Eshkol Nevo - World Cup Wishes

Of course.

An elderly couple walked past, their arms around each other, their shoulders touching.

It’s nice that they walk together like that at their age, I said.

His lower back hurts him, Ofir decided, and hiccupped like a drunk.

What?

That man has back pains. Bad ones.

How do you know?

Look at the way he walks. It’s not balanced. He walks crookedly to avoid the pain. And she’s supporting him with her hand. That’s why they’re walking that way, close together.

You can actually see things like that? I said in surprise.

Yes, Ofir said and pointed to the guy working in the kiosk. For instance, he has a stiff neck because he’s always raising his head to look up at the TV. It’s hanging too high.

I looked at the guy. There really was something robotic in the way the lower part of his body moved. Wow, I thought. Ofir is truly good at this. He didn’t say a word to those people, and yet he knows such intimate things about them. So really, what does he need words for?

But you can write, Ofir said suddenly.

Me? I said, startled.

Yes, you wrote some really good letters back then.

Me? Write? Are you joking?

Why not, you’re the one …

No way, I interrupted him. You must be wasted to have ideas like that.

We got up from the bench and staggered towards the cars. We were light-headed, a little fuzzy, and perhaps that’s why we reacted so slowly to what happened. A guy wearing light-coloured jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt was walking towards us. At the time, we didn’t notice that he was wearing light-coloured jeans and a long-sleeved white shirt. Only later, when we tried to recreate it, did we remember that. And the cap he was wearing. And the fact that there was something foreign about his facial features. Something not from here.

A van stopped next to him when he was about twenty or thirty metres from us. A huge van. Whale-like. Three men got out of it, grabbed the guy and forced him into the back seat. He didn’t try to resist. It was weird. He didn’t shout. Didn’t kick. Didn’t wave his fists around. But even so, one of the men hit him on the head with something that looked like the butt of a gun. The whole thing took a few seconds, no more than half a minute. Then the men got into the van and drove away. They didn’t drive fast and the tyres didn’t squeal on the turn. Just the opposite, they even stopped for a red light at the next junction. And then, when the light turned green — they drove off.

What … what was that? Did you see it too? Ofir asked. Yes, I mean, I think … I don’t know … maybe we should call the police?

Perhaps they were the police, Ofir said.

So where’s the flashing light on the roof?

Maybe they’re undercover, Ofir offered a logical explanation. But we still called the emergency police number. And waited a long time for them to answer. The jingle playing in the background kept repeating the words ‘service’ and ‘for you’. Carmit, the desk sergeant, sounded like we woke her up. She wrote down my description of the events without sounding particularly interested. I tried to be as detailed as possible, but the more details I gave, the more I felt like I was losing her. You sound pretty indifferent, Carmit, I said angrily. This isn’t something that happens every day. A person gets pushed into a car and abducted like that, in the middle of the city.

You’d be surprised, Carmit said. The immigration police are hunting down foreign workers at the moment.

Wait a minute, so you know about it? That’s what this was?

I don’t know, Carmit said. Maybe it was the Security Agency.

Security Agency?

People staying in the country illegally. Palestinians from the territories hiding at their employers’ places. They’re being hunted down now too.

So it’s the hunting season now, is it?

Excuse me?

Never mind. Will you give us an update on how this turns out?

We don’t update citizens.

So what … how will we know what …

Read the papers. If there’s anything unusual about what you saw, it’ll be reported in the newspapers. In any case, the Israel Police thanks you for your alertness. And wishes you … a good, quiet night.

*

We walked towards our cars in silence. I think we were both slightly ashamed for having stood by and not lifted a finger. Even though there wasn’t much we could have done.

When we reached the car park, Ofir said, what a way to end the evening.

And I said, yes. They don’t let you celebrate in peace in this country.

And Ofir said, something’s gone bad here these last two years. Or … or was it always like this and I’m only noticing it now because of Maria? Everything here’s become so base. So brutal. And you people in this city, you think you can escape it. That you’re some kind of cosmopolitans. But that’s crap. It’s worse here. Everyone in this city pretends to be liberal, but the truth is that smoking grass is the whole extent of their liberalism. God forbid they should be truly open to other people. Or care about the injustices going on right under their noses.

What does he want from this city? I thought. What sore point of his is it pressing on?

Remember what I’m telling you, Ofir went on, in the end it’ll explode in your faces. And it’ll come from the most unexpected direction.

Why ‘your faces’? By what right did he exclude himself? I wondered. Because he lives in Michmoret, or because Maria convinced him to throw away his mobile, or because he takes an afternoon nap every single day ‘because that’s what our bodies truly want’? — but that didn’t seem like the right time to bring up the subject. So I didn’t say anything.

And Ofir said, I have a request. If you can, don’t tell Maria about the … about what just happened.

No problem, I said.

She’s been a bit … since Ilana. And I don’t want her to …

No problem.

*

Maria wasn’t the only one I didn’t tell about the kid napping. I didn’t tell myself either. An article I translated recently claims that the first two years of our lives are erased from our memory because the dramas that take place during infancy are too intense to bear. And I repressed the memory of that kidnapping as if it had never happened until the first session of the creative writing workshop I was taking. The tutor asked each of us to tell a true story and a false one about ourselves, and suddenly it rose to the surface like a lost navy submarine. I talked about how we were strolling down the street and the large van stopped and a man was swallowed up inside it, like Jonah in the whale, and we didn’t do a thing, we didn’t have time, or we couldn’t, or we didn’t want to. I told the story in great detail, as the instructor had asked, but still, the whole group, except for one timid girl, thought I was lying and that the true story was the one I’d made up about still using a youth pass to ride the buses even though I was thirty, and no one suspected me because of my baby face and height.

To tell the truth, I was insulted. Even though the purpose of the game was to trick the group, I felt like shit that no one believed the first story. Wait a minute, I asked, why doesn’t the story about the kidnapping sound believable?

The way you told it, it sounded like a scene from a Hollywood movie, said a guy in glasses who looked like a Hollywood movie director himself.

It sounds more like something that would happen in America. Things like that happen in New York, not in Tel Aviv, a girl said.

You didn’t flesh out your story with enough non-contingent details, the tutor said. That’s why we found it hard to believe.

That group was pissing me off more from one minute to the next. They don’t believe me even now. And what the hell are ‘non-contingent details’?! It’s so annoying when teachers use words no one understands. And how maddening it is that it has exactly the stupid effect they’re aiming for. And what is this chair they gave me to sit on? It’s not a chair, it’s a stool. It’s not a stool, it’s a rug. Why do I deserve this? Why did I pay for the whole workshop in advance? This is the last time I come here.