9

When it became clear that some of Jamie’s third-degree burns were not regenerating, and never would, large squares of skin were sliced from her left thigh and stapled to her hands, legs, and back – the body forced to take one for the team. The Lord giveth. The Lord taketh away.¹ After the procedure, when the anesthesia had worn off, she lifted up the layers of gauze to show me the flayed areas – perfectly measured patches of crimson – as though her thighs had been stenciled with an airbrush and set to dry.

But she wouldn’t show me the hands, the staples. Nor had she shown me, at any point, the burns blistering under bandages that covered thirty percent of her body. She refused to let me see her exposed. “It’s disgusting,” she’d say. “I look like a monster,” she’d say. “You don’t want to see,” she’d say. I never asked to see underneath the bandages after she’d said, “You don’t want to see.” I believed her.

But curiously, she had chosen to lift up some gauze to show me her flayed skin, the patches on her thighs that had been peeled away, perhaps overtaken by the bizarre symmetry, the cannibalistic holism of the procedure. It would be one of only two parts of her injured body Jamie would share during her recovery, the other being the hole that had been created just below her left hip by the nut that entered in the flash of the blast, traveled up her side and into her small intestine. The nut I still have.

In the autumn and early winter, after being released from the hospital, Jamie received ongoing care at home. During those months, we watched the hole slowly close.

This is how it worked: a nurse would clean out the smooth, concave opening, then gently stuff it with gauze – ostensibly to absorb miscreant fluids and give the skin something against which to heal. Each day, the nurse arrived with her bag of supplies. She unwound the bandages, smoothed ointment over the burns, and rewound new ones over the still-healing skin. In the beginning, the hole was easily a half-inch in diameter and an inch deep, and during this phase the nurse would simply remove the used gauze and insert clean strips with her pinched, gloved fingers. But as the hole began to shut around the soft, foreign inserts, it became necessary to use tweezers, each morning’s event becoming the childhood game of Operation, trying not to touch metal to the opening’s edge, trying not to – buzz.

And then, the hole was gone. And so was the nurse. And we were alone, forced suddenly to figure out what to do with the rest of our lives.

A week before the bombing, Jamie and I had decided to start trying for a family, understanding that life was tenuous, thinking, Better start now. You never know. It was a decision preceded by months of debate, a decision I had been lobbying for against great resistance as Jamie tried to make sure I understood the stakes:

“David, it’s not going to be like a pet.”

“I know.”

“It’s going to be full-time. Non-stop. It won’t be a toy.”

“I know.”

“They don’t come with off buttons.”

“I know.”

She had reason to resist. While in Israel, I had become obsessive about learning both spoken Hebrew and Talmudic Aramaic – spending nearly every waking moment in pursuit of proficiency in each – and Jamie had a hard time envisioning me being able to slow down, to ease off the accelerator and care for a child. There was plenty of evidence to back up such suspicions. Once, during our first year in Israel, I came home and made a pronouncement:

“I think we should stop speaking in English.”

“What?”

“I really want to learn to speak Hebrew, and with all the Americans we’re around, it’s virtually impossible.”

“But our vocabulary isn’t good enough to just speak in Hebrew.”

“It would get better.”

“By just speaking in Hebrew?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think so. I kind of like having a relationship.”

“It would be fun.”

“Speaking to each other like toddlers? Look, I’m tired at the end of the day. I don’t want to struggle through Hebrew with you when I just want to relax and spend time together.”

“Okay. But what if I chose to speak just in Hebrew? You could use English if you want.”

“You can’t do it.”

“I can try.”

“Fine. Whatever.”

Later that evening, while I was washing our blue, plastic dishes after a dinner of grilled cheese with tomato and avocado, Jamie asked from the living room where she might be able to buy some gloves.

I didn’t answer.

“David?”

No answer.

“David, can you hear me?”

I turned around and nodded, shutting off the water.

“Why won’t you answer me?”

I paused, considering my options. “I don’t know how to answer in Hebrew.”

“Are you kidding me?”

I shrugged.

“You chose not to answer me because you didn’t know the right Hebrew words rather than answering me in English? Please tell me that’s not what you did.”

“I guess maybe I shouldn’t do that when I can’t find the words, huh?”

“You guess?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

“Maybe you need an Israeli girlfriend. You could speak all you want.”

“Hey, that’s a great idea.”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.”

The episode was emblematic of a determined focus on my part, which, the summer of the bombing, had peaked. As a non-citizen barely able to hold a conversation with Israelis, despite having graduated from ulpan, a Hebrew language training course of study, I searched for ways to be immersed in the language. I set up a chess board at cafés with a sign that read Rotzeh L’sachek? – Want to play? I schmoozed with supermarket clerks. I talked with children clinging to their mothers in line at the bank. Finally, I found the opportunity for sustained Hebrew immersion by volunteering for the municipality, and was placed in Jerusalem’s summer camps division. When I first showed up at the run-down building in the heart of the city, there was mild confusion.

 

Rega, lama rotzeh la’avod cahn?	Wait, why do you want to work here?
Lilmod Eevreet.	To learn Hebrew.
Eevreet? Americaye, nachon?	Hebrew? You’re American, right?
Cain.	Yes.
Ma iym ulpan?	What about ulpan?
K’var avarty.	I already graduated.
Lo m’shalmim,	Nobody’s going to pay you, you know.
Ani yodeah.	I know.
Muzar.	Weird.
Ma?	What?
Ashir?	Are you rich?
Lo.	No.
Lama b’aretz.	Why are you in Israel?
Lomed b’universita v’yeshiva.	I’m studying at university and a yeshiva.
Dati?	Are you religious?
Lo bidiyuk.	Not exactly.
Ma’anyen. Okay – baruch habah.	Interesting. Okay, well – welcome.

 

During the days, I filed paperwork, answered phones, and ran errands for an army of women trying to run the city’s slate of summer camps out of a disheveled, musty office across from city hall, rambling to me in Hebrew with reckless abandon, pointing and smoking and cursing.

That summer the World Cup was held in South Korea, and during lunch breaks I would descend to the local coffee shop and join those who were continuously gathered around the big screen, pumping their fists and shouting, despite Israel’s absence from the pitch. The United States was doing unusually well, having upset Portugal, and Israelis, hearing my accent, would pound me on the back and ask for my opinion on Claudio Reyna, the U.S.A.’s stoic mid-fielder, or launch into an analysis of America’s strategy. And so during the days, I learned how to talk about corner kicks and summer camp scholarships. At night, after returning home, I posted myself before the computer and learned Talmud online, reading pages of Aramaic while listening to MP3s of a rabbi explaining the myriad legal mazes. I felt compelled to keep up with the Daf Yomi schedule, the daily page of Talmud learned by Jews around the world.

It was an existence consumed by language, a self-directed schedule of linguistic immersion in the present and the past. And it was within this existence that Jamie and I decided to begin building our future together. “I think we should start trying,” I said one night in July.

“I do too,” she answered, surprising me.

And then, a week later, the bomb went off.

Months later, Jamie’s medical care ended – the hole closed, and the nurse left our apartment saying, “You’re done.” We said goodbye, closed the door, looked upon each other and tried to resume our lives, tried to pick up where we had left off, Jamie seeking out a doctor and asking, “Is it safe to get pregnant?” The concern was her internal injuries, whether or not pregnancy was a risk given the surgery on her small intestine. The doctor, an Israeli, a woman who understood the fragility of opportunity, and seeing nothing physically holding Jamie back, encouraged her, said, “You should do it.”

Jamie came home and reported, “It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“What should we do?”

Jamie looked at me and said, “What we can.”

Here’s what we couldn’t do: remain in Israel. Jamie’s sense of vulnerability, after Jerusalem had failed her, was too much to bear. Quick trips in the neighborhood were bringing moments of panic. While strolling on the sidewalk, Jamie would angle away from an approaching bus, anticipating the sudden shattering of glass. In the local grocery, she’d scan the produce section’s floor while picking through the broccoli, looking for abandoned bags ready to go off. Things were no longer sustainable. She had to leave. And though we needed to flee the Middle East – unable to find sanctuary amidst the bombs and artillery shells – we found shelter in each other again, reclaiming not only an intimacy that the bombing had stolen, but an intentionality that had existed as well. The first moment Jamie was physically ready, despite the anxiety geography was inducing, we began trying again for a child. We wondered if the months of pain-killers had been washed away, her body cleansed, wanting to take advantage of the blood pumping hot and fast, wanting a child before one of us – forgetting to duck – disappeared suddenly. Still reeling, dizzy, disoriented, we wanted wholeness, normalcy. We wanted stability. We were desperate to reclaim the lives that had been lost forever.

In December, Mohammad Odeh’s trial was held in Jerusalem – a high-profile affair pasted on the front pages of newspapers and analyzed on newscasts. Murder charges were brought against him and the three other members of the Hamas cell responsible for numerous attacks across Israel. Some of our friends attended the trial and stared him down as he entered the courtroom among the bereaved, among those flailing, trying to pry past courtroom security, fists clenched, wanting to feel the crack of bone on bone, shouting, “Murderers, bloodsuckers, you should all be executed;” shouting, “My girl. You murdered her in cold blood two months before her wedding;” shouting, “I can only visit my son in the grave.”

But we didn’t go. We didn’t want to go.

“Jamie, do you want to go to the trial?”

“What trial?”

“The trial of the guy who they caught – ”

“Absolutely not.”

“Okay.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

“Then why’d you ask?”

“I don’t know. Thought maybe you’d want to.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Okay.”

“But you can go,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“I can’t imagine wanting to go.”

“Then we’re not going.”

“Okay.”

It was the last thing I could envision doing, for the seed of desire to meet Odeh had not yet been planted. It lay dormant. I felt nothing. The possibility of a trial provoked nothing. There was no anger, no rage, merely paralysis – a desire for things to remain distant and faceless. It just happened.

So did this: one afternoon, walking back from the supermarket, Jamie stopped, pulled on my arm, and said, “I think that’s the guy.”

“What guy?” I asked, seizing up.

“The guy who helped me. The one wearing a UCLA shirt.”

I looked and saw a twenty-something man walking toward us, the one who Jamie told me had grabbed her as she ran from the cafeteria screaming.

“I think I should say something to him.”

“Okay.”

“Think he’ll remember?”

“Yeah, I think he’ll remember, Jamie.”

She walked up to him and said, “Hi.”

“Um, hey,” he said, not recognizing her, Jamie’s face smooth, polished, beautiful.

“Oh, sorry. I’m Jamie. You helped me at Hebrew University.” His face darkened as Jamie introduced me, gave him our number, and invited him over to our place. I could tell he didn’t want to come, that he was scared, but a week later he showed up anyway, showed up timid, quiet, forced to relive the moment when he had grabbed Jamie and held her. He showed up to help us again by reliving that moment so I could understand what he had seen, how he had helped her. And I remember the awkwardness. The talk of getting together again as though the experience, him soothing Jamie as she screamed from the shock and the horror and the pain, might create a natural bond, a friendship, when in reality, neither he nor we wanted to see each other again.

We never did. When he left, we said goodbye, said we’d get in touch – Jamie and I already preparing to leave, preparing to say goodbye to everything here. Nothing was the same. Nothing could be the same. We didn’t want to see him again.

When we returned to Pardes, a sculpture hung before the doorway, shards of broken glass protruding from layers of black paint. It was an artistic expression of torment crafted by a friend, the piece rotating idly, spinning on a string. Fragments of glass cut through the air. We looked at it and then looked through the familiar glass door now coated with a bulletproof laminate. I did not want to enter. It was over. We were the survivors, the ones still alive, but our previous lives had ended, and it was uncertain how they could begin again. In the Beit Midrash, we stared through texts, the Hebrew script moving right-to-left as our eyes moved from the foreground to the background, blurring and widening, absorbed by the periphery. I glanced to where Ben and Marla’s empty chairs stood, unable to concentrate. With a voluminous Masechet Sanhedrin open before me, I learned about the laws of lost property, thinking about loss, about losing, about all that had been stolen.

After weeks of staring through books – through the miniature screens of our eyelids upon which the past was continuously projected – we packed our bags and left.

At Ben Gurion Airport, waiting in line to check in, our passports at the ready, Jamie was stopped by a young female security agent and interrogated.

“Where are you flying?”

“Home.”

“And where is home?”

“America.”

She plucked the passport from Jamie’s hand and began flipping pages before asking, “And what was the purpose of your visit?”

“To study at Hebrew University.”

“And what did you study?”

“Jewish education.”

She raised an eyebrow and looked at Jamie. “What month is it?”

“December.”

“What is the Hebrew month?”

Jamie furrowed her brow and glanced at me. “It’s Kislev, right?”

I shrugged.

“Kislev?”

The security agent shook her head. No. Holding the passport, she stopped abruptly and fixated on Jamie’s gloved hand. Jamie was wearing pressure garments on certain areas of her body, tightly fitting nylon which pressed the skin flat to prevent hypertrophic scars – raised, nodular formations that restricted movement and flexibility. I wanted to step in and explain to the security agent that the scar tissue was still forming, that the glove was applying pres sure to the epidermal layer, forcing the scars to form smooth and flat. I wanted to explain that Jamie had to wear them at all hours for a year. That it wasn’t our choice. That she should just let us go, please, let us go and check in and leave.

“I was injured in a terrorist attack,” Jamie said, watching the agent.

“Which one?”

“Hebrew University.”

“Ayzoh mizkeinah,” she said, pulling up the rope, letting us through, victimhood giving us license to leave, justification to want to leave. It was enough.

As we walked to the gate, Jamie turned around. “What did she say?”

“Ayzoh mizkeinah. It means poor thing.”

“I know what it means. I just didn’t hear her.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t like people looking at my hand.”

“I know.”

“I’m not sure I can come back.”

I nodded, looking at the Channukiot left over from Hanukah in the window at Duty Free, the lights gone.

“Want some Scotch?” I asked.

She grabbed my hand. We walked onto the plane, silent, feeling abandoned, feeling as though we were abandoning a life we once loved, a life taken away. The terrorists won, I thought. They fucking won.