Chains of Sand

by Jemma Wayne

  “It was a miracle to see you live.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  There is another long pause, tension thrusting through it. Udi’s leg muscles contract. He feels again as though they are on fire.

  “You know,” says Tomer carefully. “Rambam says that really there is no evil, there is only good. We see things as evil because we can only see the effects, not the cause, and because we can only see things from our insignificant perspective of the universe. We can’t see the whole plan like He can. Israel is part of the plan. And maybe there was a good reason for-”

  “Oh fuck off with your philosophising you fucking Ashky,” Shimon says, and puts his hand to his eyes. “Fucking sun,” he murmurs. “I can’t see a thing.”

  They remain in silence now for hours, interrupted only by Udi radioing in the news that there is none. Still they are required to wait. Two women in full Arabic dress walk past their bush, gossiping loudly, but other than that there is nothing to distract them from themselves. Udi radios in the sighting and it sparks conversation between them, of their current girlfriends, girls they have slept with, and girls they would like to. Udi enjoys this conversation. He feels closer to Ella. It occupies them for most of the day. They move only to stretch a numbed leg, or to pull a portion of inedible food from their backpacks, or to piss. The rest of the time they sit and allow the sun to melt them. It is almost a relief when night falls again, despite the vulnerability it carries in its dangerous black shield.

  It is Udi’s turn to sleep first but he cannot. Memories of blood, of fire, of limbs, of screaming veiled women, and of a Gazan man now dead, explode through his mind like fireworks. He had felt no honour in this killing, his fifth, not even the satisfaction of avenging his friend’s death, though others had been envious, because probably this was the man who set the bomb, or exploded it, or was at least there to shoot at those still able to crawl from the fire. He had felt only sadness, as he burned, as flesh melted from his legs, and as he was choppered away, only sadness.

  They had been checking houses. Looking for tunnels. Searching for Hamas, like cockroaches. They couldn’t walk through doors that were probably booby-trapped so used more explosive means. Udi would have felt sorry to damage property in this way and at first they tried to keep it clean, but every house contained weapons, guns, ammo. Many had IDF uniforms – to hide in? To use to infiltrate? To fool? For a young soldier it was like a slap in the face, a repetitive slap. Nobody was to be trusted. And then they’d come to one house where they hadn’t found a thing.

  It looked nice, like it could be in a quiet suburb in Israel, and the man, the father, was warm, almost welcoming. A grandmother offered them water, children played cautiously. One girl, maybe four years old, looked a little like one of Udi’s cousins and he had offered her a bar of chocolate. She was gregarious. She’d smiled and moved towards him before looking to her mother for approval, and when the mother nodded she had taken it. At once her brothers had clamoured, two of them loud and forceful, a third quiet, gentle, singing her name: Farah, Farah, Farah, please give to me. Graciously, Farah had shared the sweet between them. And then, hands sticky with chocolate, she had blown Udi a kiss. Which had made him smile. In the middle of a war he had actually smiled at the enemy.

  Offering thanks in Arabic to the father, they had left then for the house next door. But a few minutes later, sirens sounded. An ambulance came tearing down the road and Udi and Tomer rushed out of the new house they were checking to see what had happened, who had been hurt, if they could help. A press van was in tow with the ambulance and a man jumped out of it, camera poised. Watching them again. The man from the nice house ran up to Udi. At first he thought he was asking for help but then he started to shout in Arabic and broken Hebrew, to swear, to berate. He waited for the camera to move closer and then he accused Udi of kicking his four-year-old daughter down the stairs. Udi remembers feeling confused, standing confused, like a comic book drawing where question marks are popping out of somebody’s head. What had he missed? What had happened? A stretcher was rushed into the house and a moment later it returned, the young girl, Farah, on it. Udi’s first idea was that she had been hurt by the father, but thankfully she was sitting up, not hurt, as gregarious as before. She blew him another kiss. And at this the press man shook his head. It didn’t work, he told the father. The girl was removed from the stretcher, admonished, pulled roughly inside. The stretcher followed and a moment later it returned, this time the grandmother upon it, more appropriately sprawled, more appropriately wailing and wailing. Now the man of the house went up to Tomer. The camera followed. ‘You pushed my mother off the roof!’ he insisted.

  Now Udi understood. And now he should have felt validated in his mission, in what he had to do. It should have convinced him that civilians were not innocent, that everybody was complicit. It should have freed him to do his job and not think of the factors that lead to it. Just say yes. Say yes and do. But Farah’s kiss had bounced through the dusty Gazan air to him. And as she was pulled inside, crying, he felt a wrench, like something vital was being yanked away, plucked from his soul, as though this one small person was important, symbolic, crucial to everything.

  After the ambulance had left they returned to the ‘nice’ house and searched it again. This time they did not try to be clean. They yanked open drawers and pulled clothes out of closets, and that’s where they found the opening to the tunnel, and brought it down along with everything on top of it, which included the man’s flat screen television, and the grandmother’s ancient sewing machine, and Farah’s four-year-old’s bed.

  “And that’s what you get when you mess with the IDF,” had said Shimon.

  Half an hour later, Mordechai had bent down in the middle of a backyard.

  Udi is glad they are not back in Gaza. Still, they are here and he needs to sleep, he has to, soon it will be his turn to be alert and watching. Tomer’s breath is steady beside him and Shimon is quiet. There is no sound from the undergrowth around them. At last, Udi begins to drift. He dreams of course of Ella, of her determination to distract him when he falls into silent reverie, of the disappointment in her eyes when he did not propose, of her slim, tanned limbs wrapped around him, of the giggle that wakens his soul. Does she know that it is her who sees him through this? Has he ever told her? He sees her dark eyes looking through him, searching him, holding him, willing him to make the moment last forever. And he can feel her hand gently stroking his arm, his back, his leg, stroking, tapping, growing harder, too hard. He wakes. It is Shimon. His eyes are like flashlights. Their whole bush is illuminated.

  Udi lurches for the radio and requests backup. The three of them huddle as low as they can while bullets whistle past their ears. Their enemy is the night, the night with guns, but Shimon points slowly in two directions. Tomer adds another, Udi a fourth. He is scared, but it is not the first time he has been shot at and as always their training kicks in. The radio crackles and they are told that backup is at least half an hour away.

  “Great, so we’re a three-man army,” Shimon whispers, though whispering is no longer necessary.

  “I’ve got your back,” says Tomer. “Have faith.”

  They open fire. The guns are so loud that it is impossible to tell which sounds are incoming and which they are producing themselves. The bombardment collects in their eardrums as one continuous explosion. Udi strains to see in his night vision goggles and thinks of Ella, then of his mother and her open arms. And his always-strong father. The fire continues to rain down. Tomer curses. He has been hit, but it is only his calf and only a graze. They battle on. More bullets. More explosions in their ears. More moving shadows they cannot identify darting out in front of them, running towards them. Shimon throws up. The vomit smells, but not as much as the gunfire with its smoky, ashy stench. One of the shadows in front of them falls to the ground. They do not hear the thud, but each of them feel it, like dropping a weight. They continue to shoot. They continue to be shot at. T
hen Udi raises his hand and they stop. For a few minutes the clatter of bullets continues, but less than before and from only two directions. Then there is silence. It is louder than any noise of the last 30 minutes, heavy with the certainty that it will not last. Udi’s radio crackles again and he is told that backup is arriving. It does, from both sides, and in less than ten minutes the sharp, tiny missiles come afresh, though now they fly from what seems like everywhere. Occasionally there is a pause, but only a pause, and then more of that jarring sound, on and on and on, until eventually, it is light.

  Slowly, Tomer, Shimon and Udi stand up. Holding hands to eyes they see five of their fellow soldiers emerge from shrubbery nearby. There is no one else. No bodies clutter the ground. No enemy fighters stand ready to shoot them in the dawn hue. Only the empty shells littering the earth tell that there has been a battle and only the blood soaking the soil and quenching the thirst of the morning flies reveal that anyone was hit.

  “Do I get a cross? How do I know if it was me? Fuck,” Shimon says despairingly. “Fuck.”

  “It was you,” Tomer tells him. He points to a pool of blood. “See there – I remember when he went down. It was early and you were the only one firing that way. It was you, Shimon.”

  He looks to Udi for confirmation. Udi nods and Shimon lets out an obscene laugh. “I fucking got him,” he shouts. Then he laughs again, before falling silent, his mouth hanging in a fixed, wild, unnerving grin.

  Neither of them approach him. Tomer tends to his own wound and Udi returns to the bush for his backpack. They are in a state of shock, euphoric in their continuing existence and quietened by the same. They need to hurry, return to their side of the border, but Udi sits for a moment in the hollow of the tree that for three days has been his shelter. He leans back against the bark where just hours before he rested his head and dreamt of Ella. And he thinks of her again.

  “Wowee,” Shimon says, still smiling as he walks over to Udi and points at the bark just above his head.

  “What?”

  “Look.”

  Udi kneels up and looks at where Shimon is pointing. The whole surface of the tree is indented with metal, plastered with it, practically forming a circle around the space where Udi’s head has been. For a moment he cannot move. His limbs feel paralysed. It hurts to breathe. But slowly he takes out a knife and one by one he digs out the pieces of shrapnel. They are still warm in his hand, the edges sharp and deadly. Udi finds himself unable to speak. Shimon too is quiet. But to their left there is a breaking of twigs underfoot.

  “There!” Tomer shatters the silence as he limps towards them. He points fiercely to the pockmarked tree. “There, there is your proof you damn atheists. There is God.”

  The following day their unit is abruptly re-stationed. Udi can only guess that security along the Lebanese border has been tightened, that the incident is being explained to the press. He can only hope that the small information they provided is useful, that it will aid protection, that there was some point to it all. He does not know, but he hopes regardless. They spend much of the morning driving south. Attached to a petrol station they stop at is a small supermarket. It is a ‘peace’ market, one of a chain that employs Palestinian baggers and Jewish cashiers. In perfect harmony. Of course it will not bring peace. It is the kind of leftie idea dreamed up by idealists like his sister, an example to prove the possibility. Unconvincing to men who have just spent three days inside enemy territory. Still, Udi overhears two of the baggers talking about football and he weighs in with his assessment of the season’s best goals. Even Shimon joins the conversation. And Udi notices a young Jewish boy listening to the four of them. His eyes pass from one man to the other – soldiers, Palestinians, equally good sources of football passion. This store will not bring peace, but Udi smiles. The same smile he gave Farah all those years ago in Gaza. Yet, back on the bus, the football talk is over. Shimon is excitable again and wants to relive the gun battle for their friends. Tomer has been despatched home (though only for the weekend) so Udi turns to the window on his own, fingering the drink he bought from the Jewish cashier, packed by the Palestinian bagger, and the shrapnel still in the pocket of his fatigues. He closes his eyes, but does not sleep.

  They are only at the base long enough to unload their bags before leaving for the flying checkpoint. It is not Gaza but the West Bank has its own challenges. Not external danger in the same way, not that feeling of each moment being precarious, each second demanding absolute attentiveness, but an internal wrestling with one’s soul. It would have been easier to be at Ezra even, or Qalandia with their glass cubicles and steel-door mazes, and long scrutinised walks, and miles of traffic: precious meters of disconnection. Instead, Gazan men and women file towards them: some in cars that they stop, others on foot; some with the correct documentation, others without; some granted passage, others denied it; some proud, defiant, others bent by the exhaustion of every day explaining themselves to soldiers young enough to be their sons. There is a Jewish settlement nearby, so extra explanation is demanded.

  Shimon and Udi stand together, guns poised. Shimon seems to grow in this role, to broaden. He is still pumped from their experience the day before, his eyes alert, hands twitchy. Full of his own might. On a cigarette break he expresses to Udi the magnitude of responsibility he feels here. ‘We could be the ones, you know, Udi? The ones who stop the bomb. The last line before Israel, before some fucker gets close enough to my town, to my house, to my family to- you know?’ Udi nods. Yes, he does know. But he is preoccupied watching a family some way in the distance who have exited their car, perhaps because of the jam their checkpoint is causing. There are four children, three boys and a girl. The girl is maybe four years old. Of course Udi knows it is impossible for the girl he saw in Gaza all those years ago to have remained the same size, the same age, and of course it is unlikely she would have made it here to the West Bank, this is not Farah, but there is something about her that is familiar. As her parents and another two adults ignore her, with her sandal she draws lines in the dirt. Udi is too far away to make out what she is drawing, but he would like to see. Next to him, cigarette finished, Shimon shouts for somebody to stop.

  Udi does not want to watch. Shimon is not physical with the people he interrogates, not cruel, but he is not polite and he will not make things easy. He will not let a car pass without first checking underneath the baby seat. He will not accept an identity card without scrutinising the corresponding profile from both sides. He will always ask the women to lift their veils. Even without Shimon, Udi hates this kind of assignment. It makes him think back to his childhood of action movies and superheroes. What was it Spiderman’s uncle told him? With great power comes great responsibility. But it is remiss to without challenge wave people past. And he knows that for Shimon, every fence, every checkpoint is for his brother.

  “Fucking Arabs,” Shimon says as one of the men flashes him a smile.

  Udi nods again. He nods a lot when he is a soldier. Nods. Assents. Shimon tells the couple who are next in the queue to open and empty their suitcases. They are young, handsome, a little reverential towards each other, perhaps just married. White, neatly folded garments are placed onto the dusty ground. Then a washbag. Then a pack of sanitary towels. The couple keep their heads lowered as they unpack these private possessions. Udi turns away. He returns his gaze to the young girl. She has stopped drawing and is being ushered back into the car by her mother. The father and other men remain outside but they will all drive this way soon. Udi will tell Shimon to let them through.

  As he is imagining this, an ambulance drives fast towards the checkpoint. Shimon puts his hand out to stop it and the Arab driver jumps out, frantically explaining that he is driving a pregnant woman who is about to give birth and the nearest hospital is on the other side of the checkpoint, on the other side of this obstacle they have created, on the other side of them.

  “Let him through,” Udi says quietly.

  “Wait a minute.” Shimon walks aro
und the van and peers through the window. A woman is lying inside clutching her stomach and at the sight of Shimon she starts to scream. Now the man shouts wildly too, gesticulating to be allowed to move forwards, to be allowed to move. Udi thinks at once of the lecture Avigail gave him a few years back about pregnant women at checkpoints. It had been in the news too: Delays by IDF soldiers at one of the crossings had resulted in tens of women giving birth at the checkpoint, in the dirt, a number of them miscarrying, some of the women dying.

  “Shimon, just let them through.”

  “Okay, okay,” Shimon relents, waving the ambulance on and turning back to the young couple who are now repacking their dusty clothes. Udi signals to the soldiers a little further along to allow the ambulance to pass and watches as it hurries forwards. He feels better. A little better. He turns his eyes back to the girl and her family, but the car she was in has turned and is driving away. Away? The father has remained with the other two men outside. They are standing, touching one another on the shoulder, bowing slightly, looking towards the ambulance…

  “Stop!” Udi spins towards Shimon and then to the soldiers whom the ambulance has almost reached. “Stop! Don’t let it through!”

  Two soldiers quickly move in front of the vehicle, guns ready. A third gets on the radio. Udi glances to the men in the distance and sees their heads raise defiantly, their stare unflinching. Udi and Shimon race to catch up to the van. Together they throw open the doors. The pregnant woman is still lying, still screaming, but there is something else in her eyes, something more salient than pain, or fear. Udi climbs into the vehicle and makes to help her up. She waves her hands at him and begins to wail hysterically, motioning him away, clasping her arms around her belly. The driver tries to intervene but is stopped by Shimon. Udi moves forward again and roughly pulls the woman to her feet. Something hard and metal falls from underneath her dress.