Tel Giborim, The Mound of the Heroes – 12:30 PM - IDT
Eldad drove slowly through the neighborhood, looking for a space to park while Yana and Bastian adjusted their eyes to the reality around them. The contrast between the vibrant blue and green hues they left behind and the depressed, grayish atmosphere of just existing. It was so palpable, crushing, but unfortunately typical–for in every city, even in affluent countries, there was a version of this neighborhood.
The crowded narrow streets were filled with minuscule apartments abused by the passing of time. Garbage piled on dusty sidewalks while trash spilled over the cans in the public park across from the apartment. Although other districts around Holon were working hard at rebuilding life with positive initiatives despite the periodic clashes, Tel Giborim couldn’t shake off the stench of its bloody history as a battlefield of austere tribalism.
Eldad parked the car behind a beat-up, white Honda and left the agents on call. It was best for Ifat to meet one stranger at a time, starting with her countryman. Eldad went into the building and up a flight of stairs. Decay and despair, like a straitjacket, imprisoned the apartments right and left. He reached for the door handle and manipulated it, tempting the faceplate-and-latch assembly until it yielded. The door protested with tempestuous grumbling, and reluctantly revealed the horror it held inside.
The stink of alcohol and human misery hit him like a gas bomb that made him stumble back. Eldad took a few insecure steps into the beast’s stomach. The scarce light filtering in from the corridor wasn’t enough to distinguish among the shadows. When his vision adjusted to the darkness, he found the light switch. He walked, making an inventory of the chaos he saw. They were just a very few poor-quality furniture pieces. The coffee table in the living room exhibited the remains of an assault on the soul. Empty bottles of alcohol, syringes, needles, and accumulated filth. They were the mute witnesses to a corroding life, drowning in rage and pain.
He followed the odors down the narrow corridor and grimaced at the painful scene. The woman lay half-naked on the bed in her room. Eldad rushed to her, fearing they had arrived too late. He took her vital signs. Her pulse was weak, but she was alive. He watched her with sinking sadness. The burns on her body looked like clusters of glowing reddish lines. He didn’t dare to lift the quilt; he could imagine the damage left by the explosion and fire. Who could judge her for her reckless behavior? Only those who had never witnessed the destruction of all that is loved.
Through his special ability, Eldad sensed Ifat’s pain in his own heart. He plunged into that sadness without hesitation, receiving such misery in his own being. The devastation and the guilt were so great that, with no other escape, the pain gushed through his eyes in the form of tears.
“Ifat, can you hear me?” Eldad squeezed the hand that was hanging limply from the bed. “Yana, I need your help,” he called through the private communication device they shared.
“On my way!” replied the Spanish agent, getting out of the car instantly.
“Hello, beautiful, do you want to play?” said a shaggy young man, standing with his group of vagrants. He grabbed her by the wrist as she passed in front of them. “Are you a model?”
“What are you doing around here? You’re too pretty to be walking alone.” Another one said in heavy accented English.
“Dangerous move. I’d think better if I were you,” said Yana, delivering a fast elbow to his nose, freeing herself from his grip. The young man stumbled against Bastian’s chest, who had anticipated trouble. The gigantic and strong German raised the thug like a wooden log and sent him flying against the rest of the guys.
“I should go bowling more often,” Bastian said, seeing the group on the ground. Satisfied, he returned to the car. “Back on my post, if you need me.”
“Got it,” replied Yana, getting inside the apartment. “Ostia, the smell! This place is ready to go up in flames!” she mumbled surprised as she faltered in the darkness almost gagging.
“Don’t say it when she’s conscious. It’s the fire that has left her like this,” Eldad reprimanded her through the communication device. He turned on the light from a corner lamp.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that the smell, and the darkness caught me off guard.” Yana examined Ifat’s languid body. She traced the burn lines on Ifat’s back. Ifat’s breathing was so weak that her diaphragm hardly contracted or expanded with the air coming in and out. She was like a living dead. “We have to get her out of here right away!”
“Agreed. She might have overdosed. Look, here is her closet, which after seeing the entire place, seems to be the only perfectly organized and clean space in this chaos. Let’s get her dressed and out of here! We’ll treat her in my apartment. I’m sure Gadiel and you will be able to provide the help she needs.”
“Come Ifat, we will help you get better!” Yana whispered, dressing the sleeping body.
Jaffa, Eldad’s apartment – 5:00 PM - IDT
The afternoon sunlight showered the desk and bed by the window. Ifat woke up slowly and disoriented. She tried to remember what had happened. The room was clean and well-lit and aired. This was definitely not her place. She got up without making the slightest noise and slid to the window, intending to jump into the busy street, but the asphalt below wouldn’t be kind to her bones, she considered. She stood tall and went out the door and found Eldad and Yana, murmuring in the hallway outside the room. Confused, she looked in every direction like a cornered animal, preparing to bite, kick and push in a dash to the door. She could make it if there weren’t four giants blocking the way.
“Who are you?” Ifat demanded in English, rough and unshakeable, looking for something she could use as a weapon, but there were only bare walls.
Eldad calmly approached her, exercising his ability within her and speaking Hebrew. “Calm down, Ifat. We are friends.”
“I don’t have friends! Where am I?”
“I’m Eldad Shalit, and you are in my apartment, in Jaffa. We brought you here to treat your overdose.”
“What? Did I make a telepathic call to Magen David? How efficient,” She walked to the door. “Well, thanks. I’ll be on my way now.”
“Wait, Ifat, please!” Eldad tried to stop her, adhering to exact measures of firmness and supplication.
Ifat understood they wouldn’t stop her. She eyed the strong man with blond dreadlocks and passed him to prove her assertion right.
Bastian just moved out of her way.
“Ifat, we know what happened in Hebron…” said Eli, approaching her from the living room, speaking softly.
“That’s no secret at least in this country,” she replied in her Hebrew accented English and continued walking to the door. She readied to run and push her way out.
“I’m not talking about the explosion, but to the night it all began,” Eli answered, behind her.
Ifat turned to look over her shoulder, her eyes loaded with fury and curiosity. She studied Eli up and down as her brain raced to find something in her amazing mental database.
“Mila Ferro. Do you remember her? She lived with her mother in your moshav. You were neighbors. Mila confided in me what happened that night. Only to me. They don’t know, I haven’t told them.” Eli spoke kindly but urgently while glancing at the others.
The sorrow transformed Ifat’s face from anger to contrition. She turned to the door slowly this time.
“Please don’t go, let’s talk!” cried Eli, planted where he was.
“Where is Mila?” Ifat asked, deciding still whether to stay or run.
“Mila is here and I think you both need each other right now,” replied Eli, begging.
“She has also gone through a rough couple of years. She has endured the loss of people she loved, and even her memory.”
Ifat hesitated for an instant, but as she turned around, she found Eli’s distressed eyes, glancing into the living room. Ifat didn’t answer. She walked the narrow corridor leading to the ample living room and found Mila unconscious on the sofa. With no regard for the silent eyes following her, she dropped to the edge of the sofa and let all the held-back tears flow for the first time since the day of the attack. She gazed at Mila through her tears, the adolescent girl who had left the moshav was now a woman. On that sofa lay unconscious the only soul that would understand her loss. Yet, if what the man said, she had lost her memory… would she remember what happened the night of the confrontation? Ifat sobbed.
Yana tried to comfort her as a woman and doctor, but Kei and Eldad stopped her. That was Ifat’s sacred moment, intruding on her pain would be like desecrating a temple in full worship.