Nicole!”
As soon as they walked through the entrance to Yael Diamonds, Mila Wooters jumped up to wrap Nicole in a warm hug. “It’s so good to see you, Mila,” said Nicole, her voice slightly muffled by Mila’s neck.
“Let me look at you, girl.” Mila stepped back and put her hands on Nicole’s cheeks, but just as quickly pulled them away. “What? You’re freezing! You’re like a block of ice! Did this one make you walk all the way here?” she asked, punching Nir in the chest as she did. “What are you doing to this poor girl? You can get anywhere in the city for less than a forty-euro Uber ride.”
“It’s not his fault,” Nicole broke in. “I wanted to walk. Besides, I had to make a stop on the way here.” She took the pink box from Nir and presented it to Mila.
“Oh no. Is this…?” Mila opened the box to find an assortment of a dozen eclairs. “Oh my, they’re perfect! But what are you doing to me, sweetheart? If I eat these, I’ll start looking matronly and before I know it, I’ll stop getting likes on my dating app.”
“Whoa, there’s a backstory I want to know nothing about,” said Nir, his hands up in the air.
“I’m sorry, Mila. I thought you liked them.” Nicole looked a little crestfallen.
Mila leaned forward and whispered, “I love eclairs, and I’m going to eat every last one of them. But how would it look if I accepted them without at least a little protest?”
“Got it,” Nicole said, taking hold of the older woman’s arm. Nir just rolled his eyes.
As Mila put the box on a credenza behind her desk, Nicole asked, “So, how is the packing going?”
Mila turned with a surprised look. “Didn’t Nir tell you? I’m not going anywhere.”
Nicole pivoted toward Nir, who said, “The man I sold the business to asked if I could recommend anyone for the front office. I told him there was no one better than Mila. I guess they hit it off.”
Mila walked toward Nir. “You need to give the whole story.” When she reached him, she put her arm around his waist and turned toward Nicole. “First of all, the severance package this one gave me could have allowed me to retire to the south of France, or at least rent a villa there for a few years. But more importantly, I love to work. So, when Mr. Levy presented me with an offer with the same benefits and nearly the salary that Nir gave to me, I jumped at the chance.”
Nicole creased her forehead and stuck out her lower lip. “Does this mean you’re not going to fly with me to Milan so you can be my mom?”
Mila rushed over and wrapped Nicole in another hug. “Oh, I’m going to miss you so much, dear.” Suddenly, she stepped back again. “Wait a second. That box says that the eclairs are from Heimisch Bakery. Does that mean he took you back to that horrid turkey bone restaurant again?”
Nicole laughed. “No, we went fancy this time. The Skybar.”
Mila turned toward Nir. “Oooo, up on the Lindner. Nice work, young man.”
“Every now and then I get it right.”
Nir’s surrogate mother stepped back and admired the two of them for a moment. Then, suddenly she was moving back to her desk. “Now, as much as I love catching up, I know you’re not here just to see me. You two go off and talk about whatever you need to talk about. I’ll be in with coffee in a few minutes.”
Nir and Nicole excused themselves, then moved into his office. After closing the door, Nir took a chair set at an angle to the soft couch that Nicole stretched out on. She lifted a thin blanket out of a basket on the floor and threw it over her legs.
“Still a little chilly,” she said.
“January in Belgium will do that to you.”
“Are you sure you want to give all this up?”
That was a difficult question. After the operation in Damascus, Nir had felt the pull to come home. The world was becoming a more dangerous place, particularly if you were Jewish. He wrestled with his decision until October 7. That one day cemented in his mind that his era of splitting time between Belgium and Israel was at an end. He needed to be ready to fight for his country at a moment’s notice, and he couldn’t do that while evaluating the cut of a ruby in Antwerp.
“Admittedly, there are parts of this job that I’ll miss. But it’s time for me to be home, and this isn’t home.”
Lifting her eyebrows, Nicole asked, “Is it wrong that I don’t feel that way yet? I mean, I’m going to be there whenever I’m needed, but I’m not feeling anything that’s saying, ‘Hey, give up modeling and be an Israeli spook full time.’”
Nir laughed. “I’m sorry. There’s just something funny about hearing you call yourself an Israeli spook. Maybe it’s the accent. Maybe it’s that you look anything but spooky.”
Nicole laid her head back on the couch and sighed. “Always the goy in a roomful of Jews.”
“Hey, don’t knock it. Sometimes we need someone to tell us that the glass is half full. That’s something you won’t find in a roomful of Jews.” They laughed together. “Besides, Nicole, you don’t have the same reasons to be in Israel. For you, it’s still safe to go everywhere. For me, the list of people who want to hurt me just because of who I am is growing every day.”
“You see, I don’t get that antisemitic mindset. I thought it died off in 1945. But now I’m hearing people say things about Israelis that blow my mind. And the stuff I see on social media? Who are these people? They have to be bots spewing the words of a small handful of hateful freaks, don’t they?”
Nir shook his head. “No doubt there are bots out there that aren’t helping the situation. But what happened in 1945 with the revelation of the Holocaust and the freeing of the concentration camp survivors didn’t kill antisemitism. It just pushed it underground, where it lay dormant waiting for an opportune time to rise up again. That’s what we’re seeing now. October 7 gave people a chance to show that they weren’t antisemitic. ‘Oh, poor Israel. What happened to them was tragic. Kidnap, rape, murder, mutilation? Just horrible.’ But now that we are fighting back against the killers in Gaza, these very same people are saying, ‘Look at those Jews! They’re baby-killers! They’re targeting hospitals! They’ve always been bad, and now they’re showing their true colors!’”
“Not only that, but they’re now saying, ‘Rapes? There were no rapes. There was no brutalization. That’s just the Israeli government making up stuff to get sympathy.’ It makes me so angry when I hear it!”
There was a knock on the door. Nir invited Mila in, who brought them both a Nespresso cappuccino. “Thanks, Mila,” Nicole said, squeezing the hand that Mila had placed on her shoulder.
“Yeah, thanks,” said Nir, his emotions still high. Mila raised her eyebrows at him, then walked back out the door, closing it behind her.
Nicole spoke first. “Okay, before we both get into too much of a froth, let me ask you this. Do you think that antisemitism is a high motivating factor for Erdoğan?”
“Good question,” Nir said, pausing for a few moments. “I’d say yes and no.”
“Hmmm, thanks for clearing that up,” Nicole said with a wink.
“Just hold your horses and let me explain. I would say yes because as Jews, we are Semites and he hates us. But that is a technical answer. A more nuanced look might say no because it wouldn’t matter if we were Arctic Inuits. He’d still hate us.”
“Why? What’s he got against you guys?”
“A lot of years of bad blood. First of all, the Turks are Ottomans, and they aren’t happy that they lost our region in World War I. But it’s more than that. We’ve been trading barbs back and forth for decades. Have you ever heard of the Mavi Marmara affair?”
Nicole shook her head.
“So, back in 2010, a six-ship flotilla set out from the waters of Northern Cyprus for Gaza. They were filled with people, building supplies, and humanitarian aid. The problem was that Israel had a shipping blockade against Gaza. These ships, filled with members of the Free Gaza Movement and the Turkish IHH, which stands for something like the Foundation for Human Rights and blah blah blah—these boats were planning on running the blockade. Israel wasn’t having it, so they sent some folks out after the ships, including some from Shayetet 13. Well, some of these batwings got aboard the MV Mavi Marmara, and they were met with people carrying pipes and knives.”
“Not an ideal way to meet the Shayetet boys.”
“For sure. Not surprisingly, things went south quickly and nine activists were killed, with a tenth dying about four years later from his injuries. It turned into a big deal and Prime Minister Netanyahu ended up having to call President Erdoğan to apologize because it was all Turks who died.”
“That had to hurt.”
Nir nodded. “Undoubtedly. The Turks made huge hay out of the incident, rubbing Israel’s nose in it time after time. They even convened a court, demanding that Israel give the names of the commandos involved. Israel refused. So, the courts instead went after the Israeli chief of staff, a navy commander, and a couple intelligence guys. They convicted them and gave them ten life sentences each. Needless to say, none of them have plans to visit Turkey anytime soon.”
“I kinda wonder about that one,” Nicole said, looking up at the ceiling. “Yeah, they met armed guys on the boat, but was there a better way to stop them? Or would it even have been more politically expedient to let them through to Gaza?” Her eyes shifted to Nir’s. “Although I get that too. You let one flotilla in, you’re going to have forty more launching the next week.”
“Exactly. But let me tell you one more. And with this one, you won’t have to think. We were definitely in the wrong and it was beautiful! Throw me a few of those pillows from the couch.”
Nicole sat up and tossed Nir a few pillows, which he put on the seat of his chair. When he took his seat again, he was staring down at Nicole, who was a couple feet below him on the couch.
“Okay, that’s a little weird,” she said.
“Just listen and let me explain. About five months before the flotilla incident, Turkey, and Erdoğan in particular, had been going after Israel mercilessly. Constantly criticizing the prime minister and the government in the press over their handling of the Gaza situation. Then came the coup de grâce. A Turkish television station broadcast a drama depicting Israeli soldiers as brutal and evil. In the program, they were shooting old men and kidnapping children. It’s essentially the same stuff that the American left is accusing us of now.”
Nicole snorted a laugh.
“The prime minister was not happy. So he had his deputy foreign minister call in the Turkish ambassador. When the guy arrived, the deputy foreign minister didn’t even shake his hand. The ambassador was directed to a low couch, where he sat. The deputy and his contingent then took their places on full-sized chairs. They were looking down on the ambassador like I’m looking down on you. Then the deputy chewed the guy out, up one side and down the other. The ambassador left humiliated.”
Nicole was full-on laughing now. “What a beautifully awful political move.”
“Yeah, we ended up sending a letter of apology for that one too. But the point was made, and it will never be forgotten.”
Nicole raised her finger up and said formally, “Because nothing is ever forgotten in the Middle East.”
“Exactly!”
They talked a while longer. Then Nicole asked, “So, you’re heading back to Israel now?”
“In a couple days. Where are you off to from here?”
“Well,” she said, dragging out the word, “I had thought of maybe tagging along with you.”
“No shoots lined up? Aren’t there clothes that desperately need modeling?”
“There may be, but it feels like my family needs me. I can’t be ready to jump in the fire if I’m modeling a swimsuit on a beach in Saint Tropez.”
Nir didn’t answer. Instead, he stared up at the ceiling.
Nicole followed his gaze. “What are you staring at?”
“Nothing. I’m just picturing you in a swimsuit on a beach in Saint Tropez.”
A pillow flew through the air and hit him in the face. “Stop. Don’t be a creepy stalker freak.”
With skill and great accuracy, Nir flung the pillow back at her, following it up with the three that he was sitting on. “Don’t mess with a sharpshooter, little missy.”
Nicole had her hands up. “I surrender. I surrender.”
“Good decision. Now, how about we invite Mila in and spend a little family time?”
Without answering, Nicole popped up from the couch and moved toward the door.