Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

Major General Giora received an urgent call from his friend and promised to punish the out-of-line soldier and remove him from the settlement. But Yoni’s discharge date was drawing nearer anyway, and his commander, Omer Levkovich, convinced the battalion commander to leave Yoni at the settlement until then, and promised to prevent any chance of a relationship or contact between Gitit and Yoni: when she came home to the outpost for Sabbath vacations, Yoni would be sent home.

Gitit didn’t tell her father about Nir’s indecent proposals, but on one of the cold Sabbath nights on which she returned from the religious boarding school, the Vayigash Torah portion, Shaulit asked her outside the synagogue how she was doing. The “Okay” accompanied by a shrug and a sad smile left much room for interpretation. Shaulit placed her slender-fingered hand on Gitit’s arm and asked, “Perhaps you’d like to come over after dinner?” Gitit smiled and didn’t reply. Just the thought of the questions her father would ask, his suspicions. She preferred not to leave the house until the ride to Jerusalem on Monday morning. But later, when the house went quiet, after her brothers and sisters had fallen asleep, and her parents were also in bed and the stillness of the Sabbath had settled in; after the Sabbath timer had turned out the light in the living room and left her in darkness, she remembered Shaulit’s invitation. She didn’t feel like sleeping, too many thoughts and emotions swirled inside her. Silently she stepped out the house into the darkness of the hilltop. Beilin accompanied her a fair distance and then barked in farewell. The crisp air filled her with thoughts and memories and longing and passion, and she inhaled it. When she passed by Shaulit’s home, she glanced over and saw her sitting outside on the bench swing.

“Good that you came,” Shaulit said, “I’ve just made a pot of tea.”

They hadn’t spoken much during their years as neighbors, but something about their new circumstances made them bond. A covenant of the outcasts. The women who did the unthinkable — the one threw out her husband, the other guilty of forbidden relations. On that initial night Gitit told of her life after. It was hard for her at Eshet Chayil, but she felt she was moving closer to God and becoming more resolved in her faith and her opinions, was invigorated by the sense of togetherness of the girls when they sang Hasidic songs or danced Hasidic dances — lovely girls, Ethiopians, too. Shaulit nodded, noticed the young girl’s gnawed fingernails.

The next time the religious schoolgirl was out for the Sabbath, she came again, and again they swung outside in thick sweaters and long skirts, and this time she spoke about Yoni. Before leaving, she said, “You’re the first one I’ve told the whole truth,” and Shaulit smiled and caressed her. It was raining the next time, and when Shaulit smiled at her in synagogue, Gitit couldn’t wait for the moment her family would go to sleep. This time, clutching cups of tea in the cramped kitchen and taking care not to wake the children, she told Shaulit about Nir’s bizarre marriage proposal.

Shaulit remained silent. She stood to pour water from the urn and then sliced a cake. Gitit kept her eyes on her in the kitchen. “Oy, I’m sorry, I was wrong,” she said, “I shouldn’t have told you. I think he was joking, he didn’t mean…” Her voice died. Shaulit sat down again, slowly sipped the tea, stared blankly.

“I don’t think he was joking,” she said. “Maybe he didn’t mean to actually get married, but he was after something. The fact is, the moment you said no, he went in and told your father.” Zvuli mumbled something and then wailed and they both jumped to attention, but he went quiet. “Don’t be sorry for telling me,” Shaulit continued, “it’s important that I know. He comes here asking for forgiveness. Sometimes I consider giving him another chance.” She raised her eyes. “Okay, I’m terribly tired.”

They hugged at the door and Gitit left. Shaulit turned and went to the bed and hugged the pillow and wept. Nir was a good father. He told her every time that he had changed, come to terms with the mistakes he made, stopped drinking, that for the sake of the children… Relentless pressure. She didn’t want to go to the rabbi or to Othniel because she didn’t want to hurt him anymore. She didn’t want to distance him from the girls because they needed him and he them. She needed him, too. She had stood firm until now, and as she sobbed into the pillow in bed, she knew she’d continue to do so. It’s hard alone but not impossible, her mother did it with six. And now she finally understood, Nir was not the man for her. She didn’t want him to sleep in bed with her, didn’t want to spend her life with him. He’d always be the father of her children, and with that he’d have to make do. She’d go to synagogue tomorrow without a head covering, she decided, publicly and openly announce her new status, for everyone to know, and herself, too, that it was final.

“Mommy,” suddenly came the voice of Tchelet, her younger daughter, three and a half. She had gotten out of bed and now brought her head close to the head of her mother. “Why are you crying?”

Shaulit burst into another wave of tears and gathered the girl to her. “Oy, my sweet one.”

“Why are you crying, Mommy?”

“I’ll be fine,” Shaulit answered, and sniffed, trying to smile.

“Are you sad ’cause Daddy’s gone?”

“No, sweet Tchelet. I’m fine. Look, no more crying, okay? Give me a kiss and a hug.” Tchelet spread her small, warm arms and wrapped them around her mother’s neck, and then climbed back into her bed and fell asleep.

Nir showed up that crisp and cold Friday morning, the guitar strap over his shoulder and in his head the songs he’d composed for the girls and the baby, and while he was still on his way over, he saw Shaulit out walking with the stroller and sweet Zvuli with his first two tiny teeth and light curly hair, with a piece of cucumber in his hand, smiling naturally and unconditionally at the sight of his father. Nir kissed his son excitedly, raised his eyes, and noticed the loose and beautiful hair of his estranged wife, and his heart soured within him because he realized he was no longer the only man who’d be able to enjoy the sight of it. And while he considered what to say and how to address the matter, he spotted the ruins of the cabin on the edge of the cliff and his jaw dropped and he asked, “What the hell?”

* * *

Musa Ibrahim asked the very same jaw-dropping question that morning. He rose shortly before sunrise, prayed, drank three spoons of olive oil and a cup of tea, ate something, and went on his way. The smell caught him first. What’s burning? He reached his olive groves and stood fixed there for several seconds, couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, struggled to understand the change that had been made to the landscape of his life. Something finally clicked into place in his brain; he took out his cell phone and pressed the buttons and said to his sleepy son, “Nimer, come to the grove.” He did nothing while he waited. Didn’t want to go near. Those trees, he thought, were here for hundreds of years before him and were supposed to remain hundreds of years after him, the earth’s trees, not Palestine’s and not Israel’s, trees that don’t care who’s there and who’s in control and who builds above the earth. That’s all nonsense to them, the real world is under the earth, and there they are deeply and widely rooted.

Nimer arrived in a gray sweatshirt bearing the words Battalion 13—The Wild Ones , and together they went down to the damaged trees. Twelve olive trees had been torched and chopped down. It emerged later that others had suffered damage, too: trees in other groves and plantations, the tires of cars were slashed, windows were smashed. Musa and Nimer worked in silence, cleaned up, cleared away branches, cooled still-smoldering trunks with water, fetched burlap sacks and wrapped the stumps in them. A burial ceremony.