Mishka Ben-David - Forbidden Love in St. Petersburg

Everyone was alert and keyed up when we heard the sound of traffic close by. Tomer, our point man, put on his night-vision goggles and reported sighting one Mercedes and two Land-Rovers.

Get ready to fire, I ordered, and assigned a team of gunners to cover each of the vehicles.

Guns were cocked in silence, eyes lowered to the night-vision viewfinders. At my command, the soldiers armed with rifle-launched grenades rose to a crouching position.

The vehicles were now rounding the bend and coming into view. Even if they were to see us, I thought, it would be too late for them to escape the ambush. There was little if any chance of them accelerating at this spot in the road.

Fire!

The guns were all discharged simultaneously. Even so, only one jeep was hit. The vehicle, its passengers, and ammunition rose to the sky in a ball of fire. Though we peppered the lead Mercedes with bullets, it wasn’t enough to halt it. Apparently the driver was unhurt for the vehicle continued moving. The jeep at the rear of the convoy swerved sharply off the road. But the machine-gunner sitting in the middle, with his weapon traversing our site, managed to fire one salvo at us before being taken out. I saw tracer bullets heading towards us, the flares forming a spectacular arc. Instinctively, I ducked. My men then released a second volley at the jeep. The crackle of gun fire merged with a scream coming from somewhere to my left.

A third volley ensured that no one remained alive in the two vehicles below.

I ran to the wounded man–our medic–who only six months earlier had completed his service as a conscript and was joining us for the first time in the reserves. He was in the second line of the formation but had apparently stood up to take part in or watch the shootout, and been hit in the shoulder.

I saw it coming, he whispered. The tracer. It’s not that bad, just please stop the bleeding.

I contacted the battalion commander via the field communications system. Against his advice, I decided not to send a team down to pick up documents and perhaps even bring back corpses. My fear was that the passengers from the Mercedes would return to the scene and engage us in combat. I also wanted to get our one casualty out of there fast, and carrying the dead would slow us down considerably.

Reluctantly, the CO agreed to let me leave these potential ‘bargaining chips’ in the field. We regrouped and began our long trek back. We walked along a ridge, with the stretcher swaying to and fro as the men carrying it stumbled over shrubs and stones, to a place where a helicopter could land. Once the road had disappeared from sight, we didn’t expect any further fire. I handed over the lead to one of my platoon commanders and took over the front handles of the stretcher. Unlike some of my guys, I’m no sprinter, but I was stronger than most of them and wanted to share the burden of the immediate consequences of my decisions.

When we reached a wide flat area, I checked the wounded medic. His condition seemed stable and I decided not to put a helicopter in harm’s way in the black of night.

At first light the chopper rose from the wadi, its blades almost scraping the hilltop, kicking up an awful lot of dust in the process. I managed to get the wounded medic and half of my men into the helicopter. I took the rest of them and linked up with my deputy and the soldiers who were with him. In the bracing chill of a Lebanese dawn which quickened our pace, I led my company swiftly and in silence to the southern entrance of the nearby outpost.

Even though the battalion CO, brigade CO, and division commander all complimented me on my decision to swap the location of the ambush, the debriefings were exhausting. That’s what I expect from an officer in the paratroops, said the division commander, himself a former paratrooper. Seeking contact with the enemy, initiative, determination, all the things we’ve let slide here sitting in the outposts. My men also felt they had done something. No one was happy about having apparently missed the Mercedes, but that’s life. The battalion commander raised the issue of not bringing back bodies and documents.

The enemy of the good is the very good, I said. Returning to the scene could have cost us lives. And in my heart I already knew what was and would remain my guiding philosophy. I want to do well, but not better than anyone else. To be among the good, but not necessarily the best.

The brigade CO had no problem with my response. Maybe now those SOBs will creep back into their shells for a while, he said, summing it all up. We were all dead tired and wanted to go home. The only ‘seeking contact’ we could think of was with our wives and girlfriends. I was so wiped that I forgot to call home, even though the six o’clock morning news which both Orit and my parents listened to when I was in Lebanon had already reported the battle. It ended, said the newscaster, with ‘about eight Hezbollah men killed and one of our soldiers lightly wounded’. It sounded good, except that they’d be sure to think that the lightly wounded soldier was me.

I know you, Orit wept on my shoulder. You always pick the spot where you’re most likely to engage the enemy, don’t you? And aren’t you always the first to fire and storm ahead?

Orit, a dance and movement teacher, and quite an acrobat, had been waiting for me for three whole weeks. And I, never much of an athlete, was on my last legs. However much testosterone I may have stored up during the ambush and firefight, there was no sign of it that night. I fell asleep on my back, soon after I thought I’d heard Orit–still on top of me–climaxing. I was so exhausted that I didn’t even know if I had also come.

By the time I woke up, Orit had already showered and seemed relaxed. She told me about a letter that had arrived for me from The Bureau of International Relations, asking to meet me.

But first we’re going to fix a date for the wedding. I beckoned. She came towards me. I pulled her back into bed to celebrate, once more, the future that awaited us.

OUR MARRIAGE WAS a surprise to no one. The story had its beginnings in the ninth grade at a youth movement rally for all the moshavim–the collective villages–and the kibbutzim in the central Arava desert. As I climbed onto the towbar of a brightly-decorated trailer, a pair of legs came into view. And what legs! Long, slender, smooth, and shapely. These were not the legs of the local girls I usually met at such events. We sat facing each other on the festively bedecked benches along both sides of the trailer. My eyes travelled from the legs and up, fixing on an embroidered floral blouse. This too marked her out from the rest of the girls who were all wearing the standard blue shirts of the youth movement. Through the blouse I could just about see the outline of soft but still tiny breasts. I then stared at her long neck, her finely drawn, beautiful face and deep blue eyes that looked straight back at me with an expression of rebuke that told me–could you perhaps stop ogling me like that? But beyond the petulant gaze, her delicate lips revealed a smile of resignation as if to say–OK, these games aren’t new to me. As I was still trying to filter these mixed messages, which would one day become a pivotal part of my life, she suddenly offered her hand. I’m Orit, she said. We moved from Givatayyim to the Sapir Centre this summer. My parents teach at the high school.

While I regained my composure, her hand remained extended for what seemed like ages. Here in the desert we don’t shake hands, we just go ahead and talk. Yogev, I said, shaking her hand almost formally, her delicate fingers squeezed in my grip. My hands aren’t big, but as early as ninth grade there were already signs of my strong physique; well-developed biceps, wide shoulders, and a powerful chest. In what appeared to me a blend of amity and awe, my friends used to joke that since my bar-mitzvah I’d gained plenty in width but little in height. Something about the fragility of her hand, and the delicateness of her slender body, made my heart skip a beat and from that very moment I took on the role of her protector.