35

Ariel

Is the fear he feels now that same fear his father felt in 1967, six days before Ariel was born? The fear of total destruction by the fall that could’ve become a fall to the abyss? But that fear was followed instead by ecstasy. His father told him, “We shocked the Arabs on that day, six days before you were born. We thought they were going to throw us into the sea for sure. They would attack us from all sides. But the great surprise was when we discovered that this young country, only nineteen years old back then, didn’t only defend itself fiercely, but somehow became a tiny empire. The ecstasy of victory was unparalleled, and then you came.” Ariel remembers his father’s words very well. He used to return to that reservoir, his chest of memories, whenever he felt his confidence in what was taking place becoming shaky.

He rarely harbored any doubts. He did, once, back when he served in the army. He remembers the terrified faces of Palestinians when they used to surround their homes in the middle of the night to arrest their children and take them to interrogate them. Some of them were so young and he never understood where they got all that stubbornness from. He recalled those looks from time to time after finishing his military service, and when he returned for reserve service in later years.

They were watching a youth standing next to someone his age, throwing rocks at them. “Look at this aggressive mouse throwing rocks at us,” said his colleague. “I’ll show him,” he added, as he looked at the “mouse” through the scope. Snipers were like gods. With a pull on the trigger they decided who could stay alive and who would be expelled from it.

Ariel and two fellow soldiers approached the young man whom the soldier’s finger had decided should fall. When they were close, his breath was still warm. “What brought you here?” Ariel yelled at the corpse. “He’s a boy. Not yet fourteen,” Ariel screamed into the mic that carried his voice to the ear of the soldier who had pulled the trigger. “He didn’t look that young from behind the trigger,” said the sniper.

The dead youth’s friend stood a hundred meters away, his hands full of rocks. He didn’t flee. Fear died inside him and he froze. When Ariel apprehended him to deliver him to be interrogated, he had to drag him to the jeep. He kept looking at his friend’s corpse as the jeep was pulling away. He didn’t shed a single tear and stayed silent. It was a cold silence.