Edward Whittemore - Jericho Mosaic

The officer leading the squad was killed, then the paratrooper behind the officer was killed. The whole line of paratroopers in front of Assaf was falling and dropping. Suddenly Assaf felt an intense burning in his chest and one of his legs went out from under him. He landed hard and men were running over him, continuing the attack, rushing up the alley through the smoke and the flames and explosions and shrapnel. The burning sensation in Assaf's chest was overpowering. A boot drove into his back. Darkness came over him and he remembered nothing after that.

***

Eventually Assaf had found his battalion but not his company. He had done all his fighting with another company, which had lost its way in the night assault. The company had fought its way up the wrong street in Arab Jerusalem, but it made little difference because the area was so small. They were supposed to be on the street that led to Herod's Gate in the Old City, while in fact they were on the street that led to Damascus Gate, a little to the south. The alley of death where Assaf was wounded was very close to the Old City, no more than four hundred yards from Damascus Gate.

By seven in the morning the assault was over and the paratroopers occupied all the buildings facing the walls of the Old City from the north. The fierce night attack had carried them the length of Arab Jerusalem. There were still Jordanian positions on the ridges east of the city, so another day was to pass before the colonel in command of the paratroopers led his men through Lion's Gate, the same northern approach that had been used by the Babylonians and Romans and Crusaders in taking Jerusalem. The Old City itself passed to the Israelis without any organized resistance within the walls.

The Old City was taken on the third day of the war. The Jordanians had been beaten back along the central front and were retreating to the east bank of the Jordan River. On the fourth day of the war Israeli armored units reached the Suez Canal, trapping what was left of the Egyptian army in the wastes of the Sinai. The paratroop battalions in Jerusalem were put on buses again and sent north, along with all other available troops from the southern and central fronts.

At noon on the fifth day the assault on the Golan Heights began. No surprise was possible and the Syrian army was fresh, having done no fighting, whereas the Israeli units were tired and worn. The assault forces rushed straight up the steep slopes with heavy losses, fighting their way through the massive Syrian fortifications which both the Russians and the Syrians had considered impregnable. In a little over twenty-four hours the Israelis accomplished the impossible and conquered the entire Golan.

And thus on the sixth day the new war came to an end.

THIRTEEN

Assaf's wounds were not as serious as Anna and Tajar had feared. He would have restricted movement of his left shoulder and perhaps a slight limp, but the rest of his body would mend with time, they were told. When Anna was with him in the hospital Assaf kept up a show of courage, but when Tajar was alone by the bedside Assaf let all his bitterness pour out.

It was horrible, he said. Even when we were succeeding it was horrible. Men are ripped apart and blown to pieces and you just keep pushing on trying to kill. It's brutal and ugly and there's no sense to any of it.

There was a family hiding in one of the Arab houses we went through, he said. We had to stay for a while because we were giving covering fire. The family was huddled in a corner watching us, as still as death except for a little girl who couldn't stop crying. It was a small room and they were just a few feet away. We were firing out the windows. While I was reloading I said something to the little girl, trying to comfort her. She wasn't surprised I was speaking to her in Arabic. Then it struck me. She was too young to know enemy soldiers don't usually speak in your tongue because enemy soldiers are always from another country or tribe or another something. Her father was surprised but not the little girl. We were ready to leave and I had a moment before crossing the yard. I knelt beside her, wanting to stop her terrible sobbing. It's going to be all right now, I said. The soldiers are moving up the street and you'll be safe in your house. She didn't stop crying but I knew she heard me. Then she choked out some words between the sobs, pathetic little words that were meant to explain her crying and justify herself in front of her family. I'm so frightened, she said. This is my first war.

Tajar leaned over the bed to hear Assaf, who had closed his eyes. A shudder ran through Assaf under the sheets. He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling, speaking in an exhausted voice.

Her first war, repeated Assaf. That's what she said in that room where her family was huddled in the corner as silent as death. If this were the last war then maybe I could justify what I saw and did that night. But where is the last war? My mother conceived me in the first war and my father was killed in the second war and I was mangled in the third war and . . . what's the matter with people? What's wrong with their minds and their hearts? This isn't survival or life or anything at all a man can speak about. It's just horror. War.

Tajar sat with his hand resting on Assaf's arm, saying nothing, listening. Some of the exploits from Tajar's early life had become known to the public by then, not his intelligence work in Arab countries but his efforts to smuggle Jews into Palestine when it was still under British rule. Accounts had appeared in books and Assaf made reference now to these histories.

And I'll tell you something else, said Assaf. If I were asked to rescue people, I'd volunteer for every mission as long as I had the strength. Bringing people to safety and freedom? That's easy because there'd never be any doubt in what you were doing and never a fear in yourself. Who doesn't want to help people? It's right and it makes you feel good and that's the way it was when you were my age, Tajar. That's what you faced and you did it, but doing the right thing then was simple. Don't you see it's not that way now? You were lucky. You saved lives. But that's not what I'm called upon to do. I lie awake at night listening to a little girl cry. But when she's older and stronger and harder, when she knows hate better, maybe she'll no longer cry. . . .

Sadly, Tajar listened to Assaf pouring out his feelings. It was all understandable after what he had been through, with his body still in great pain. He was severely troubled and more time would have to pass before they could know how his experiences had changed him.

We can only wait, Tajar told Anna after describing what Assaf had said to him. The psyche adjusts to trauma in so many different ways, we just can't assume anything yet. But the resilience of the human spirit is a wondrous thing, truly limitless. Despair passes and anything can be born from it, anything at all. And Assaf is very young and he's strong inside, so we'll wait and watch and listen, and we'll see what we can do to help him regain his footing.

Tajar was a profound comfort to Anna that summer. She didn't know how she could have got through the first visits to the hospital without him, or the days and weeks that followed. Often in the evening he turned up after work at her house, unannounced, and the two of them would sit on her balcony until a late hour, talking quietly in the shadows beneath the stars, a heady fragrance of jasmine drifting up from the courtyard on the night breezes. Anna was now aware that Tajar had once known her dead brother David, in Cairo during the world war, so their conversations carried even further back into the past, spanning her entire life.

We try so very hard, she said to Tajar one night, but no matter how hard we try we never do very well. And people always seem to struggle for the same causes, wanting life to be a little better for their children than it was for them, but what comes of it?