We’re at the Bar-Meirs’ apartment. I leave the living room, where my mother is chatting with Martha Bar-Meir and Tsvi, her husband, and look around for my brothers, who have disappeared on me. I go into Barry Bar-Meir’s room at the end of the hall, the room where Yoni spent his leaves while he was in the army, and find the two of them, Yoni and Bibi, sitting on the bed. Barry isn’t here; he’s left for Italy to study medicine. Yoni is studying math and philosophy at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem after a year at Harvard.
There’s an air of conspiracy in the way both of them suddenly turn their heads toward the door as I enter. When I ask them why, Yoni tells me that he’s thinking of returning to the army, to Bibi’s unit, and makes me swear I’ll keep it to myself.
“Tell Uzi to take a look at my service record,” says Yoni, going back to his conversation with Bibi. “If he does, I think there’s a good chance he’ll agree to take me.”
“A good chance? He’ll snap you up in an instant,” says Bibi, and then adds: “That’s the problem.” There’s no hint of happiness in his voice.
Yoni seems encouraged, as if he hasn’t noticed the undertone in Bibi’s words. “Tell him that if he needs an officer, and you’re not willing to go to Officers’ Training School, I’ll take your place.”
“I don’t think you really see what you’re getting yourself into,” says Bibi. “You’ll be older than any of the other officers with the same position. And besides, it’s no job for a married man. You’ll hardly ever get home.”
“Bibi, I know what I want and what I’m getting into. Tell him everything I said, including the part about the service record.”
Bibi won’t let up: “Come back to the army if you want, but to a higher position. It doesn’t fit your age or your experience to be a squad leader. And besides, the Unit…” Then he stops, as though he can’t quite explain his reservations, even to himself. Gradually, watching his brother’s enthusiasm, he gets caught up in it, too, and starts describing all the opportunities that will open up for Yoni. Yet there’s something forced about the way his words rush out. As for me, the youngest brother, I’m exhilarated by the scene — by what’s being said in half-whispers, by the revelations I’m hearing for the first time.
When we’re already standing, about to rejoin the “grown-ups” at the far end of the apartment, Yoni warns us not to tell anyone about his intentions — even Tutti, his wife. “I’ll tell her when I make a final decision,” he says. “Until then, there’s no reason to bother her with it.” Even though I’m only sixteen, it strikes me as strange to hear a married man talk that way. True, I know his trait of having to decide alone about anything really important to him. But the words still grate in my ears.
Yoni has long since enlisted, I’ve been drafted, and we’re walking together, in uniform, in the Judean Desert. The sun beats down on our heads and sweat pours over our bodies. With us are two other soldiers, fellow members of my squad. Nissim, excited to be with a high-ranking commander of the Unit, picks up the pace. A jerrycan of water is strapped to his back, yet he walks at great speed as if it were nothing. I’m already completely exhausted from spending the last two nights at solo orienteering in the Galilee (nearly half our time in training was spent learning to find our way in any terrain, even at night, by memorizing the map in advance). Why can’t I sleep like the other guys do during the days between those nights, when we all stretch out in some olive or eucalyptus grove? Why don’t the flies on their faces or the hard clods sticking into their backs wake them up too? Yoni is relishing the orienteering — the exertion, the primeval scenery, and most of all, it seems to me, walking with young soldiers. Still, I can see he’s also having a hard time in this heat. Once in a while, when we stop to drink from our canteens, the four of us talk about the sights around us, the orienteering, and the blistering heat. “Sometimes,” says Yoni, “when you’re walking in real hellish heat, much worse than this, worse than you can take, you look for any shred of shade you can find just to rest for a minute. You’ll even stick your head under a lousy thistle, as long as it gives your eyes some shade.”
Now it’s my turn to carry the jerrycan, and I begin to fall behind a little bit.
“You’re in the desert with another person, and you only have one canteen of water,” Bibi once presented Yoni with a classic Talmudic dilemma. The three of us were boys, and we were talking in the hall of our house. “Either of you would need to drink all the water in the canteen to save himself. You can’t split it. What would you do, take it for yourself or give it to the other person?” Yoni thought a minute before answering. Then he said: “It would depend on who the other person was. If it were Iddo, let’s say, I’d give him the water.” I looked at my big brother, who was then fifteen years old, and I knew: He’d do it.
Nissim turns around. “Give me the jerrycan. I’ll carry it,” he calls.
I shrug my shoulders in refusal, and run to catch up with the others. Later, when Yoni offers his help, I pass the load to him.
We’re the first ones to reach the finish line, at the foot of Masada. Yisrael, who had brought Yoni and has met him here with the car, has already made a big cooler of lemonade and a pile of french fries. I sit and drink one of the tall glasses we’ve “borrowed” from a restaurant on Dizengoff Square in downtown Tel Aviv where we go on nights out. Time after time I draw cold liquid from the cooler and pour it into my mouth. My need is bottomless. We sit there around the cooler, the five of us, and eat fries. They taste so good that soon Yisrael has to remind me that I should leave some for the others who are on their way. The shadow of the cliffs has already spread over us and the slope leading down to the looking-glass waters of the Dead Sea. The others still haven’t arrived; I’m thoroughly content. Yoni finishes eating, says goodbye, and drives with Yisrael to the Unit’s base. We stay on for another day of orienteering.
We’re at Ein Fit on the north side of the Golan Heights for urban combat exercises. This is our second time here, and this time the exercises are more elaborate than the last. The deserted town is beautiful, and the plants growing wild in its midst only add to its allure. The houses have stood empty now for nearly four years since the Syrian officers who lived in them abandoned them during the Six-Day War. The streets of the town slope down and converge at a small square; the spring at its center is enclosed by a wall built, like the houses and the low walls separating them, of black basalt. Between exercises, we get some time to rest, and after we wash our sweat-drenched faces with clear spring water, we stretch out around the spring. The open spaces of the northern Golan are spread out before us. Above us lies Za’ura, another ghost town, while below and further off, on the crest of a hill, stands the Crusader castle of Kala’at Namrud. Against the wet skin of my face blows a bracing gust of wind. For this moment, looking out from these heights, I feel as if all the world were mine.
Yoni arrives for the week’s concluding exercise. I’m leading the team responsible for covering fire in one of the drills. We’re briefed by our commander, and then Yoni adds a few comments before we begin. Among other things, he discusses covering fire. “There’s an important rule for the force providing holding fire,” he says. “You’ve got to be ready to act, immediately, under any conditions, to defend the main force — even if it engages the enemy unexpectedly or too soon. You’ve got to lay down the covering fire without any delay, even if you’re still moving and you haven’t taken up your position.” At the start of the drill, my commander reminds me of what Yoni said, and I can already see that they plan to engage the main force while I’m still moving towards my position. I run through an alley with my team. As I expect, the engagement comes early, and I open fire immediately. The drill itself, like most drills, follows a predictable pattern, but the lesson is etched into my memory.
That day we conduct another exercise, in which we take a group of houses. During one part I make a clumsy assault — my body upright and exposed, my movements slow and awkward. Yoni dresses me down, as he does others who have performed poorly, and then he demonstrates how to cut across the courtyard between the houses to burst into the building on the far side. For the first time in my life I get to see how someone moves when he’s a soldier in every limb, every muscle, every step. His control of his body is absolute. Fast, agile, he leaps from a window into the courtyard, fires from behind the cover of a half-ruined wall, darts forward in a crouch under the wide window next to the door of the far house, and bursts through the door in a blaze of gunfire. The whole performance lasts but a few seconds. “Thats how you do it,” he says as he stands, still panting a bit, before us.
We’re gathered — a very large group — on the lawn between the officers’ quarters and the hut of the canteen. We’re leaving soon for an extended tour in the Gaza Strip to take part in the final stages of Southern Command chief Maj. Gen. Ariel Sharon’s 1971 campaign to wipe out Gaza’s terror network. Yoni, who will be in command of our force in Gaza, has brought a veteran paratroops officer who has served there recently to give his impressions. In the middle of the briefing, the officer remembers a particular incident and starts laying into certain members of the Shin Bet security service working in Gaza. He turns to Yoni, who’s standing to one side, and says: “You just can’t believe a word some of them say, not one word. Let me tell you…” We’re all ears now, hoping at last to hear something really juicy — after all, this is officers’ gossip. But such talk is anathema to Yoni, especially when it’s in front of us. “That’s not important now,” he says, cutting the man off in mid-sentence and trying to steer him back on course. He sounds uncomfortable, almost apologetic — the officer, after all, is only trying to help us.
A week or two later, in the Gaza Strip, Yoni is briefing us. It’s afternoon, and we’re sitting in an overheated room in a base in the city of Gaza. This won’t be our first action in Gaza, but it will be bigger than anything we’ve done yet. Yoni is sitting next to a sketch of the objective, and explains the plan for the raid on a large building in the refugee camp, which is suspected of being a terrorist base. We crowd around him. It’s the first time I’m taking part in an action that requires a real plan of operation, and I’m astonished by the quantity of detail Yoni deals with in planning a small assault in an area under Israeli control. The raid is set for that night, under Yoni’s command. He explains how the various forces we’ll be deployed, how we’ll advance in order to seal off all of the clan’s houses simultaneously from several directions, and how we’ll enter the building. He goes over each part of the operation in depth — simply, detail after detail, as if he has been doing this for decades — to make sure there are no misunderstandings. In the brief pauses between subjects, as he glances at the points he’s listed in his notepad, he squeezes his lips tightly together. The expression is so familiar; I’ve seen it every time I’ve watched him thinking something over seriously or concentrating on some task. His lips relax now as he goes on to the next stage of the assault, and a smile of pride passes over my own lips.
One afternoon he appears in our apartment. “I’ll have to stay with you for a while,” he informs us. “Miri and I are through.” That day he brings his few possessions from Miri’s apartment, where he’s lived for the past few months, and moves into a small room we haven’t been using. Among the books he brings is a small army booklet listing and describing the parts of a tank.
The next day he goes back to the army, to continue the transfer course for the Armored Corps. He finishes it as outstanding cadet and is posted on the Golan Heights as commander of a company of tanks in the enclave captured from the Syrians during the Yom Kippur War in 1973. A war of attrition is being fought with the Syrians; thus he returns to Jerusalem and stays in our apartment only rarely.
“I’m completely content at this moment, enjoying myself thoroughly,” he writes to his ex-wife Tutti, with whom he has not corresponded in years. “A moment of calm more precious than gold at 5:30 on a Friday, as evening approaches.
“It’s still light out, and I’m here in a chair outside the tent. In front of me is my row of tanks. Music wafts from the tent behind me, and in my hand is a book that I’m keeping open with two fingers out of inertia but not reading. The day passed without any serious shelling, and there was even time to wash up in the field-showers. Yesterday a shell landed right in the mess tent and completely destroyed it, along with the kitchen shed.
“My second-in-command has just come by, smiling blissfully.
“‘Like a real Sabbath, huh?’ he says.
“These are moments worth preserving, and I find myself wanting to write you a letter.
“Soon I’ll climb into a jeep and head home. It’s been exactly a month since I took command of the company, and until now I’ve been home just once for twenty-four hours. It’s interesting that I don’t even feel the need to get out now, and the truth is that it isn’t at all clear to me where to go. It’s a pity. It wouldn’t hurt if I had someone to come home to.
“Much of the time there’s a real war going on here. Of course, not like wars we’ve been through before, but still — you could easily do something foolish and pay dearly for it. The company is situated in a fairly critical position, and it does very good work.
“A few days ago, I thought about you long and hard, and my heart ached. It strikes me that every time I think of you, the memories that come back are of times I hurt you or made you sad, and I feel badly all over about them, and about my insensitivity. Not that I’d be more understanding today, but, with time, I see things differently.”
I’m busy now myself with medical school and with whitewashing the apartment. Yoni, in Jerusalem for the briefest respite from the shelling on the Golan, helps us scrape the old paint from the wall. He calls to us excitedly to come look at the new technique he’s come up with, and we see that, along with the paint, he’s succeeded in removing a thick layer of plaster. His joie de vivre bubbles to th surface, along with a carefree smile. Yet underneath, hidden, is a deep layer of sadness and loneliness. Loneliness, I know, is what he has to call his own more than ever before, and not just because he has no home, no wife, no child. It’s been his lot all his life, even when he was a “popular” kid in high school or the Scouts. It’s in a soul that rises far above and ponders everything, and sets him apart from everyone around him.
The war of attrition ends a few weeks after Yoni takes command of what’s left of a tank battalion that was nearly wiped out in the Yom Kippur War. The enclave is returned to the Syrians, along with the Golan Heights city of Kuneitra, and Yoni is almost totally absorbed in rebuilding his battalion, virtually from scratch. From the way he talks about it, I can see how much he enjoys working with the Armored Corps, how successful and admired he is there — and how far he could advance if he only chose to stay there. But he’s determined to return to the Unit after his tour as commander of the tank battalion.
When he comes to our apartment, soon after he takes command of the Unit, he mentions that I missed the ceremony. I don’t try to explain why I left; I don’t even tell him I was there that day. Instead. I ask him how things are going at the Unit. “It’ll be all right,” he answers, without saying more. The words reflect his optimistic spirit, but his voice is holding something back. Or maybe it’s my imagination, hearing in his voice my own uneasiness.