Eshkol Nevo - Homesick

She nodded in surprise and said, ‘You mean there’s someone else in this world who felt like I do?’

Yes, I continued, encouraged by her nodding, but you know what? The fact is that everyone there was scared. Everyone burned their fingers when they vacuum-packed their kit, and no one believed you could run to the weapons depot and back in ten seconds or run a circle around the entire base. But I walked with my head down so much that I couldn’t see it. The people in the platoon seemed like a big, threatening block that functioned in perfect harmony, and I was the one who ruined it. I was wrong. It wasn’t a block. It was just a collection of confused people making a huge effort to hide their confusion from each other.

So what should I do? she asked and gave me a look that said, you’re smart, you know.

First of all, lift your head up, I said. When do you go back? Sunday? Good. Go like a queen. Smile at everyone. Ask how they spent their time off. Don’t be afraid. And every time that lonely feeling starts to come back, look at them and say to yourself: they feel this way sometimes too. It’s not just me.

I don’t know … she said, drawing out the words as if she wasn’t sure that what I suggested was doable, but she liked the idea.

Try it, I said. The worst that can happen is that it won’t work. How much more time do you have?

Eight months.

That’s nothing. If you take away Saturdays and holidays and sick days and real dentist days and fake dentist days, and two or three family affairs, how much is left? Four months, tops. And you have to subtract your discharge holiday leave, and right before that, no one will even notice you any more, so you can go back to the base on Monday instead of Sunday and leave on Wednesday instead of Thursday. And on Monday, there’ll be a day of fun in Eilat and you’ll take a sick day on Tuesday because you’ll get sunstroke. Which easily takes off another two, three months. In short, tomorrow or the day after, tops, you’ll be discharged, young lady. So what’s your problem?

She laughed and looked pleased with the way I’d juggled her time left in the army. For a minute, I could imagine how, after the army, she’d let her hair grow and be attractive. Very attractive, even. And someone else — not me — would run two fingers slowly along her naked arm, climb to her shoulder and then to the back of her sweet, white neck. Someone else. Not me. Sorry. I have to go back to studying now. I have an exam. What am I studying? Psychology. Interesting. Yes. Even though it can be a pain sometimes. Why a pain? Some other time. Tell your mother I said thanks, OK? And come over again. Don’t be shy.

Before she left, she surprised me with a kiss on the cheek. Thank you, she said. I didn’t ask what for because I was tired of pretending. I watched her through the window till she disappeared at the end of the block, and then I paced around the apartment for a few minutes feeling like I always do after I do a good deed and someone thanks me. It’s hard to explain the feeling. I’d say that maybe it’s a little bit like kubeh metfunia . It has a core of soft happiness wrapped in a sour feeling of guilt — who am I to give other people advice — and on the side, there’s a red sauce made of emptiness. And okra.

I lay down on the bed. The smell of Noa still lingered on the sheets even though I’d changed them three times since she left. She’d understand, I thought. She’d understand how a feeling can be like kubeh metfunia , and how doing something good for another person can actually make you sad.

She’d say: it’s the law of connected vessels of feelings.

And say: it’s easier for you to give than to get. So you give, and then you feel like you’ve missed out on something because look, you haven’t got anything this time either.

And say: who’s that knocking on the door now, in the middle of our conversation? Maybe you won’t answer it?

The knocking continued, persistent. Stop it, I really am in the middle of a conversation with Noa, I thought, but I went to the door anyway. Ever since I hadn’t opened the door for Yotam and he disappeared, I don’t dare not open it.

Standing in the doorway was a young guy wearing black. With the scraggly beginnings of a moustache.

Ahalan , brother, he said.

Ahalan , I said, returning the greeting, not understanding where he was hiding the pot of kubeh .

Would you be interested in an amulet from Rabbi Kaduri? he asked, pulling out a yellow box. We have all kinds of amulets in all shapes and sizes.

Ah … look … I started to say, but he’d already opened the box.

This, he said, pulling out a medallion, is a pendant with a portrait of Rabbi Kaduri, also inscribed with letters that have special power in the Cabbala. You probably know what they are.

I nodded as if I did.

And here, he went on, I have cards with the Rabbi’s blessings on them for all occasions. This card has a blessing for success in business, this one for health and a happy life, and this card is for marital reconciliation — all signed in the Rabbi’s own hand.

And what’s that? I asked, pointing to the candles sticking out of the box.

Those, he explained, slightly embarrassed, are oil candles. You have to light them while you say the prayer that’s written here, on the side, and that will guarantee our success in the elections next month. Would you like a candle?

No, thank you.

Maybe a pendant? Some cards? You can also send letters to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and get a personal reply from him.

I think I’ll pass.

That’s a shame, brother, because it’s all free. Maybe you’ll take something anyway? A card? Come on, just one card.

OK, I said. Give me the card for marital reconciliation.

He handed me a card excitedly, patted me on the shoulder and asked if I wanted to buy a cassette of religious songs by Benny Elbaz, ten shekels, all of it for charity.

No thanks, I said, rubbing the card nervously.

No problem, he said, patted me on the shoulder again and announced to the empty lot and the cats, we’re on the way back to our former glory! and skipped quickly down the tiled path.

I closed the door and threw the card into the rubbish bin. A second later, I regretted it, took it out and hung it on the noticeboard above a bill.

I went back to bed, got under the covers and put the pillow behind my neck. Tiny fragments danced in my eyes. For a minute, I wasn’t sure if that quick visit of my long-lost brother had really happened or whether I’d imagined it. I thought that if Noa were here with me, I’d tell her everything and that would make it real for me. An invisible fly buzzed in the room and kept bumping into the window. Suddenly, I missed her terribly.

*

And then, one night after I came home from the bar, it appeared. All at once, like those fans at the games Amir watches who burst naked on to the football pitch and steal all the attention.

Suddenly I knew. I knew. What. I wanted. To do. For. My final. Project.

I was so excited that my hands started to shake, actually to shake, but I didn’t try to steady them, I let the idea — which at that minute contained only one word, LONGING — spread through my mind and send associations in every direction. It all happened with lightning speed. As if that project had been incubating deep inside me, just waiting for the right moment to hatch. Come here, my little beauty, come here, I coaxed it. I took a pile of white paper out of the drawer and started drawing sketches that I taped to the wall. In the centre, I hung an illustration of myself holding a phone, and then I started surrounding myself with more and more longing. My mother was there, with a scarf she knitted for her first boyfriend, who died in the Yom Kippur war and she never talks about him. Saddiq, the worker who came into Avram and Gina’s house was there with his grandmother’s gold chain around his neck. And there was a new immigrant from Argentina who I called Franka, and a cinema usher who caught my eye in Jerusalem a year ago and seemed to fit now. And there was a guy I’d never met, but I could see him, I could imagine him down to the smallest detail, and I knew that there would be no objects in his frame, just the text of what he says about longing for something since he was a child, but not for anything specific, just in general. I drew him and stuck the drawing on the wall. I drew other figures with and without objects and wrote all kinds of words that came into my head, like toy, boy, joy, and the whole time I had the feeling in my throat that I was about to cry, the feeling I get whenever I’m creating from the right place. Suddenly, I didn’t care about what my instructors would say. When I have an idea that really makes me shiver, no one can put me down, no one! And if they dare to make a peep, I’ll just add them to the list of the people I’m photographing because they must be longing for something too. Maybe for the time when they really did create and didn’t just criticise. Yes! That’s it! Fantastic! I’ll photograph Yishai Levy at the door to a gallery. Standing there, but not going inside.