The Ascent of Eli Israel

by Jonathan Papernick, Dara Horn

Neither Shawn nor Kravetz heard the bomb when it went off three days later; bus number eighteen, a route that went through the heart of the city, blown up during the morning rush hour by a suicide bomber. The lucky number eighteen, or chai for life. Twenty-four people dead. Kravetz thought it was ironic that of all the numbers, of all the bus routes to choose, the bomber chose the one symbolizing life.

  When Kravetz woke Shawn and told him the news, Shawn could only fumble for his camera and say, “Shit. Missed it.”

  Kravetz remembered a line from Amichai’s poetry about the three languages of the holy city: Hebrew, Arabic, Death.

  The Bombshell

  In the days following the bombing, Shawn followed Kravetz to the rally at Zion Square, not to pay condolences to the dead and maimed, but to catch someone with their pants down.

  When a man led a sheep on a leash into the square, chanting, “Like sheep to the slaughter. We’re not sheep!” Shawn ran to him, but was stopped by a border policeman who said, “No photos. Only press.”

  Though people were told not to gather in large groups, the crowds chanted and called for peace. Heavily armed soldiers snaked through the crowds; two soldiers stood at each bus stop, checking bags for bombs.

  “It’s just like Europe before the war,” Shawn said. “Can’t you see the writing on the wall. This is Kristallnacht all over again.”

  “So leave, if you’re so afraid,” Kravetz said. “Go home.”

  “Why don’t you?” Shawn said, blowing smoke in Kravetz’s face. “Huh?”

  “This is home,” Kravetz said.

  “Fuckin’ idealist.”

  “Yeah, so?” Kravetz said, clenching his fists. He felt like he was in fourth grade all over again. “Go home, if you’re afraid.”

  “I never said I was afraid, asshole. It’s just, violence breeds hysteria,” Shawn said. “And hysteria makes good photos. I’m going for a drink.”

  Kravetz went home and lay on his bed, throwing a tennis ball against the ceiling. He could hear a man coughing from the floor below, deep retching coughs that went on for minutes before he was silent. Kravetz wondered if the man had died. He picked up the shoe box from under his bed and began flipping through Shawn’s Polaroids. The photos looked so cheap, bad lighting and red eyes, most of the women mugged for the camera and looked drunk out of their skulls. He thinks he’s fucking Gene Simmons, Kravetz thought. The group seemed to be made of equal parts blonde and brunette with a redhead or two thrown in. Kravetz recognized some of the girls but could not recall their names. One of the pictures was stuck to the back of another and he pulled it off.

  It was Jana.

  Kravetz went numb. He hadn’t seen her since May and her face, puckered and drunk, looked cheap and foreign. Could it really be her? She hated Shawn, thought he was a phony and an asshole. And suddenly, without any warning, he just burst out, one loud wrenching cry, his eyes burned, his throat swollen, his saliva as thick as cotton.

  He didn’t even hear Shawn come in. He was breathing heavily, as if he had taken the stairs.

  Shawn walked forward and took a deep breath that made him look like a bulldog. “You’re not going to cry again over the Slovakian slut. She’s a Jew killer,” Shawn said.

  Kravetz could tell that Shawn was drunk. “You found her,” Shawn said.

  Through blurry eyes Kravetz could not tell if Shawn was smirking or biting his lips from nerves.

  “Why?” Kravetz said.

  “These Slavic bitches,” Shawn said. “All of them, Russians, Latvians, Czechs, every last fucking one of them — Jew killers.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kravetz said.

  “You know what I’m talking about. You know how they killed our grandparents and our great-grandparents, and their parents. Made us live in ghettos.” Shawn slurred most of these words out. “Any Jew who consorts with these types must hate himself, must have a death wish.”

  “But I loved her, and she loved me,” Kravetz said.

  “Bullshit. Take a look at yourself, Poochie. What kind of Jew would fuck a pogromist pig?”

  “She was going to live with me. I don’t know.”

  “You scared the shit out of her. You’re too fucking serious and intense,” Shawn said. “You pressured her. Practically forced her under the weight of guilt.”

  Kravetz didn’t say a word. He had never been so wounded in his life before.

  And now Shawn’s voice became as hard as it had ever been. “I did it for you, man. I don’t give a shit about her. Yeah, she called a few times trying to find you, but I never told her shit. I told her to fuck off, but she kept calling. Don’t you understand we’re on the same side here. I only did it to get back at her for you.”

  “Get out!” Kravetz shouted. “Get out of here! I want you out of here now!”

  “Don’t you get it?”

  Kravetz threw the tennis ball at Shawn, then threw the half-empty box of Polaroids at him.

  “Don’t freak out. I did it for you, man. The cunt hurt you, so I got her back. Come on.” Shawn stuck out his fist and said, “Kids are united . . . ”

  “Get the fuck out of here,” Kravetz said, batting his hand away. “Asshole! Fucking grow up.”

  “Bro, listen . . . ” Shawn began to say.

  “Go to sleep,” Kravetz said. “I don’t want to see your face in the morning.”

  Lucky 18

  The next morning Kravetz was woken by a ground-shaking boom that rattled even the walls of his apartment. He lay in bed, unable to move, with the horrible silence filling his ears, thinking, “There’re no sirens, so it can’t be,” and when he heard the sirens he thought, “That’s not enough sirens for a bombing.” And he prayed, or muttered what he thought was a prayer. He could hear Shawn in the next room, shouting, “Get dressed, let’s go!” as the sirens wailed outside. Shawn burst into Stuart’s room, buttoning his pants. His shirt was open and his camera hung around his neck. He threw open Stuart’s steel shutters, and they could hear sirens racing down Azza Street, and others from the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus moving toward the rising smoke on Jaffa Street, just at the other side of Independence Park.

  “Get up, bitch,” Shawn said. “We’re going to miss the whole thing.”

  “It’s bus eighteen again,” Kravetz said. He felt hollowed out inside, and could barely breathe. He thought of Jana, and Shawn thrusting against her, and Jana with her eyes wide open, saying, “Uh-huh. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh,” as he pushed into her. Kravetz imagined Shawn’s tongue all over Jana like some absurd pink fish flopping about her body. Then he thought of the bombing, and imagined bodies scattered about the streets like torn-up rag dolls. He didn’t want to move. He just wanted to close his eyes and open them again to the misty rain falling out of the gray sky.

  Shawn pulled Kravetz out of bed onto the floor. “Let’s go,” he said, his voice rising nasally. Kravetz wanted to run at Shawn, throw him to the floor, and strangle him, squeeze every breath of life out of him. But then he thought of the twisted metal of bus eighteen, and cried out, “It’s your fault! It’s your fault, you fucker!”

  Shawn was rushing around the room, grabbing Stuart’s clothes. “We’ve still got a five-minute walk, let’s go!”

  “They were throwing stones in East Jerusalem, calling for a holy war,” Kravetz shouted as he pulled on a pair of pants. “A fucking jihad because of your picture.”

  “Have you ever seen a dead person before?” Shawn asked calmly, lighting a cigarette.

  “Well,” Kravetz said. He had thought that Jana was as good as dead to him, but he knew she still walked and talked and kissed and fucked. Out the window he could see smoke rising into the sky to meet the gray clouds. And he wondered what lay beyond the clouds.

  “Boo!” Shawn said, waving his arms in Stuart’s face. “Let’s go.”

  A moment later Kravetz was dressed and he was smoking one of Shawn’s cigarettes. He felt delirious, almost drunk with some sort of sickened excitement. No, he never had seen
a dead person before and he wondered at what moment the soul left the body, and whether if you watched carefully enough you could see it escaping its earthly bonds.

  They ran through the park and the sirens kept coming from all around. Shawn tripped over a stone at the entrance to an old Muslim tomb where men traded blow jobs after dark. He lay in the grass. “I’m dying, Stuey! I’m dying!”

  “Come on,” Kravetz said.

  “Go on without me.”

  “Your lens cap is off, dick,” Kravetz said, running ahead.

  “Wait for me, you freak.”

  The rain was falling harder when they arrived at Jaffa Street. Hundreds of people crowded around the steaming carcass of the bus, which was flattened and twisted like some giant insect. A police line pushed the crowds back. Religious men dressed in black shook their fists, chanting that peace with the Arabs is suicide. Men dressed in white jumpsuits were picking through the debris for body parts. Kravetz had read about these men in the newspaper the past week, how it was their job to gather every hair, tooth, and drop of blood for a proper Jewish burial. Atop the Generali Building Hesed shel Emet volunteers scraped body parts from the face of a winged stone lion. Shawn stood on a garbage can and pulled Kravetz up with him. Kravetz held Shawn around the waist and could feel his warm behind against him. All the windows were shattered along Jaffa Street. A woman hung her head out the window and wailed.

  “There’s one,” Shawn said. “Look.”

  Kravetz could see a black charred body lying on the road behind the bus and then another, a woman tangled inside the bus, beneath a seat back. He could see her colorful wool dress hiked up high on her bleeding thigh, and he swore he saw her move, just for a second. He saw a green apple on the ground nearby that seemed to be miraculously untouched.

  “I’m going down there,” Shawn said, jumping from the garbage can.

  “What? How?” Kravetz said.

  Shawn smiled and flashed him his fake foreign press id card and said, “Don’t leave home without it.” And he ran off through the crowd.

  Kravetz was too stunned to move and just stood where he was until a man climbed up on the can next to him and whispered in his ear, “Oslo is dead.”

  Stuart’s throat clenched, as if he would cry, but he could only cough. Shawn had weaseled his way through the barrier and had moved in close to the bus, snapping shots next to CNN, UPI, the AP. This was it, Lucky Eighteen, the shot they’d both been waiting for. And Shawn was down in front at the second bus eighteen bombing, kneeling next to the lady with the wool dress. Kravetz could see him pull away the seat back and before Shawn turned to flash the thumbs-up sign, Kravetz could see there was no upper part of her body. He leaned over and threw up, a thin viscous fluid that tasted like tobacco, like Jana’s kisses, like five thousand years, like the dying peace process. When he looked up again, Shawn had it in the can, his centerpiece shot, the woman with her skirt hiked up, his prize winner, a lament, or celebration of . . . something they didn’t fully understand.

  Glossary

  Allah: Muslim name for God.

  Am Yisrael Chai: Hebrew for “The people of Israel live.”

  Amalek: A nomadic tribe of the Hebrew Bible, hostile to Israel. Amalek has come to be known as the archetypal enemy of the Jews throughout history, including the Nazis and the Palestinians in the twentieth century.

  Babi Yar: A ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev in which nearly 34,000 Jews were massacred on September 29–30, 1941.

  Baksheesh: Charity to beggars in the Middle East; also used in reference to political corruption and bribery.

  Baruch Hashem: Hebrew for “Praised be God.”

  Beshert: Yiddish word meaning “destiny,” often used among Orthodox Jews to describe a preordained soul mate.

  Chmelnicki: Bogdan Chmelnicki, a Cossack leader (1595–1657) led a Cossack rebellion in what is now Ukraine. It has been estimated that anywhere between 100,000 and 500,000 Jews were massacred in hundreds of communities in Poland.

  Elohim: Hebrew for “God.”

  Fellahin: Plural for farmer or agricultural worker in Arabic.

  Fuul: Egyptian dish of mashed fava beans, olive oil, parsley, onion, garlic, and lemon juice.

  Hamsa: A hand-shaped amulet popular in North Africa and the Middle East. It is believed to ward off the evil eye.

  Hamsiin: A hot desert wind blowing from Egypt up through Israel from about March to May.

  Haram: Arabic for sanctuary or holy site in Islam.

  Hijab: The head covering traditionally worn by Muslim women.

  Huppa: A canopy under which a Jewish couple stands during a wedding ceremony symbolizing the privacy of the home. It is considered a basic requirement for a Jewish wedding.

  Inshallah: Arabic for “God willing.”

  Kaffiyeh: A traditional cloth headdress worn by Arab men.

  Kanafi: A Middle Eastern desert made with white cheese and honey.

  Kashrut: The set of Jewish dietary laws.

  Kippah: A skullcap, also known as a yarmulke, worn by religiously observant Jewish men to fulfill the requirement to cover their heads.

  The Kotel: The Western Wall; the remaining Western Wall of the Temple built by King Herod on the site of Solomon’s Temple.

  Kristallnacht: Night of Broken Glass. A pogrom against Jews in Germany and Austria on November 9–10, 1938, in which stores owned by Jews and synagogues were vandalized and the windows were broken.

  Ma’ariv service: Jewish evening prayer service.

  Mazel: Hebrew for “luck.” Literally means “star.”

  Mea Shearim: One hundred gates; one of the oldest neighborhoods in the new city of Jerusalem, populated by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

  Mezuzah: A piece of parchment contained within a decorative case affixed to the doorposts of Jewish homes. Two verses from the book of Deuteronomy are inscribed upon the parchment.

  Mikvah: A bath used for ritual immersion in Judaism.

  Minyan: Traditionally a group of ten Jewish males required to conduct a communal service. In Reform and most Conservative communities, women are now counted.

  Mitzvah: Commandment. Any of the 613 commandments Jews are obligated to observe.

  Mizrachi: Refers to Jews from the Middle East and North Africa.

  Moloch: The name of an ancient Semitic deity associated with sacrifice of children by their parents.

  Moshiach: A term that means “anointed” and that was traditionally applied to many different kinds of leaders in ancient Israel including prophets, priests, and kings. More commonly it came to mean a political leader descended from the House of David who would bring peace. The word “Messiah” is the English (King James) attempt at transliteration.

  Motek: Hebrew for “sweetheart” or “sweetie.”

  Muezzin: In Islam, the person chosen to lead the call to prayer from one of the mosque’s minarets.

  Mukhtar: Title given to the head of a village or neighborhood in the Arab world.

  Nigun: A wordless religious Jewish melody, often improvised, with repetitive sounds instead of lyrics.

  Nudnik: Yiddish for “a pest” or “a nuisance.”

  Palmach: Strike force. The elite fighting force for the Haganah in pre-state Israel before the establishment of the Israeli Defense Forces.

  Pogrom: An organized massacre of Jews in Eastern Europe.

  Portzim: Stormers; a unit of the Palmach.

  Rashi: An acronym for the medieval French Rabbi, Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki.

  Rebbe: Leader of a Hasidic group.

  Sefer Torah: The Torah, or the Five Books of Moses; the holiest book in Judaism.

  Sephardi: Originally referred to a Jew expelled from the Iberian Peninsula in the fifteenth century. Now, it refers to Jews from Spanish-speaking countries. Seen historically in Israel as a secondclass citizen by the more educated, European Ashkenazi Jews.

  Shaddai: The Almighty. An ancient name of God commonly used in Hebrew scripture.

  Sheheheyanu: A common Jewish prayer from the
Talmud said on joyous occasions.

  The Shema: An affirmation of Judaism and of faith in one God and a central prayer in Jewish prayer services, taken from the book of Deuteronomy. Many observant Jews consider this to be the most important prayer in Judaism.

  Shesh besh: Backgammon.

  Shiduch: A system of matchmaking in which Jewish Orthodox singles are introduced to each other for the purpose of marriage.

  Shmatte: Yiddish for a rag or shabby garment.

  Shuk: Outdoor fruit and vegetable marketplace; refers to Shuk Mahane Yehuda in Jerusalem.

  Shukran: Arabic for “thank you.”

  Simcha: Hebrew for “ joy” or “gladness.” Also means “a festive occasion.”

  Streimel: A fur hat worn by married ultra-Orthodox Jewish men on Jewish holidays and other festive occasions.

  Tchotchkes: Yiddish for “useless knickknacks.”

  Tefillin: A set of leather straps and small leather boxes containing verses from the Torah worn by observant Jews once a day during morning prayers, except on certain holidays and the Sabbath.

  Tehillim: The Hebrew name for the book of Psalms.

  Tishri: A month on the Jewish calendar that falls during September and October. Many holidays occur during this month including the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

  Treif: Non-kosher food.

  Tschuva: Hebrew for “repentance, return.”

  Tzitzis: Fringes or tassels found on a prayer shawl worn by observant Jews.

  Wadi: A valley or dry riverbed that fills during the rainy season.

  Yala: Arabic for “Let’s go,” or “hurry up.” Commonly used in Hebrew conversation.

  Yam Ha Melach: Hebrew for the Dead Sea. Literally “Salt Sea.”

  Yeled: Hebrew for “child.”

  Yeshiva bocher: A young man studying at a Jewish religious seminary.

  The Ascent of Eli Israel

  Jonathan Papernick

  READING GROUP GUIDE DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Why do you think Papernick decided to start the collection with a story set in 1948 when the remaining six stories were set during the 1990s? Does “Malchyk” effectively set up themes presented throughout the rest of the book?