Assaf Gavron - The Hilltop

The telephone rang but he was too afraid to make small talk, his hands remained fixed on the wheel, his mind focused. The descents grew steeper, the ascents more arduous. Don’t worry, hundreds of Israelis travel this road daily and no one has been killed here in years, even stone-throwing incidents are few and far between. And yet, unlike those of the settlers, his car wasn’t equipped with armored glass. Could they know that, the Arabs? Despite the air-conditioning, he was sweating, and couldn’t quite work out why he was there at all, it was just another business idea that would follow in the footsteps of all his previous business ideas. Why couldn’t he be satisfied with the not so little he had — accountant, average-size firm, in the center of the country, married, with one kid? But to really make a killing required taking risk, doing things that not everyone would do.

The military pillboxes comforted him, the red-tiled roofs soothed him. He wouldn’t have believed he would feel that way, but the turnoff for the settlement was a welcome sight, and outside the yellow steel gate, which opened for his Toyota and its yellow plates without any fuss, he could see the waiting cars of the Arabs and the Arabs themselves, and once inside, he felt secure, as unpleasant as it might have been to admit so. After all, he didn’t have a problem with the Arabs, they deserved better, he didn’t support the crazy settlers, but he did feel a lot more at ease and safer within their prohibitive boundaries.

“What’s up, bro? You look green,” Roni said to him.

“Give me a glass of water,” Ariel responded, and entered the trailer.

“Okay,” he said after he recovered. “Good news. Three boutique stores in Tel Aviv who took samples from me want to place a substantial order for the olive oil. They all say this is the kind of oil that sells these days, heavily flavored, strong-tasting, spicy, with the true fragrance of olives, unlike those yellowish, lighter Italian or Spanish oils.”

“Well, of course, it’s the real thing.” The words rolled gleefully off Roni’s tongue. “Not only is it better than the pale, Ashkenazi, overrefined European oils, it’s the best in the country, the purest, the tastiest. Better than from the Galilee, better than from Samaria. These are olives from the edge of the desert, it’s Bab A-Zakak, the region with the oil of the highest quality! And it’s costing us nine shekels a liter, instead of the sixteen shekels you’ll pay for the cheapest Israeli oil.”

“You can find some for fifteen,” Ariel corrected him, but Roni didn’t bother to respond.

They sat in Gabi’s yard, which overlooked the olive groves of Kharmish.

“What’s a substantial order?” Roni asked after a few moments of thought.

“A thousand liters and more.”

“A thousand and more…” Roni nodded, and released smoke from his nostrils. “Multiplied by three, you say. I hope Musa can handle that. We’re a small enterprise, after all, not an industrial farm.”

“He has to cope. Anything less, and it’s not worth my while to leave the comforts of my office. But now that we’ve bought him that wonderful electric motor to replace his dead donkey, I’m not worried. And just so you know, you can boutique me all you like, I still haven’t given up on my dream of a sophisticated oil press and mass production. After we’ve established the brand, we can invest in an Italian production line, and then, within five years, we’ll have made it.”

Roni laughed to himself. The words “God willing” were on the tip of his tongue, but he refrained at the last second from blurting them out. He waved to Othniel and Yakir, who were walking along the ring road toward the synagogue.

“Now take a look at this,” Ariel said, and glanced around for his black briefcase. He reached for it, couldn’t get a hand on it, cursed, stood up, and went over to retrieve it, patting down the pockets of his pants to feel for his wallet and keys and mobile phone as he walked. He removed several printed pages from the briefcase, glanced at them, and handed them to Roni without a word. Roni took them, then took a final puff on his cigarette before stubbing it out in the ashtray. He browsed through the pages and a broad smile slowly appeared on his face. He nodded intently.

“Initial drafts for the ad campaign,” Ariel said with a sense of satisfaction. “I also want a draft with the headlines from the newspapers. People will be floored.”

“Or I’ll be floored. What will people who know me think when they see me like that in an advertisement?”

“They probably won’t see you. It’s not going into national newspapers or anything like that. You know, local ads, signs at stores, that kind of thing.”

“Well, if they do, you can say it is ‘an Israeli man whose ties to the area remain unclear.’ ”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing,” Roni said, “just the Washington Post article. That’s what the son of a bitch wrote about me. I was pleased actually that they had no clue who I was or what the hell I was doing jumping onto the blades of bulldozers.”

“I heard about the article. That’s why the defense minister went to America, right? We may be able to leverage the story for our own needs. Perhaps for exports,” Ariel said, scribbling down a note to himself in a small notebook.

“Why not? Leverage as much as you like.” Roni browsed through the pages again and looked contentedly at the photograph of himself and Musa on the blade of the bulldozer. “Just a sec,” he said, and paged back through the photographs. “Isn’t there something missing here?”

“The religious woman,” Ariel confirmed. “We Photoshopped her out. I was of two minds about it, but the settlers are daunting.”

Roni nodded. “ ‘Together, we’ll press on?’ ” he read out the slogan under the photograph of the bulldozer.

“They’re only initial drafts. We have lots of options for slogans. You won’t believe the brochures I’m having made — quotes from the Bible, symbols, Arabic verses, heritage, ties to the land, uses of olive oil. You’ll be blown away.”

“Great, great. And get the Golani Brigade in there, too, with the olive tree on the brigade tag — Roni, the former Golani fighter who went from being a fucked-up soldier with an olive tree on his shoulder to producing olive oil in partnership with an Arab. Know what I mean?”

Ariel smiled politely, his silence clearly implying that Roni should leave the marketing and branding to him. “Okay, dude,” he said, “ask Musa when he can get us some oil.”

“I’m on it,” Roni responded, putting a hand up to shield his eyes from the sun and dialing the Palestinian’s number. “I’m on it.”

The summer was suddenly at its peak. The month of July arrived and the long summer vacation began, and on some of the days, Nehama Yisraeli organized activities for children of all ages (a day at the swimming pool, a hike, a day spent working at Othniel’s livestock pen, a day of building), entrusting the older ones with various responsibilities and tasks. She called it a summer camp.

On one such day, the children left to go hiking through the Hermesh Stream riverbed. Nehama showed up at the kindergarten at 8 a.m. with her two sons, Boaz and Shneor, one in each hand, and a huge rounded tummy. Elazar Freud brought along his son, Nefesh, and went into the men’s section of the synagogue for morning prayers. And Amalia Rivlin arrived with her baby brother, Zvuli, in a baby carriage, her younger sister, Tchelet, at her side, and their mother, Shaulit, a few steps behind, talking on her cell phone, laughing and gesturing intently with her hands, saying, “Insane, insane.”

Along for the day, too, were Shimi and Tili Gotlieb and all the Assis children aside from Yakir — Gitit, who served in the summer as a teacher’s aide, Dvora, Hananiya, Emunah, and Shuv-el, and Beilin the dog as well. At the request of Nehama, they were accompanied by Jehu, his butt firmly fixed in the saddle of his horse, Killer, and his Jericho 941 pistol tucked into his holster, and when the merry bunch exited through the settlement’s gate, Yoni the soldier surprised them and asked Nehama, “Can I tag along?”