Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

*

But I too sat in the living room of that family from Nablus and watched England — Cameroon. And stretched my legs to rest them on an armchair that wasn’t mine. And I was glad when England evened the score to two-all (I think I was so excited that I even stood up). I too ate the pitta and hummus we took out of the family’s fridge. And agreed that those Arabs really knew how to make hummus. I too heard the sobs of pain coming from the handcuffed boy. And the pleading of the women to be let out so they could go to the toilet. I too saw Commander Harel walk over and turn up the volume so all that noise wouldn’t bother us.

I too wanted to stay a while longer, when the game was over, to see the replays of the goals. And a little longer than that, to hear the post-game interviews.

*

Only later, when we went back to the roof, did I have an attack of nausea when I thought about what I and the guys from the company had done and about that damned World Cup, and I tried to tell myself that it had been a one-off moral lapse, but I knew it wasn’t, I knew that, over the last few weeks, I’d become as brutalised as everyone else there. I kept twisting and turning in my sleeping bag that night, unable to find a position in which my conscience could fall asleep. Suddenly, it seemed to me that there was no way out. No future. It was as clear as the dark night to me that no one would ever come to relieve us. That I was going to stay on that roof, with those people, my whole life. And that the curse that the old Arab woman had muttered before we pushed her into the room would haunt me my whole life.

I pulled myself out of the sleeping bag and went to a far corner of the roof where no one could see me. I took small, Charlie Chaplin steps until I was standing right on the edge. I looked down to the street and thought, what would happen if I jumped now and ended it all?

Ofir can make his movie, was the bitter-sweet answer that surfaced from the depths of my memory. After all, I had promised him that if none of us died in the army, then I would.

I looked down again. This building isn’t tall enough, I said to myself. With my luck, I might stay alive. Paralysed.

*

Dear Bro in intelligence , I wrote to Churchill that night, holding a torch in one hand and a pen in the other.

I don’t understand what I’m doing here. I don’t understand who’s fighting who. I don’t understand any more what’s behind the word ‘I’. I don’t understand what the difference is between me and an animal. I don’t understand how I got to this. I don’t understand why I insisted on hiding my asthma so they’d take me into a combat unit. I don’t understand why I’m tired now and can’t fall asleep. I don’t understand why I want to shout and no sound comes out of me. I don’t understand what there is to understand here. I don’t understand why they don’t come to relieve us. I don’t understand why I don’t care whether they come to relieve us. I don’t understand anything .

You’re in intelligence. You probably know. Maybe you can explain it to me?

*

Three weeks after the weapons carrier dropped us off under the roof, they came to relieve us. It was twilight. I was the one on duty then. And when I saw someone who looked like Amichai get out of the weapons carrier, I thought I was hallucinating. Amichai? No way. He isn’t even in this division. I must be very far into the twilight zone if I’m seeing my friends in the middle of Nablus.

But it was Amichai. With his MAG slung over his shoulder, and those broad shoulders and that happy walk. For a few seconds, I heard his familiar steps echoing on the stairs, and then, all at once, as the sun setting behind him illuminated his hair in golden, nearly messianic light, he burst onto the roof.

I knew it! he shouted, running happily towards me. I knew I’d see you here! I told the guys, you’re about to meet my best friend! He crushed me in a huge hug, then introduced me to the soldiers who’d come with him to relieve us. They shook my hand and I could feel in their handshakes that being Amichai’s friend won me a lot of points with them.

This is amazing! he went on happily. For us to meet here! Churchill and Ofir won’t believe it when they hear it! Come on, let’s take a picture so we have proof.

Move your arse, Freed, we’re waiting for you down here, the soldiers who’d been on the roof with me called from down on the street. But suddenly, I didn’t care about them. Suddenly, because Amichai was there, I felt like a human being again.

*

In the picture, we look like one of those ‘before and after’ ads. Except that with us, the ‘after’ looked horrible. Unshaven. Tired. With a blue ink stain near his shirt pocket. And murky eyes. And the ‘before’, who was Amichai, actually looked great. Fresh uniform. Shiny equipment. A bold, direct stare into the camera.

I don’t know a lot about photography, but of all the pictures in the album, I think that’s the only one with a chance of making it to a gallery exhibition. Because of the soft, minute-after-sunset light. And because of the sharp contrast between me and Amichai, which neither of us was aware of. And also because in the background, the camera had unintentionally caught a Palestinian boy of about five or six on one of the other roofs watching the whole scene.

After our picture was taken, Amichai gave me the letter Churchill had asked him to pass on to me. And he hugged me again. You came just in time, Bro, I whispered in his ear. You came a minute before I was going to throw in the towel. And it’s good that of all the guys, you’re the one who came. Because there’s no one like you to remind me that there’s also good in the world (and perhaps I didn’t tell him all that, and now, as I write, I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to say it).

Then I climbed down from the roof and joined the unit waiting for me on the street. The sun had already set and a frightening trip in the dark back to the battalion base was awaiting us.

Where does he know you from, that MAG guy? someone asked me after the weapons carrier had started moving.

Amichai? I replied. He’s my friend, in civilian life.

*

I think that was the first time I called him my friend and really meant it.

Our friendship didn’t ignite with a single spark, the way my friendship with Churchill and Ofir did, but grew over the years. Patiently. From event to event. That meeting in Nablus, for instance. Or the first time he asked me to his family’s home in Haifa, in Ramat Hadar.

The first friend I ever had, Oren Ashkenazi, had also lived in Ramat Hadar, and as a child, I was jealous of that and begged my parents to move us to the empty flat above his family.

Why should we move to Ramat Hadar? my mother asked with a grown-ups-who-know smile, and I said excitedly: there’s this giant yard where the kids go to play football and frisbee, and there’s a lift in every entrance that makes this scary whistling sound when it goes up, and there are twelve floors in every building and the twelfth floor is really high and sometimes you can look at the clouds when you’re on it, I mean, really see them from up there!

I wasn’t a child any more when I went to see Amichai in Ramat Hadar. Oren Ashkenazi and his family had already gone to live in America, and the neighbourhood looked different to me: intimidating buildings. Too wide. Too grey, almost like the buildings in Kieślowski films.

I stood on the ugly bridge that connected the car park to the building entrance, looked at the play area that had once seemed so wonderful to me, and noticed that it was bordered on all sides by high concrete walls. There was no way out of it. No landscape. Like a prison yard.

There were no children in that now. Not even one. Just a bearded man in rags standing in the centre of it talking out loud to himself, but not loudly enough for me to hear him. Had he already been talking to himself then, when we played there? Had he grabbed the ball once in the middle of a game and refused to give it back? Or was my memory deceiving me?