by Sara Shilo
At first, they tried to pick me up. They tried to talk to me, shout at me, drag me up. In the end they left me alone. They’d circle me, blocking their ears and screaming, ‘Itzik! Itzik!’ I felt like a football player, urged on by the crowd. They’d all shout, even the girls, until the teacher came to take them away, to make them sit somewhere else.
One day they decided to give me my own special space. The teacher’s assistant took me by the hand and said, ‘Itzik, when you need to lie down on the floor, come over here.’ She put me in a little cupboard near the kitchen, where the broom, the bucket and the mop were kept, and said, ‘You’ve just got to hold it in until you get here. Then you won’t disturb anyone else and no one will see you.’ She explained it in exactly the same way she’d explain to a kid who peed or pooed his pants, that there was a place for such things, that you shouldn’t do things like that near other people. So I’d go and lie there instead. Instead of smelling my own sweat, I’d smell dusters and cleaning liquids. I think it was then that I got addicted to the smell. Even now, if I want to calm down, I go to the bathroom, pour some washing powder into the sink and breathe it in. Then I can calm down, clear my mind.
At first I used to hate God for making me this way for his own fun. Just to see what a person looks like who can’t hold anything in his hands, who bleeds whenever he tries something for the first time, who falls over when he tries to walk, because his feet aren’t like other people’s feet, who sweats with the effort of trying to be like everyone else.
Then I used to curse him, deep in my heart. God’s name and a curse, as one. I’d curse him in Hebrew, in Arabic, in Moroccan. I’d invent curses. And I stopped going to synagogue on Sabbath, so he could see I wasn’t playing his game. What’s he after anyway? Is it just to have everyone go the synagogue and sing songs about how wonderful he is?
Show me the person who wouldn’t sign up to that. To have everyone read a book that’s all about him, which if it fell on the floor is picked up instantly as if it were a baby, checked to see it’s OK, its dirty cover given a kiss. Show me the person who wouldn’t dream of everyone reading this book together, a book that commands them to sing about him, about his goodness and strength, and to obey him. You can look all you like, you won’t find anyone who’d say no to that.
When did I get my new idea? Four months ago, when I turned thirteen without a bar mitzvah or anything. I don’t know how it started. Maybe God saw I wasn’t his pet, and gave me this new thought. I used to think God wanted to see how someone managed with hands and feet that were different, but maybe he just wanted to invent a new type of person altogether.
Maybe God wanted to create a person who had no use for normal machines, cutlery, tools, weapons, clothes, shoelaces, pencils, erasers or razors. None of that was any use to him.
Why not? I bet he wanted to see how inventive that person would be.
Even a tefeillin is no good. He’d even have to invent a new way to tie himself to God. And a tefeillin isn’t something someone else can do for you.
But truthfully, I don’t know what to believe. If God had made me mute, I might think he just wanted to make fun of me. But he gave me brains to think about all the things that happen in the world, so maybe he did want to try something new. Why would he watch all the people in the world, doing the same thing, for a million years? I think he must always be looking at me, God, why else would he make me this way? He chose me when I was in Mum’s belly: Me, Itzik Dadon, the first boy of a new kind of people.
Dudi
Today we’re going down into the wadi, taking the path lined with boulders, far away from the houses. We’re neither too cold nor too hot. Itzik’s big hat sits above his ears like a helmet. He never takes it off. He even sleeps in it. He only ever washes it at the outdoor tap in the wadi, then puts it back on straight away, soaking wet. I wish I could take it off him – the hat and the fingers together make him ugly – but Itzik doesn’t think about his looks. He never looks at himself in a mirror. He walks around like he’s invisible.
Itzik and people don’t go well together. But I’d like to live in a world filled with people and nothing else. I’d take that.
He thinks everyone and everything is a traitor. Once he said to me, ‘Look how our clothes betray us. On Pesach Kobi gave you the blue shirt, remember? When you first put it on, it was like you were wearing Kobi’s shirt, that you’d dressed up as Kobi. The next day it was the same: Dudi’s wearing Kobi’s shirt. The shirt didn’t forget its owner. But after a month, it’s over. The shirt has passed itself from Kobi to Dudi. Now when you walk around in it, it’s yours, completely. You can’t tell that it transferred from one person to another! And it’s exactly the same thing with cars. When Reuven first sold his pickup to Makhlouf, you’d see the pickup turn into the street, and you’d think: Here’s Reuven’s Amar. Even when you saw Makhlouf in it, you’d still think he was driving Reuven’s pickup. But after two or three months, you look at it in the street, and you say: Makhlouf. That’s it. Finished. The truck forgot the person who sat in it for three years. The things we think are ours betray us without a care in the world. Now, if cars and shirts are like that, it can’t be any different with people, can it?’
We go further into the wadi. I lead, choosing a path he can walk on without falling. The way I’m walking, you’d think we both have a problem with our feet. As soon as I hear the sound of his breathing behind me, I pretend I have to pee, or that I’m tired, or that my foot hurts, and we find a stone to sit down on together.
All of a sudden he starts to talk, slowly. It’s as if his words are rocks and he doesn’t have the strength to pick up too many at a time. ‘Say, Dudi …’ he begins. I know what’s coming. When he starts like that, I just don’t know how it’s going to end. Once it almost ended with the police. Heavy words start to fall. ‘Say you were a terrorist. What would you target? Our building?’
‘I don’t know. You’re making me into a terrorist now? What did I do to you?’
‘Think, Dudi, think for a minute. Let’s say we’re terrorists. What would we target?’
‘Why are you talking like this?’
‘Listen, Dudi. Are you with me? Let’s sit on this rock for a while. Close your eyes for a minute and think.’
Obediently, my eyes close. That’s Itzik’s power. I could beat him up even if I was sick. But he can finish me off with two words.
‘We’re terrorists now, Dudi. You and me. Imagine … We’ve carried out a thousand training missions. Our hearts are as strong as iron and beat slowly, never racing because of fear. Then our moment arrives. We break through the border fence at night. They don’t catch us. That’s how good we are. There are no more than two hundred metres between us and the Israeli army, and they can’t see us, even with all their searchlights. Are you with me?’
‘You’ve got to say it in Arabic. I can’t think like a terrorist in Hebrew.’
‘Ahalan wasahalan, tefadalu, Allahuakbar! Allahuaakbar! Ru’h min hon! Itba’h elYahud!’
‘OK, so we’re terrorists, with our keffiyehs.’
‘Now it’s midnight, Dudi. We walk at night. Ten or twenty miles, with the guns and bombs on our back. We crawl, too, crawl really quietly. They don’t catch us. We move here, to the wadi, to the big boulder. We climb it, feel the cold when we lie on it. We go past the red tree. Can you see us?’
‘Yes, I can.’
‘It’s starting to get light. Open your eyes a little – no, not all the way, more closed than open. Ex-act-ly. Now we can see houses, streets, a water tower, but we don’t know the town. We don’t recognise a thing. Get it?’
‘What do you mean? What don’t we recognise?’
‘We’ve never been here before. How could we recognise it? We don’t know who lives where or if they’re Romanian, Sephardim, Tunisian, Moroccan. We don’t know where anything is. We’re not from here. We don’t know a thing – whether people are young, old. Nothing.’
‘We don’t know nothing.’
‘Now, listen, Dudi. If you see people’s faces, everything we’ve done goes down the pan. If you look at people, you start to think: I like him so I won’t target his house, but I don’t like the look of that other one. You’re a terrorist. You’ve got no family, no friends, nothing. Get it?’
‘Totally!’
‘Now you have to pick a house, to make a choice. You, alone. So, which one are you going to choose?’
‘I’ll tell you something. If I was a terrorist here in the wadi, I’d go up to the closest house, the first one I could see. I’d go straight up the path, and in without a second thought. The railroad apartments, say. Right, Itzik?’
‘No, Dudi, that’s not right.’
‘Why not? I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t we just go to the railroad apartments and get it over with?’
‘OK, I’ll explain. Now imagine that I’m the terrorist. I choose my building carefully. I know I’m going to die there, and I don’t want just any old place. You only die once, don’t you? I also know the newspapers will come and take my photo afterwards.’
‘What, your photo will be in the newspaper?’
‘After something like that, definitely. Why wouldn’t I be? Who doesn’t want to be in the newspaper? So I look at the buildings to see which is best. Not all buildings look good in photos. And I want to make a statement, too. I think you’ve forgotten we’re terrorists. What good would it do to blow up the railroad apartments? We’d get one family, and then we’d be caught and that would be the end of it. Before we could do any more, the people in the other apartments would hear and come out for us. Get it?’
‘What do you mean? So we shouldn’t go into the railroad apartments? People who live there are always afraid because they’re at ground level. The minute Rafi’s family hear about a break in the border fence they get out the axes his dad’s hidden under the bed. They sleep with them at night. His dad probably got them from the JNF. What’s up, Itzik? You’ve gone deaf all of a sudden? So where would you choose? You still haven’t said. What about the terraces? Why not? Where, then? I bet you’re thinking of our building.’
‘What are you on about, Dudi? I’d never choose our building in a million years. No way. Even if it was an option, I wouldn’t choose it because of the rubbish. Maybe if it was cleaned up, so there was no stinking rubbish or graffiti. Maybe then. But not definitely. Let’s walk to the carob tree so we can see it.’
We walk as far as the carob tree, past the tall oaks, then up the path slowly until we can see our building.
‘I’d never pick it, Dudi,’ he says. ‘Look at it. All that rubbish from the big families on the ground floor. If they cleaned it up, I’d think about it, but not as it is. I’d never target it. They should clean it up first. Clean it, then paint it. Why are you making that face? They’re just sitting there waiting for City Cleanup to come and do it for them. They should do it themselves. They can dilute the paint with water, but the materials wouldn’t cost much anyway. Two pots would be enough for the whole entrance, although they shouldn’t put too much water in. Why? Because it wouldn’t get rid of the graffiti.’
‘You want terrorists to bomb our building? Is that what you really want, Itzik? You’ve lost your marbles. Wait till Kobi hears about this. I’m not going to keep quiet about it. As soon as he comes home from work, I’m going to tell him.’
‘Leave Kobi out of this. What did he ever do for you? He’s paid you off with a few pennies for the cinema. When the terrorists turns up, what good will that do you, eh? The minute he hears them coming, he’ll run into the cupboard. He practises. You won’t see him for dust. What sort of a man is that? You tell me! Someone who trains how to hide. He’s not your dad, someone to say, “Come on, sweetheart, you go into the cupboard. It’s better that you should live and I should die!”’
‘As if you’ve got any better ideas.’
‘But I’m not afraid of the terrorists! I don’t shiver and shake like the rest of the town. Let ’em come, let ’em come. Itzik’s got a little plan. Believe me, Dudi, if you just do what I say, they’ll curse the day they ever came here. And they’ll curse the day they were born, too.’
Then he began to explain his plan: the kestrel might not be able to kill them, but she could take out their eyes. She wouldn’t need to attack them all, just the leader. If you kill the leader, the other terrorists are finished – everyone knows that.
When he was satisfied I understood, he said, ‘We’d get a medal of honour for that. At the very least. All I want you to do is to talk to that volunteer, what’s-his-name, the one who paints the shelters and the rubbish bins. Let’s get him to come and do some painting for us. That’d be better than a normal paint job. He could cover up all the holes and also the shit that Motti spread around after Beitar lost the game.’
‘Mike?’
‘What Mike? Who’s Mike? Motti Abarjil did it.’
‘No, I’m talking about the volunteer that paints. His name is Mike. I’ve been to his house loads of times. He even made me a coffee once. You leave Mike to me, Itzik. I’ll tell him what to draw. If you tell him to put in mountains and snow, then he’ll do that, as well as trees and waterfalls, just like in films. That’s what he did in Shimmi’s building. You tell him to do an ocean with boats, that’s what he’ll do. I’d let him draw the Wailing Wall if he wanted to.’
‘The Wailing Wall? What are you talking about that for?’
‘Since he went to Jerusalem at Pesach, he’s been dying to paint the Wailing Wall. He’s painted a little one in his room. You give him a big wall, Itzik, and he’ll give you the Wailing Wall. You’d swear the stones were real. Only when you touch them can you tell they’re painted. And he’ll do the religious guys, too, the ones in black with the round hats, as well as the notes and the grass. Whatever you tell him to do, he’ll do.’
‘How long would it take him to paint the Wall?’
‘Three or four days. A week at the most. And he does it for free. You could have a sunset, too, or a blue sky, with birds even. He’ll do whatever you want.’
He listened, waited until I had finished, then said I should stop getting so excited.
‘What’s so great about the Wall? It’s just a pile of rocks. What does it have to do with God? And what’s it got to do with us?
Then he said he had a problem.
‘I didn’t sleep all night because of it, Dudi. All I could think about was a name for her. There’s no way, no way on earth, she can’t have a name. She sleeps with me, but I don’t know her name. My brain was on fire trying to think of a name, but nothing came to me, nothing. My mind was a blank. She’s not a dog, she’s a raptor. If you say “Blackie” or “Spot” to a dog, he’ll come. He’ll come running up, tail wagging, to any name you give him. But she’s got more pride. Her place is in the sky. She even shits in the sky.’
‘You’re after a name? I can think of hundreds of names. I’m great on girls’ names.’
‘Just don’t call her Liat. Or after any of your volunteers from the Absorption Centre. Not the name of someone you’ve got a crush on. Get it? I need an honourable name. Not the name of just anyone.’
‘Liat’s not just anyone! Even Kobi and Mordi, who saw her on Memorial Day—’
‘Forget Mordi and Kobi! I need you to think of a name as if you were looking at her, how she flies then homes in on something, how she grabs food, tears your hand with her claws, how she gets hostile when she’s hungry. Even though she’s strong and fearless, she’s still a girl, as you can see by the colour of her feathers. And don’t talk to me about Kobi again. You and Kobi. Don’t you say one word about Itzik’s plan. He’s not our brother any more. It’s over. Mum made him into Oshri and Chaim’s dad instead. He can’t be two things at once. That would make him God.’
‘Delilah.’
‘What about Delilah?’
‘Delilah. We’ll call her Delilah.’
‘Isn’t she someone from the Bible?’
‘Of course she is. Samson’s wife, Delilah.
You haven’t been to school for two months and already you’ve forgotten about Samson and Delilah?’
‘I don’t remember. It just disappeared from my head. De-li-lah. I really like that. It’s got honour, but it’s not too heavy. It’s delicate, too. Delilah. Well done, Dudi, you got it just right. I wouldn’t have thought of that in a million years. Delilah. Yalla, let’s get her some food from the butchers. Did you talk to Moshe about giving us scraps? You’re a great guy, you really are. And then we’ll start training her with her name. You remember the boy in the film, how he shouted to the flying bird, ‘Kes! Kes!’ And the bird to flew to him. That takes training, Dudi, a lot of training. Get it?’
We go back to the town. Again I can see Itzik’s weighty thoughts. His head is like a cement mixer. After two or three days, every thought in his head has spilled out and turned into something real.
If I have a thought, on the other hand, it’s invisible, like the wind, like a plastic bag tossed into the street and whisked up until it’s like a little fly in the sky. Soon you can’t even see it, and after five minutes, no one will care that one of Dudi’s thoughts came into the world.
Itzik
When I wake in the morning, I just want one thing: a mountain.
I want a huge mountain right by my bed, brown with white rocks. So that as soon as I open my eyes, as soon as I put my feet on the floor, a mountain is standing there ready to be smashed, by me, Itzik Dadon. I’d make no allowances. I’d rip it up with my hands, the ones God decided would come into the world, hands of a new kind.
