He went to school to learn how to kill me.
They taught him how to carry the bomb strapped to his waist, how to dress so that bulging explosives wouldn’t show. They taught him to meet people’s eyes and walk normally so as not to draw attention. They practiced what to do if someone shouted, “Stop!” or if people started to stare, and when to push the red button. Always, they drilled, when in doubt, if you think they’ll try to stop you, press the red button. He even had his photo taken so that his parents could display it at his all-expenses-paid funeral.
Sooner than he could have expected, everything had been set up—his ride to Tel Aviv, the bomb made out of fertilizer and sugar, embedded with nails, no heavier than the one he had practiced with. He was blessed one last time, and after they dropped him off a few streets away from the café, he was on his own, ready to go.
I wonder all the time if his heart was racing fit to burst. If his palms were sweaty, his mouth dry. If he was sorry that he had set this all in motion. If he was more scared to turn back than to go forward. If he was calm. Or high. Or if he was eager. If I had seen him, would I have known what he was about to do?
But those are questions that I will never know the answer to.
He didn’t kill me. I was on the bus, stuck in traffic. The girl who got him fired. The Israeli girl who ruined his life.
Seven other people were killed instead.
A single mother of two. A computer programmer. Two college students. A grandmother and her four-year-old grandson sharing an ice cream. And Dov, my boyfriend, my heart, the man I wanted to marry, who was there waiting for me.
I wonder if the Palestinian bomber would be pleased that it turned out this way. An eye for an eye. A tooth for a tooth.
I ruined his life. So he ruined mine.