d take me into a combat unit. I don’t understand why I’m tired now and can’t fall asleep. I don’t understand why I want to shout and no sound comes out of me. I don’t understand what there is to understand here. I don’t understand why they don’t come to relieve us. I don’t understand why I don’t care whether they come to relieve us. I don’t understand anything.

You’re in intelligence. You probably know. Maybe you can explain it to me?

*

Three weeks after the weapons carrier dropped us off under the roof, they came to relieve us. It was twilight. I was the one on duty then. And when I saw someone who looked like Amichai get out of the weapons carrier, I thought I was hallucinating. Amichai? No way. He isn’t even in this division. I must be very far into the twilight zone if I’m seeing my friends in the middle of Nablus.

But it was Amichai. With his MAG slung over his shoulder, and those broad shoulders and that happy walk. For a few seconds, I heard his familiar steps echoing on the stairs, and then, all at once, as the sun setting behind him illuminated his hair in golden, nearly messianic light, he burst onto the roof.

I knew it! he shouted, running happily towards me. I knew I’d see you here! I told the guys, you’re about to meet my best friend! He crushed me in a huge hug, then introduced me to the soldiers who’d come with him to relieve us. They shook my hand and I could feel in their handshakes that being Amichai’s friend won me a lot of points with them.

This is amazing! he went on happily. For us to meet here! Churchill and Ofir won’t believe it when they hear it! Come on, let’s take a picture so we have proof.

Move your arse, Freed, we’re waiting for you down here, the soldiers who’d been on the roof with me called from down on the street. But suddenly, I didn’t care about them. Suddenly, because Amichai was there, I felt like a human being again.

*

In the picture, we look like one of those ‘before and after’ ads. Except that with us, the ‘after’ looked horrible. Unshaven. Tired. With a blue ink stain near his shirt pocket. And murky eyes. And the ‘before’, who was Amichai, actually looked great. Fresh uniform. Shiny equipment. A bold, direct stare into the camera.

I don’t know a lot about photography, but of all the pictures in the album, I think that’s the only one with a chance of making it to a gallery exhibition. Because of the soft, minute-after-sunset light. And because of the sharp contrast between me and Amichai, which neither of us was aware of. And also because in the background, the camera had unintentionally caught a Palestinian boy of about five or six on one of the other roofs watching the whole scene.

After our picture was taken, Amichai gave me the letter Churchill had asked him to pass on to me. And he hugged me again. You came just in time, Bro, I whispered in his ear. You came a minute before I was going to throw in the towel. And it’s good that of all the guys, you’re the one who came. Because there’s no one like you to remind me that there’s also good in the world (and perhaps I didn’t tell him all that, and now, as I write, I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to say it).

Then I climbed down from the roof and joined the unit waiting for me on the street. The sun had already set and a frightening trip in the dark back to the battalion base was awaiting us.

Where does he know you from, that MAG guy? someone asked me after the weapons carrier had started moving.

Amichai? I replied. He’s my friend, in civilian life.

*

I think that was the first time I called him my friend and really meant it.

Our friendship didn’t ignite with a single spark, the way my friendship with Churchill and Ofir did, but grew over the years. Patiently. From event to event. That meeting in Nablus, for instance. Or the first time he asked me to his family’s home in Haifa, in Ramat Hadar.

The first friend I ever had, Oren Ashkenazi, had also lived in Ramat Hadar, and as a child, I was jealous of that and begged my parents to move us to the empty flat above his family.

Why should we move to Ramat Hadar? my mother asked with a grown-ups-who-know smile, and I said excitedly: there’s this giant yard where the kids go to play football and frisbee, and there’s a lift in every entrance that makes this scary whistling sound when it goes up, and there are twelve floors in every building and the twelfth floor is really high and sometimes you can look at the clouds when you’re on it, I mean, really see them from up there!

I wasn’t a child any more when I went to see Amichai in Ramat Hadar. Oren Ashkenazi and his family had already gone to live in America, and the neighbourhood looked different to me: intimidating buildings. Too wide. Too grey, almost like the buildings in Kieślowski films.

I stood on the ugly bridge that connected the car park to the building entrance, looked at the play area that had once seemed so wonderful to me, and noticed that it was bordered on all sides by high concrete walls. There was no way out of it. No landscape. Like a prison yard.

There were no children in that now. Not even one. Just a bearded man in rags standing in the centre of it talking out loud to himself, but not loudly enough for me to hear him. Had he already been talking to himself then, when we played there? Had he grabbed the ball once in the middle of a game and refused to give it back? Or was my memory deceiving me?

I stood on the bridge for another few minutes, then took out the slip of paper on which I’d written the number of the entrance where the Tanuri family lived.

*

Hanging on the living room wall was a huge picture of the father in uniform, and he didn’t resemble Amichai in the slightest. He had light hair and dark self-confidence. And shrewd, crafty eyes. I remember that there were no other pictures in the living room, just plaques of recognition the father had received from the various units he’d served in. In appreciation for. In acknowledgment of. Wishing you success in your new post. From your friends in the company, the battalion, the division. I remember that it wasn’t his mother who served the food at the table, but Amichai, and that her plate was empty throughout the entire meal. She looked like someone who hadn’t eaten for a long time, and when a strong wind came through the window, I was afraid for a minute that it would blow her out of her chair and swirl her around the room. Every once in a while she took a quick glance at the blank screen of the TV that stood in the middle of the living room, and I was sure she had asked for it to be turned off because of me, so I wouldn’t get the impression that the Tanuris needed a TV to keep them together. She tried very hard to have a conversation with me. She asked me about school and my father’s printing house and my plans for the future, and I felt how much effort every question, every word cost her.

I wanted to console her. That woman with the large brown eyes and the freckles that gave her a slightly childlike look. I wanted to shake her. To save her (me? twenty years younger than her? I was the one who would save her?).

But I just kept answering her questions.

At a certain stage, two of Amichai’s brothers started fighting (perhaps to rescue her from having to continue asking the guest questions?). Amichai let them push each other for a few seconds, then said in a quiet voice, ‘Guy and Shai, that’s enough.’ And they stopped immediately and sat up in their chairs obediently.

I looked at him, amazed. I couldn’t make the connection between the insecure, inarticulate guy who hung out with us, and the mature, authoritative person I was suddenly seeing.

*

Later, during the first few years in Tel Aviv, our friendship was constructed slowly with brick after brick of small deeds. Every time I asked him to help me move, for instance, he was right there. Not three hours late, like Ofir. Not trying to convince me, like Churchill, that hiring a removal company would be cheaper in the end.

Whenever he needed an emergency babysitter — usually when Ilana was in one of her moods and he felt he ‘had to take her out for some air’ — I would go there and read the twins stories and change their nappies and feel pangs of longing for children of my own, which would turn into sharp stabs of impatience the minute one of them started to cry, then back into pangs of longing again when they fell asleep.

Once a week, between meetings with one Telemed client and another, Amichai would come to visit me. Always with delicious cookies Ilana had baked. Always insisting on making the coffee himself. Always collapsing on my sofa with the same old Yiddish cry of pleasure, a-machayeh.

The conversations that came after the coffee were excruciatingly predictable: he would tell me about the new treatment he was trying to remove the blotch on his neck, and I would say that no one noticed it but him and that if he weren’t with Ilana, a lot of women would want him. And then I would tell him about another awful date I’d been on, and he would agree with me too quickly that the girl wasn’t worth it anyway. And interspersed were updates on Ilana’s latest successes in academia and the twins’ latest antics, complaints about work at Telemed, empty words about the possibility of leaving everything and signing up to study shiatsu that same year and circular debates about the new line-ups of Maccabi Haifa or the Israeli national team.

Quite a few times, I stole a glance at the clock while he was there.

But even so, I was filled with light when I saw him through the peephole of my door a week later.

There they were, the broad shoulders. There they were, the earth-coloured eyes. There it was, that feeling that everything would be OK.

*

After Ilana died, he kept coming once a week. But he didn’t talk any more. Not about the blotch, not about Maccabi Haifa, not about the Israeli national team. He would hug me limply at the door, then go into the living room, sit down on the sofa and remain silent.

At first, I tried to get him to say something.

Do you want to talk? I asked.

Yeah, but … he slowly dragged the words out of his mouth … it hurts.

Want something to drink?

No.

Eat?

No, Bro, thanks.

So what … what can I do for you?

Nothing. Sit … Sit here with me.

*

So I sat with him. Once a week, on the sofa. And we were silent together. On the wall across from us hung framed pictures of the guys. In front of us, on the table, the cookies he bought at the grocery shop. Sometimes, as I stared into space, I’d start thinking about a word I’d come up against in a translation, or about clients’ cheques I had to cash, or I’d try to concentrate and read his thoughts, or I’d try to wordlessly pass a thought of my own to him, let’s say a thought like, Bro, stop feeling guilty, you did what you could to prevent the surgery, and anyway, who could have known that such simple surgery could suddenly go so wrong? Or a thought like, you’re so strong, Amichai, so much sorrow would have turned anyone else, including me, into a well a long time ago, like it did to Egeria in Metamorphoses.

*

But it didn’t matter what thoughts I tried to pass on to him. After half an hour, he would get up and walk to the door.

Usually, he would give me a quick hug and leave without saying a word. Only once did he linger a bit at the door and say, this stays between us, OK, Yuval?

Of course, I promised. Even though I didn’t understand what was supposed to stay between us.

And he would lean on the wall of the staircase, smile mournfully and say, you’re … you’re a friend.