Edeet Ravel - Look for Me

“This conversation is turning me on.”

“It’s hard to believe people like reading these books, but they sel by the mil ions.”

“How long does it take you to write one?”

“Two or three months, because I don’t write every day. In theory I could write faster, but I don’t want to.”

“I’ve imagined this moment for a long time.”

“I had no idea.”

“I liked get ing your let er in jail. Even if it wasn’t personal.”

“What was jail like?”

“Just the usual. Nothing special. Lots of disturbed people who should be get ing help, not a jail sentence. One guy in particular.”

“Remember the vigil we had for you on the hil ?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Yes, you waved from down below. We don’t shoot, we don’t cry, we don’t watch children die …Were you bored in jail?”

“A lit le. We joked a lot, though. We spent a lot of time laughing.”

“A lit le. We joked a lot, though. We spent a lot of time laughing.”

“It’s something we have in common with the Palestinians. We both have a good sense of humor, have you noticed?”

“Yes, it always amazes me,” he said. “They never lose their sense of humor, no mat er what.”

“Especial y when our soldiers mispronounce their names or the names of their cities.”

“Yes.”

“The women don’t laugh as much.”

“Maybe at home they do. They’re more restrained in public. And they have enormous burdens.”

“I remember one time I was taking a photograph of this journalist from Canada interviewing a Palestinian guy. And he asked her at the end of the interview where she was from, and she told him. He put his hand on her shoulder as though leading her away, and he said in this serious voice, as if he were giving her advice, ‘Go, go home,’ and he and his friends burst out laughing. They laughed for about ve minutes. I have a nice shot of that … I can’t imagine you in combat,” I said.

“I can’t imagine it either.”

“I hated the army because I was so spoiled by then. I hated being told what to do. My mother also hated anyone tel ing her what to do, I must have inherited it from her.”

“I feel so detached from al that now. Even the images in my mind, it’s as if I’m watching the scene from above, from a distance, and I see myself as one of the figures in the scene.”

“How’s your arm?”

“Bet er now. Those pil s are working … What do you take them for?”

“My period, sometimes.”

“Can I take of your clothes now?”

“Yes. I’ve had sex since Daniel left me, but it hasn’t felt like this. This is dif erent.”

“For me too. Do you want to use a condom?”

“No.”

“I’m happy.”

“I hope we won’t be sorry.”

“Of course we’l be sorry. You can’t live and not be sorry.”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

SATURDAY

HE LEFT AT FOUR IN THE MORNING.

“What wil you tel Graciela?”

“She won’t ask. What are you doing today?”

“I’m in a dilemma. There are two events, and I want to go to both, but it’s impossible. I wish these things were a lit le bet er coordinated.

There’s the condolence cal and the gay thing.”

“I haven’t heard about any gay event today.”

“It wasn’t very wel publicized. The army is sending these gay and lesbian soldiers to the High School Pride Club to convince the kids that the army is gay-friendly.”

“They must real y be get ing desperate.”

“There’s going to be a protest outside, a drag carnival, they’re going to parody army uniforms and hand out free tickets to the Hague or the military cemetery. So that’s going to be colorful. But the condolence cal seems more important. Are you going to that?”

“No, I can’t, I have a soccer game with my after-school kids. And I want to spend some time with my daughter today. Cal me when you get home.”

I walked him to the door.

“Wil you be okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He kissed me one last time, and left. I returned to my flat, our flat, mine and Daniel’s, and sat cross-legged on the unmade bed.

Everything had changed: I had betrayed Daniel. I had held someone else, loved someone else. I would not have believed it possible and I stil didn’t understand exactly how it had happened, or why.

At the start, during the rst few seconds of sex, I had not been able to stop thinking of Daniel; it was as if Ra and Daniel shared one body.

I remembered dreams in which people I knew had merged into one person: Daniel and my mother, Tanya and Odelia, El a and the woman at the photography store. In my dreams the transformations seemed natural, as though al humans had shifting identities and were continual y exchanging one for the other. In waking life the confusion was frightening.

But Daniel faded almost immediately, because Ra ’s style in bed was very di erent. Daniel was funny, playful, imaginative. He joked, he entertained me. Ra was quiet and intense. It was a serious undertaking for him, sex. Serious and complex, an exploration of another person and of himself. Daniel and I talked about what we wanted to do as though discussing some trip we were going to take and what hotels we would stay at. Ra did say a few things, but they were not in the category of discussion. Remembering those things now made my stomach lurch, and I longed for him to come back.

What would I tel Daniel when I saw him? It was distressing to think that I would have a secret from him, but the idea of hurting him was unbearable. Maybe I could telescope the years of his absence and make them vanish, make them inconsequential; maybe we could start over.

But I wanted to know about his life over the past eleven years and I wanted him to know what had happened to me. It occurred to me that maybe this was the reason I’d started taking photographs: I wanted a record of my life for him. I would show him the photographs, and he would know what I’d seen and, if the photo was good, what I’d felt.

What would I say when I reached the one of Rafi?

I quickly pul ed out the shoe box that held the photo of Ra and removed it from the box. I stared at it and wondered what to do; I felt like a fairy-tale hero who has to find a clever way to dispose of a magic object without activating some dreadful curse.

First I would find Daniel, then I’d decide. In the meantime I placed the photograph on my work table.

I showered, slept for two hours, had a container of yogurt, and set out for the condolence cal . It would be a lot harder than the drag carnival, but it was more urgent. I took a taxi to our meeting place at the train station. The taxi driver was in a good mood and whistled cheerful y as he sped down the empty streets. “Where are you of to this early?” he asked conversational y.

“A condolence cal ,” I said. “Two children were kil ed.”

“Good for you!” he exclaimed. He’d misunderstood, and I didn’t have the energy to correct him and get yel ed at. Maybe he wouldn’t yel at me, maybe he’d only shake his head and sigh, but I didn’t want to take a chance. Once a taxi driver had thrown me out of the car because of my views. That was the only time, though, that I was banished altogether, and it was because the driver had narrowly missed being blown up that afternoon, had seen body parts flying through the air.

“You’re an asset to the State,” the happy driver told me. “Please give them my condolences, too.”

“I wil ,” I said.

He whistled al the way to the train station. He’d probably had sex the night before. Just like me.

There were two minivans at the train station, waiting to col ect everyone. We were a smal group: sixteen people in al . The condolence cal was in Hroush, which normal y would have been a short drive from the city, but it took us nearly eight hours to get there because our two vans were stopped and held up so many times. At one point we were told we had to turn back altogether. Desperate, we climbed out of the vans and sat on the road so that other vehicles would not be able to pass either. There were only two soldiers at this isolated road-stop, and they couldn’t drag us al away.