Chains of Sand

by Jemma Wayne

  I turn back towards the sea of white and blue, the voices uplifted. But my sensation of hopefulness has been tainted. I feel cowed by the chants, paralysed. Why do they hate us so much? The missiles of course, but… I find that I have stopped singing. I stand amidst the swathes and I watch the waving of flags, the cheers, I hear a speech starting, but my mind is elsewhere. I am zipping up astronaut suits and fiddling with straps on helmets.

  I am aware that my fixation with this is a little obsessional. But there are things I like to do. Things I sometimes have to do.

  In Israel I’ll be doing.

  Gaby doesn’t understand this.

  Safia would.

  Orli? It’s strange, Orli gets me in a way nobody else has and nobody ever will, she sees me, sees through me. But sometimes I feel like she looks at my quirks as though they are creases to be ironed out. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they’re like the baseball cap I wore every day as a teen and still don sometimes on Sundays – boyish traits I’ve somehow neglected to shed. But Safia has known me since I was still a boy-man. She recognises those quirks as part of me. She knows there are reasons for them, some irrational.

  I understand why she’s irritated by the whole kosher thing. It’s not logical and she is. The marrying a Jew thing too. But it’s too complicated to explain. Too messy. Too difficult. And that’s the thing about Orli – I don’t need to explain it, she gets this stuff, she feels it or knows that I feel it, and sees it, and paints it, and with her painting shows me how to see.

  But I am still dreaming about Safia. Last night she was sat in the exam hall in a state of semi-undress and I woke up with a boner. I guess it doesn’t help that I have seen her naked. It makes the image so much more detailed. So much better. Not that I actually think my subconscious is telling me that I still fancy Safia. I know that I love Orli. And Orli is clearly the logical, simple, straightforward option, not that I even have an option. My attempts however at decoding the dream have led me only to the following: Safia is undressed, exposed, so there’s a truth/secret/issue that she is exposing that I am attracted to? And that is…? Basically I don’t have a clue. Other than knowing that I need to see her again before I leave. There are things that feel unsaid.

  My thoughts are interrupted by a kerfuffle in the street. A counter-protestor has attempted to break through the barrier and is being marched back to his section. Other than a megaphone he isn’t carrying anything threatening, it seems unlikely that there was anything physical he was going to do, but in my mind I see falling blue yamakas.

  The man is shouting through his megaphone. Anonymous bravado: he wears a hood, and sunglasses, and one of those typical terrorist-looking scarves, and is bearded; it is impossible to make out any defining characteristics, I cannot see the emotion on his face. The image however is violent, or strikes me that way. And now I listen: “Allahu Akbar!” So nothing new.

  And then something new: “Heil Hitler.”

  Heil Hitler.

  It is like a punch to the gut.

  I am in the deli again looking at a swastika. I am in a movie. Or a history book. I cannot speak. But I am not the only one who has heard him. A few on our side boo. Others, like me, seem stunned into silence, this perhaps their first real, up-close encounter with an attitude we know exists but not where we live, not in our schools nor our work, nor our lives. Somebody near me shouts an insult back and around this man there is a flurry of V-signs, again like a football match, a co-ordinated wave, but this time we are disoriented, not in sync and quickly it peters out. I think of my Nana and the number I never see on her arm. I think about whether the police have checked the other counter-protestors for weapons. I wonder how easy it would be for somebody else to break through the barrier, this time with a knife. Robert glances at me uneasily. This unease, of course, is what the megaphone man intended.

  The police however are efficient and he is returned to his section, cheered by his supporters. Behind him, somebody holds up a hand-written sign: Hitler you were right.

  Another gut blow.

  Seriously? Seriously? People think this?

  I saw stuff on Twitter about this kind of thing at yesterday’s march, but it is different seeing it not on a screen but right here, just feet away from me. I cannot look away. But on our side of the barrier somebody is speaking through a microphone.

  And suddenly, there is a siren.

  I duck down. I haven’t been listening to the speaker’s preamble but the siren was planned, it is part of our protest and I know what I’m meant to do. For us it is a simulation, but it is what Orli has been doing for real – running, hiding, living like this. It is important to show onlookers that Israelis are victims too. Do they get that? Do they even try to? Do they spare a moment to imagine random, unpredictable murder? We all kneel on the ground. I think for a moment about having to dash to a bomb shelter myself, what that would be like, what that will be like. I can’t pretend I’m not shitting myself. I tell people it’s the same everywhere now, terrorism is everywhere, and that’s true but not true. Because the thing is the threat is not made up. Rockets come. Often. Bombs too before the fence. There’s a real, relentless reason why Israel has to act. Why does nobody see that? I look down. Beneath my feet there is a sticker: Israel is a terror state. I hadn’t noticed these stickers before but when I scan the pavement I see they are everywhere. Left over from yesterday’s pro-Palestinian protest but still here, it feels, to taunt us. To hate us. To despise and revile us. “Shame on you,” somebody shouts to us from the small counter contingent.

  I look up. Down, up, loathing everywhere. The voice however did not come through the megaphone and I can’t see who shouted, who had to shout though our moment of solemnity. At least in Israel you know your enemy. I look again but still I can’t see the person, the fellow Brit. I keep looking, and suddenly, just a few feet away from the Hitler sign, I do see someone.

  She is at the back of the crowd.

  She looks almost like an off-duty model.

  I am too far away to tell, but she probably has one eyebrow raised.

  ***

  Now

  18

  At first, all Udi is aware of is the whiteness. The walls are white, though sometimes he thinks he is looking not at them but directly at the sun because he feels hot all the time and it is hard to breathe. The sheets are white, though it is difficult for Udi to turn enough to see them. And when he opens his eyes and glimpses sometimes Ben, sometimes his mother, and always Ella hovering nervously at his side, their faces too have lost all colour. It is a pure, uncontaminated whiteness that he slips in and out of as the days pass by.

  He has never seen sand like it. He stands at the window and looks out, across Gaza. Soft waves caress utterly white beaches. Shady huts are roofed in palm. They are in a Nice House. It has white rendered walls with yellow shutters, a curved side roof giving way to an arch behind which there is a gate and a garden, with a dozen colours of carnations. Inside there are flat screen TVs and designer furniture and hidden lights casting a stylish glow. They came in through a hole they blew in the hallway, like in cartoons where the animals run so fast they leave rabbit or roadrunner or coyote shaped outlines in walls slightly to the left of open doors. But the doors may be booby-trapped. Under the floorboards of this house they have found an IDF uniform, grenades, AK rifles, a press pass. They have already searched the place next door, a house with no walls, no shutters, and no flat screen TVs. That house looked as though it had been half way through building when work just stopped, stopped, a home incomplete. Now, open to the elements the floors were disgusting, there were cockroaches and rats, and unprotected beds staring out into the collapsing city. But the beach is beautiful. And white. Udi would do anything to get there. He would fight through all of Gaza to reach it.

  The pain comes later.

  Back at base his commander calls them into a room and explains they are going back in, into Gaza. That evening a little orthodox guitar-playing kid arrives with his father in a car fi
lled with people handing out wet wipes and sports drinks and deodorants, and he plays them a song, his childish, hope-filled, sure voice ringing out across crowds of fatigued soldiers, and the whole of Udi’s unit joins in, letting themselves believe the music, feeling full of purpose and pride, and apprehension too but hey you could lose a leg in a car crash; dancing on shifting sands. Their job is to find the target and blow it up. The same as the previous day. He is in the front squad. His role is to clear the building and so far it has been everything he’d hoped, exactly like in action movies – darting around corners, pointing his gun, giving the all clear. But now they are headed to another part of the city. There are people. Not women and children, but men, and any man still here, here where they have been warned not to be, is here for a reason and that reason is to kill them. So they are alert. They walk through the night. Gaza’s sky is lit up but still there are dark, narrow passageways where they must send ahead their toys. The toys don’t make it. There are blasts, exploding metal that but for their technology could have been flesh, but still it is like playing a video game – they choose the correct weapons and they clear the level. On to the next.

  Next is a house in whose wall they don’t make a big enough hole to enter. Another kind of explosive is needed to open the back door. It’s in Udi’s backpack. To save him the trouble of taking it off, Mordechai goes to unload it. But no, says Tomer, go to the passageway at the side of the house, don’t stand in the garden, it is too open, too unprotected, prime pickings. Udi agrees. He makes to move. Shimon and Tomer are already half way there. But Mordechai calls him back. The side passage is far away, it will take time, time for Hamas, if they are inside, to escape. So far it has been a clean run. They have already found two tunnels. Countless weapons. They have not yet had to point their guns and actually shoot. And besides, God is on their side, says Mordechai. It will take one minute, he says. Udi hesitates. His instinct is to follow Tomer. But Mordechai is already opening the backpack, Trust me, and pulling out the explosives, Trust God, pulling them out and up, and up, and up, and they are moving up, flying, hurtling, exploding.

  The pain comes later. First there is yelling. And confusion. Have their own explosives gone off? No, or Udi would be dead. But then what? What? He has had training for this, they have prepared for every possible scenario, but in his mind he had always won, he always wins. He has not imagined himself lying here, not shot, not hit by a bullet where he could at least see a person and shoot them back, but floored by something else, something more. He is unable to tell if his body is still attached to him or which part of it is melting. And now he can feel his legs burning, burning, burning.

  The pain comes later. First it is mainly in his chest: a bruised lung, the doctor will tell him. With every breath he feels himself on fire and not even the refrigerated water or ice chips the nurses bring him do anything to put it out. Then it is a searing, deep throbbing that both shoots down his leg and is ever-present in an insistent, raw ache. He has vague memories of being lifted on and off gurneys, of entering what he thought was a coffin, and of briefly lying on a cold metal table surrounded by masked attendants before slipping back into his white existence. The doctor will later inform him that he has been operated on; that his leg was broken in such a severe open fracture that they were forced to insert a metal rod to hold the shattered parts together, that he was lucky not to have lost it, that he is lucky to be alive. But for now all he knows is the pain. When he smiles at Ella, she bursts into tears.

  She is not wearing the ring. This is all Udi can think about during those first glimpses of her face that he takes back with him into the whiteness. Did she refuse him? Did he ask her? Does she know?

  Tomer stands next to his bed, his face sombre, ashen. “You’re okay,” he says when Udi opens his eyes. “You’re burned, but you’re okay. Fucking roadside bomb, Udi. Thank fuck you crawled out of there. Thank fuck they didn’t shoot you while you were on fire. Thank fuck you saw their shooter. You got him, you know. Thank God.”

  “Mordechai?” Udi whispers.

  Tomer hangs his head. “Nope.”

  A young boy is next to his bed. He carries candy. His mother is behind him. A stranger. Where is his own mother? “This is what you are fighting for,” the unknown mother states, pointing to her child then placing her hand onto his. “Thank you,” she says. “Thank you.”

  Tomer remains next to him with his message of death. Death on one side, life on the other. Where is Ella?

  He cannot piece together the jumbled memories. He remembers her crying and him shouting; he remembers pain and noise; now his own mother screaming, banging on his bedroom door, and another time sitting silently, accusing him with her gaze; then Ella again, this time smiling, her lips still pursed; giggling; and then once more the pain.

  He cannot stop it. He wants to stop. Stop the chaotic pushing and shoving inside his head, go to a place more retiring, more calm, cooler, and ask Ella, where is the ring?

  Ben provides the answer. On the third morning in hospital he appears clearly at Udi’s bedside. Ella has gone. “She’s at my mum’s. Sleeping,” Ben informs him when he sees Udi’s eyes opening. “Your parents are here too. My God, Udi, talk about scaring the shit out of us. We thought that was it you fucking cooney.”

  Udi laughs painfully and Ben calls for a nurse who helps him to sit up. “What the fuck happened?”

  “You’re a crazy Israeli driver, that’s what!” Ben says. “You had a car crash on the way to the airport. Another car drove straight into you. He says you flashed him to go.”

  “To stop,” Udi begins, but cannot really remember. “Ella, how did she…what did she…is she…”

  “She’s okay. I picked her up from the airport. You might be needing this though.” Ben reaches into his pocket and produces a dented box. He opens it.

  “Still perfect.” Udi grins, reaching his hand out to take the sparkling diamond, before glancing up at Ben. “Still perfect.”

  Ben says nothing. He wears the same look that Tomer once did.

  With some difficulty, Udi pushes himself up a little in bed. He glances around the room. There is a drip attached to his arm, but he cannot see anything revealing. He looks down at his body but it is under a sheet. There is pain but the pain is everywhere. “What’s the diagnosis?” says Udi.

  “You should probably speak to the doctor,” Ben answers.

  “Y’allah, the doctor’s told you, no?”

  “Yes.”

  “So tell me. How long? How long ’till I’m running round the Heath?”

  There is a pause before Ben answers. Finally, he looks Udi directly in the eye and shakes his head. “Udi…”

  Unconsciously, Udi reaches to touch his leg.

  “They want you to go back, Udi, to Israel.”

  “What?”

  “You almost lost your leg and they say you need a lot of therapy on it, and that- Udi…”

  Udi has stopped listening. His head is suddenly full, loud, deafened by noise.

  “Udi-”

  “And why must I do that in Israel?” he snaps.

  “Well I suppose you don’t have to but the doctors say Israel has an advanced set-up for this kind of…rehab, you know, for limbs. I guess because of…”

  “Because of the army. And the bombs.”

  “Yes.”

  “There are lots of injuries like this,” Udi muses. But it could happen in a car crash. He laughs obscenely. Then pauses again before turning back to Ben. “And Ella? She wants to go back?”

  “I don’t know,” Ben says. “I think she just wants you to get better.”

  Udi shakes his head and fingers the ring in his hand. “I’m not leaving.”

  The doctor confirms what Ben has told him. He needs months of intensive rehab on his leg and even then they cannot promise he will ever regain normal functionality. He will probably never run. His lungs are less serious – painful but not chronic. He was lucky. He will be okay. Still, the doctors tell him that the Israeli
set-up is first class, better than what he will be able to access in Britain. He would be crazy, they tell him, not to go back. He tells the doctor it is true then, he is crazy.

  Ella appears just as the doctor is leaving. His mother is with her. Both are brimming with tears. Batia rushes forward. She strokes his face fervently and kisses his cheeks. “Udi,” she breathes. “Udi. We were so afraid. We were- Thank God. Thank God.”

  Udi looks up. Ella is standing in the corner making way for his mother. She has so far said nothing. Udi winks at her but she does not move. She looks terrified.

  “Your father’s on his way,” Batia continues.

  “Abba’s here?”

  “Of course he’s here.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Jonny took him to see the restaurant.” She smiles as she says this. “You have been doing well, Udi.”

  Udi looks to Ella but she makes no movement. “Yes. I was.”

  “But of course. We knew that you would,” says his mother.

  “Ima, I’m going to stay.”

  For a moment Batia says nothing, then slowly, carefully, she sits on the side of his hospital bed and summons Ella to stand next to her. Ella moves forward tentatively, in silence she flanks his mother. “It is not what I saw, Udi.”

  “You saw this? You saw this?” Neither of the women respond. “You saw this in my fucking cup?”

  “No,” Batia corrects. “I saw a journey, and it was a circle. I saw that you will come back.”

  ***

  Ella waits until Udi and his mother have stopped blaming each other for their separate despair, she waits until Batia has stopped crying and waits until Udi’s mother has left the room to find a doctor to corroborate her decree that he must return with her to Israel, before finally she reaches out to touch him. To touch him again. He doesn’t know that she has already stroked his face, kissed his wounds, smelled his neck. He doesn’t know that she has sat by his bed for the past three days, or that sometimes, when no one else was there, she has curled up carefully in it, warming herself in this cold country with the heat of him.