by Izzy Ezagui
“Sir, do you think maybe we should take him to the hospital? Looks pretty bad.”
“Do I think—? Yes! Yes, my driver will take him.”
An hour later, I'm in the X-ray room.
Not for the first—or the last—time.
DRIVING BLIND
I'm fourteen, on break from yeshiva, and I've been whining for about an hour. I really don't want to go with my father to a parlor meeting in Miami. Why would any kid want to attend an event honoring some random Israeli terror victim? Even a dentist could diagnose my galloping ADHD—how am I supposed to sit still? Listen to some boring speech? And what the hell is a “parlor meeting” anyway? Are they holding a séance?
And then Eyal Neufeld, the terror victim, begins to speak. I'm sitting on the staircase at the edge of a crowded living room, my hands on the railings. With his first word, a hush descends over the room. “Here's the story,” he says. “I'm a nineteen-year-old off-duty soldier. I'm riding the 361 Har Meron bus home. We're near the northern Israeli city of Safed. A man shouts just before my stop. Something in Arabic. I turn and watch the passenger who was just sitting beside me stand up and hug another Israeli soldier right behind me. Why this hug? And then they both blow up. Nine people are murdered, ten seriously wounded, and that's the last image I'll ever see—a Hamas killer hugging one of my own.”
I'm stunned. Why did my father take me here?
“My lungs and spleen are shredded. My nose, my skull, my eye sockets, my neck, my jaw, and my right hand are all broken or fractured. I'm in a coma for two months. When I finally wake up, I'm blind and deaf. I'm at Rambam Hospital in Haifa, but I don't know it yet. I'm convinced I've been captured by Hamas. I think the mysterious people poking and prodding are terrorists torturing me.”
The fuzz on my neck stands on end.
“It isn't until the staff finds a way to communicate with me—big plastic letters—that I realize I'm home. And these strange figures I can't see or hear are trying to help me.”
I feel dizzy, and I shut my eyes reflexively.
When I open my eyes again, I look over the whitewashed living room, scrutinizing the well-to-do patrons who've come to contribute to Eyal's cause. I watch their eyes as they watch the blind man. “This darkness travels with me 24/7. It drives me crazy, if I'm honest. I can't escape it. A totally obscure, black, colorless, formless space that is my universe. I may be blind and deaf, but I'm not retarded,” he says. “So all the ‘ifs’ haunt that darkness. What if I picked another seat? What if I jumped out the window after I heard the shout? What if? What if?”
He continues, but I hear nothing more. Until my father says, “Let's meet him.”
“What? No.”
But he's already dragged me down the stairs and through the crowd across the room. I'm relieved Eyal can't see the way I'm staring at his scars, the weird, deep-seated way his dead eyes look. His hearing aids. I slip from my father's grip and beat a quick retreat back to my perch behind the banister. Everyone is still in “hush” mode, so I can hear the conversation my father's having with Eyal. “Sorry this happened to you.”
“Yeah, me too.”
“Are they showing you a good time while you're here in Miami?”
“Showing?”
“Oy, I'm so—”
“Relax. Just teasing.”
“So…what do you like to do?”
“I'm sorry?”
“What are your hobbies?”
“My hobbies?”
“Sure. Stuff you like to do for fun.”
“Well, I enjoy fast cars.”
“Really!?” says my father. “Same here.”
“I used to dream about owning something, you know, with epic torque,” says Eyal.
“Have you ever been in a Z8?”
“The BMW? Not yet, but I hear it's a beaut.”
“Listen, Eyal. I've got an idea…What do they have you doing tomorrow?”
I'm not present the day my father lets a blind terror victim loose on the racetrack in a silver convertible roadster. Of course he would never put my life at risk even if he hadn't staged his stunt on a school day. But while the rabbis blather on about Jewish law, language, and custom, I look out the window at the wind-ruffled palms. And when I close my eyes I can hear a blind man's triumphant howl, the wind whipping through his hair, and that exhilarating torque roaring underfoot.
That's the kind of guy my father is. Always was.
Growing up, we got to spend time together after school while we accomplished our separate, yet equally important, objectives. Like back when I was nine.
“Take that, Batman!” I yip, as Superman's booted foot meets the center of the Dark Knight's tight black spandex.
“Of course,” my father says into the phone. “Count me in.”
“Kapow!” I respond, sending the Batmobile on a perfect trajectory for the stairs.
“Whatever you need,” my father says reassuringly into the receiver. Batman moans on the steps of city hall in Metropolis, or maybe Gotham—hard to keep track. “Yes. Sure. Do you want me to mail the check to—? OK, come and pick it up.”
He hangs up. “Izzy,” he says. “You know what tzedakah is, right?”
“Charity.”
“Not quite. It means ‘righteousness.’ We don't separate charity from duty when it comes to the needy. That means anyone—poor, sick, handicapped, refugee—and always without causing them embarrassment, or showing off that you're the big spender. See, giving is something no one can ever take away from you. They can take your money, your material possessions. But once our good deeds are done, that's forever.”
I nod comprehension, but inside, a deep-seated fear begins to mount in my nine-year-old head. I'm worried all this giving could start to hurt us—but that's only part of my anxiety. My real fear, what truly scares me, is the likelihood that I'll never be able to keep up with him, that I'll never be able to be as giving. Or to give him the naches he deserves. How could I ever compete?
ARMS AROUND HER
October 2008. With my goal of getting home to my family, by any means, finally achieved, I hobble straight from my hospital stint to our apartment in Jerusalem. Only this time, my father's not tinkering or talking on the phone. This time, he's in New York, under house arrest, as he awaits trial. My mother opens the door, and the smells of holiday dinner waft from behind her. “Hi, Ma.” We hug.
“Izzy! What happened? Why are you limping? My God.”
“It doesn't matter. I'm home.”
She's crying. I'm wearing Oren's grin.
Later, we're at the dinner table. I'm supposed to be saying the blessing for the fruit of the earth, but I'm just staring at the plate in front of me, stoned on pain. As if in sympathy with my father, I see I'm also in a prison. I'm trapped inside the skin of a complete wimp—the lowest of the low. Maybe this will be a life sentence. Why couldn't I have just gone AWOL? Just left the base and suffered the consequence for abandoning my post? Instead, I struck the only body I'll ever get. This isn't a video game. I don't get to restart each level, like Mario, wearing new suspenders on his fresh set of bones. What really makes me anxious is how good it felt—how satisfying. As though my troubles had always been awaiting some physical expression. As if cracking open my skeleton was the only way to release the voice inside.
I put the strange fruit down, something red with spikes that I've never tasted. I don't deserve to eat so well while my father sits starved for freedom. I look at my three sisters’ faces, one by one. I swear to the universe that if we survive this, I will never again be a pussy. The only thought that gets me through this fire is the certainty that I will absolutely keep my vow. That starts with instantly, right now, becoming the man of the house for my mother and my sisters.
“I'm sorry,” I say. “Sorry for letting things get this bad.”
My mother looks up from her plate. “Oh, Izzy,” she says. “So much of life is out of our control. Look what happened to your father. And what about your foot?”
I bite my tongue, hard.
“HaShem works in mysterious ways,” she concludes.
“HaShem is everywhere!” Shoshi exclaims. Six years old, and spreading mushy carrots everywhere.
“That's right,” my mother says, praising.
“That's right,” I echo for my mother's sake, and I see the gratitude in her eyes. That's when I make her a promise. “Nothing will ever hurt this family again. You have my word.”
Later I'll deal with the IDF's marred property—right now, these people need me.
January 8–9, 2009. Soroka Hospital. Waking up in ICU Recovery is about as much fun as being born. Breech. And, on top of everything, I was “born” missing a limb. Almost instantly I understand I have a bed-partner. Phantom pain is sharing my sheets, spooning me, laughing in his dream. This Fuckface and I are going to be an official couple from now on. He's turned me into a housewife numbing myself all day on opiates as he's out there partying it up with hotter, younger babes. I wish to file for divorce. But he's in this for life. I'll always come home to you, Phantom whispers in my ear.
I keep coming back into consciousness, only to hear everyone yammering about the “soul.” Meantime, isn't it my body that's broken? Let's get our priorities straight. One young nurse compliments my inner strength—just because I'm not blubbering, I guess—and says she can tell I have a good neshama (soul). “You'll get through this. Trust me. I've seen a thousand—I can tell.” Would I get through it? One old doctor says to a younger one—I don't think he knows I can hear—that I'm about to enter “the long, dark night of the soul.” I presume this means I'll be lying awake for some months wondering what the hell a nice boychik like me was even doing out there on the Gaza border. And what the hell I'm supposed to do now that I left my arm there.
They ask if I've gotten morphine. It's right there on the chart, but I say no, and I can use some, please. It's the only thing that puts PF to sleep. That gives me time to consider my predicament. I wonder, when I do all the soul-searching I know people must do when they find themselves in my kind of rare snafu—what will I find down there? I suspect tumbleweeds. Maybe a pair of sarcastic vultures cawing atop a dead olive tree limb. A pile of sheep dung entertaining flies by the trunk.
The door to the emergency bunker stands slightly ajar, allowing the florescent bulbs that line the hallway to cast a dim glow inside. Whitewashed walls. Cheap, tiled floors. Fuckface loves the décor. I find it isn't such a cheerful place, nor aesthetically pleasing. But it is anesthetically wonderful. Plenty of pain meds swim through my system. Plenty. The grim ambiance and the morphine infusion meld my surroundings into a warbling silhouette, caressed by the fluorescence above. If not for the privacy curtains between each bed, I might be able to just make out the contours of the other four battered soldiers recovering with me in the fortified room.
But I can't. PF and I have the space to ourselves. Within hours, an endless parade of visitors stream in, distracting me from reality five minutes at a time. They all bear gifts. It's only been a few hours since my surgery, and the nurses have had to clear out a closet for all the “Get Well” presents. Lots of junk food: Gummy worms. Almond cookies. Rugelach. Delicious-smelling licorice from Australia. Jerky from South Africa. My stomach is sick, so I can't eat any of it. No one brings me Mike and Ikes.
As the first evening wears on, responding to the visitors makes me more and more winded, so the hospital staff stems the stream. I just want to sleep. During sleep, I won't have to think about the past or future. I'll be…nothing. Empty.
The soul: Sure, I believe in the soul. I just don't believe I have one. There are certainly people who have souls. Those three lovely medics in the ambulance, the nurses, the doctors (well, some of them). The visitors who bucked up and kept from crying when they saw me, knowing they needed to be strong. My mother, God bless her, has a soul the size of Cincinnati. What I have, I know, is a black hole surrounded by body chalk where my soul's supposed to be, possibly used to be. And now some helpful CSI guy has erased one of the arms in my outline.
No sleep. The others—the guys behind the curtains—seem to find some peace through their drug-induced comas. Have I already built up a tolerance for the morphine? No way. The drugs are making me want to puke. Or maybe that's just the world spinning now, dizzying me with morose, unanswerable questions: Did I let my unit down? What could I have done differently? Who could love me now? What girl will ever want to—? Is this the final straw that will kill my father, break my mother's heart? If I can focus on something, I can ease the nausea for long moments at a time. But my eyes dart around the bunker, searching, searching. For what?
My soul?
In the sparse light, I can identify, just barely, the outline of the IV bag that hangs above and to the right of my bed. Eyes glued to the drizzle, I watch the bag slowly dispense its cocktail into my body. And I simply…breathe. The paradox is that every breath sustaining me feeds Fuckface, too, currently teething on the wound like a sarlacc in the Dune Sea of Tatooine.
When I break my concentration, I notice the hubbub of the hospital ward has died down considerably. I hear only the rhythmic beeping of the life-support machines and various monitors. No. There's something else. Some animal in here, some wounded thing. It's the intermittent moans escaping from the bed across from me. I know now from the nurses’ talk, and a glimpse I got when they opened the curtain, that a mangled reservist lay there. I try to muster some sympathy, or empathy, or whatever it's called. I feel nothing. I feel that his whining is going to drive me insane. I need more morphine. He needs way more morphine.
But, screw this moaning son of Satan stationed across from me.
Yes. Where my soul should be starts spinning, a swirling vortex like those dust devils in the desert. My entire mission now is to mute this human air horn. In an alternate dimension, I'd be the cantankerous old man on the floor below him banging the ceiling with a broom handle, demanding he shut off his blasted EDM and let a guy get some goddamn sleep.
No more alternate realities for me. Despite all the drugs in my system, my situation smacks me in the face with the here and now, the truth of my new normal. I've spent a good ten thousand hours reading fantasy and science fiction all throughout my youth. And now I come to find no force field shielded me from a simple mortar. It's the catastrophe on planet Hoth all over again. I couldn't catch the bomb in my web, wind up, and chuck it into the clouds like Spidey. No high-tech bio-suit built by Lucius Fox protected me.
No. Batman, with all his gadgetry and stealth, would never lose an arm. And try as I might now, I can't morph my body into something else, something whole, something that doesn't hurt like hell. Damn them all, my heroes of the past. Real heroes look like Zvika Greengold, the tank squadron leader who faced off the entire Syrian Army. Fire from a T-62 burned more than half his body, shrapnel cut him up, but still he fought on for hours.
My gaming console is the only war zone where I can boast anything close to Zvika's heroics. For the rest of my time on Earth, I now know, I will never forget that you don't get a second life. You don't get resurrected after that melancholy “Game Over” music plays your blinking corpse off screen. If I ever dare forget that, I'm certain PF will be there to remind me. Dick.
I take a risk and look down at my bandages. They're tightly wrapped in a way that's causing the amputation to pulse, and yet, red and yellow shades of goop manage to seep through the weaves. My eyes move from my left “arm” to my left foot. I cannot believe what I did to myself four months ago. My leg, I notice, pulses, too. I can fully sense both damaged areas but, mercy, these meds are performing their magic. Both spots are warm and fiery, as if my arm and leg are old buddies, knocking back cheap shots of tequila at the pub. I can feel in the twin pulses how each injury's dancing to a different tempo. The amputation throbs strong and slow like the heart of a brave Wookiee, while the pulse in my ankle flutters and jumps like a skittish womp rat.
How could I? How? When at any moment, this kind of thing could have
happened to me—what the hell was I thinking? Or did this happen because I—?
Don't go there, Iz. The first step in your new reality, the only option, is to grit your teeth and keep moving. You've got to honor your vow. The I'll-Never-Again-Be-a-Pussy Promise. Be more like Amir, will you? For once? Now's your chance.
But first I have to try to filter out the cries of my neighbor. It becomes a kind of contest. Who will win the Nobel Peace-and-Quiet Prize? I could trounce this guy with my silence. By my grit.
A visiting soldier told me the poor guy's story, how he was a reservist whose unit had been sent to a rally point on a building outside of Gaza. As he prepared his gear for battle, he simply tumbled over the roof's ledge. Corporal H. Dumpty just plummeted off the three-story building, head first. He owes his life to a wide-open casement window that jutted out on his path to Skull Crack City. This guy can forever trace his lifetime supply of living back to a solid wooden window frame. To some random resident who wanted a breeze, or to get rid of the fish smell in his kitchen. What about me? Am I supposed to be grateful now? It seems as though I should be, but gratitude, I bet, comes from the soul.
His howls pierce the stale air of our chamber. I hate this guy. So what if the window frame shattered his whole leg from ankle to hip like one of those fluorescent tube light bulbs? My father went back to work the next day after shattering thirteen bones when he fell three stories. So what if a window frame spun the reservist around so that he landed ass-first and cracked his coccyx? Who needs a totally intact assbone?
You gotta shut up, guy. Please. You're alive. Shut up and deal with it. At least you've still got all your limbs. I'd give my leg now to have an arm splintered in thirteen places.
His reply to my psychic message? A long, pitiful lament, like some Jersey Shore floozy crumpled over a public toilet after a long night of boozing.
My squad mate, Rabbi, resting right beside me, has suffered a shattered femur by shrapnel—and he's not whining. In fact, fifty other wounded men—all undergoing untold agony—lay within a hundred-meter radius of us. Why is this trooper so special, his pain so much more unbearable? Some of these soldiers will never see or walk again—or jerk off with their more maneuverable hand—while Sissy Pants over here, with all his limbs still attached, will likely make a full recovery. He'll go back to playing ball in Gan Sacher Park, or dancing with his girlfriend, with only the faintest limp, if that. A girlfriend who'll be all the more attracted to her beau's “courage under fire.” Not repulsed by a gnarly stump. God, even the word disgusts me. I'll never get used to it.
