Fire burst over the desert as the sun broke the horizon. Bright orange at the edges, blood red below. The heat radiating from the glow cut subtly into the cool of the desert. Crisp, fresh, unpolluted air bit at the lungs, reminding one that they were alive and it was another day.
“There is nothing as beautiful as a desert sunrise,” Adira Halevi said, leaning tighter against her man. “You were right, motek.”
Yossi Hirschfield, who was the back half of the spoon on the dusty ground, squeezed her bare shoulder a little tighter, replying, “I always am.”
Adira chuckled and turned her head to give him a little kiss.
This is a moment, Yossi thought, as the bass thumped from the speakers behind them. The only thing that could make this better is if it was just the two of us. This might even be the time I’d finally ask her to make things a little more permanent.
But it was far from just the two of them out in the Western Negev. Three thousand other sun worshippers surrounded them; some were dancing in front of the stage, some slept or had passed out on the ground or in tents, some were huddled with Yossi and his girlfriend, watching the birth of a new day.
Behind him, someone started swearing, totally breaking the mood. He turned to tell the guy to shut up but saw him pointing into the sky. Dozens of bright lights were soaring through the air, seeming to float toward them from the direction of Gaza. Yossi was so glad that he and Adira had that moment with the sunrise because it was suddenly quite evident to him that the party was at an end.
It had been just over two months ago that Adira had told him about the Supernova Sukkot Gathering, better known as the Tribe of Nova Festival, down in the Negev. He had heard of Nova and its ties into the drug-laced trance culture. Electronic music, black lights, love, peace, and nature, all blended with a dose of Eastern mysticism and a steady supply of Molly, or MDMA.
Initially, Yossi was unsure about going. The event seemed kind of weird, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around a bunch of drugged-out hippies. This was despite the fact that, if asked, he would likely admit to being a bit of a hippie himself. But his greater concern was that it was being held only about five kilometers from the border with Gaza. After wrestling with the decision a bit, he came to the conclusion that, based on history, the worst that might occur is that they’d have some rockets fired their way. If that happened, they’d all bug out and head home. Besides, he’d been forced to say no to Adira so many times lately because of his job, sometimes at the last minute. She always seemed to understand, but still. It was obvious that she really wanted to go, and he kind of owed her this one.
Yossi Hirschfield was an intel analyst for the Mossad, assigned to assist a specific team of Kidon agents. When the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, wanted a person or persons eliminated, it passed the operation down to Caesarea. And when Caesarea needed the job done immediately and with absolute finality, it passed the assignment on to Kidon. Yossi was not part of Kidon’s tip-of-the-spear wet work. His job was back in CARL. He always smiled when he thought of CARL. He and his offbeat fellow analysts had spent a lunch hour wrestling with what to call their workroom. At the end of the break, they had settled on the acronym CARL. What did the letters stand for? Absolutely nothing. But those in CARL were the only ones who knew that, and as a result, the cryptic acronym had been the subject of many water-cooler discussions throughout the Mossad compound.
The couple made the 90-minute drive from Tel Aviv to Re’im on October 6, arriving a little after dark. The rave was already in full gear, and it took them about 15 minutes to hike in from where they had to park their car along the side of the road. It would have been impossible for anyone to miss the location of the party—as they trekked the dirt path, a glow rose into the sky and the rapid, steady beat from the electronica carried through the cool desert night.
A couple minutes was all it took for Adira to start getting a little groove to her walk. Turning, she grabbed Yossi’s hands, and they danced as they hiked. She was beautiful—jet black hair, olive skin, her face showing heavily her father’s Grecian background. When she moved, it was with a dancer’s grace, showing off her long legs and bare torso. For his part, Yossi’s long, light brown hair and matching hipster-length beard caught the wind as he spun her and dipped her.
The two moved and swayed until Yossi took hold of her shoulders and kissed her. They stood that way in the middle of the road with their lips locked and their bodies pressed together, until he once again felt her hips begin to move back and forth. She pushed him back with a laugh, lifted her arms above her head, and started grooving to the beat. Yossi, who was no slouch on the dance floor, joined her, and they continued on their way.
The festival was mayhem, but it was a controlled “everybody loves each other” kind of mayhem. It made Yossi think of the spirit of Woodstock, only with glow sticks and ecstasy instead of mud and LSD. Everyone was moving, everyone was smiling—one big happy family.
There were two dance floors, and Adira and Yossi made their way to the larger one. Very soon, they were jumping and bumping with hundreds of their new best friends as a DJ he had seen on viral TikTok posts controlled the crowd from up on stage. They had been there only about ten minutes when Adira said something to him that he couldn’t understand, then slipped away.
Fifteen minutes later, she was back, carrying two small drink cups. He took one from her and was about to toast her when she reached into her pocket and brought out two little green pills with a yin-yang symbol pressed into them. She raised her eyebrows at him, and he shrugged his shoulders. Neither one of them regularly took drugs. In fact, if Nir Tavor, Yossi’s boss at CARL, knew about him popping this tablet of MDMA, he would probably force him to type “I will not take Molly” 10,000 times on his computer without the benefit of cut and paste. But his team had just finished an operation, and he wasn’t due back to work for three more days. When in Nova, might as well do as the Nova-ites do.