The People of Forever Are Not Afraid (20 page)

I
T STARTED
out as a thought, something that existed entirely in Avishag’s mind, but by the time the two girls finished the long walk to the guarding tower, it was already a feeling.

Gali and Avishag climbed up there, and they sat, and they didn’t say a word. And then an hour passed, and then it was more than a feeling.

It was a burning feeling, like fire ants eating at Avishag’s skin from the inside. It made no sense to her at first because she had showered last night after she left Nadav’s, and it was a good shower, long and drowning and kind to Avishag with the smell of soap.

And it didn’t make sense. And it didn’t.

And she sat, and she thought, and she didn’t understand.

But then she did.

It was the uniform. The stupid uniform underneath the
M-16 and the ammunition vest and bulletproof vest, underneath it was the green uniform all along.

Avishag was wearing the uniform now, but she had also worn it last night when she was leaving Nadav’s office and heading toward the showers. And she could feel it now: last night her uniform touched where he had kissed her; here, there, then lower, then on the other side. And now the same uniform was touching her again, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she realized that she could stand this no longer. But realizing it was not enough—she could still feel it; it wasn’t in her head. She could feel his dried spit on her skin, it was real and close and so
there
.

There was no escape.

Except there was.

She unbuckled her helmet and tossed it on the ground.

“Avishag?” Gali asked.

Avishag took off her M-16. Then the ammunition vest, the bulletproof vest, and her dog tag. She sat down on top of them, as if falling, untied her sandy boots, and then took off her socks.

“Avishag, what is going on?” Gali asked.

Avishag’s quick fingers unbuttoned her military top and then unbuckled her big brown belt. She took off her green tank top, then her red Mickey Mouse sports bra, then her underwear.

Finally, when she was completely naked, she got down on the floor of the tower and closed her eyes. The sun was roasting Avishag’s skin in blows, like a child blowing on a ragwort.

G
ALI THOUGHT
about shouting, or slapping Avishag, or even calling for help on the radio. But then she thought about the oddest thing.

She thought about how, during her first time, she was actually fully clothed.

It was only after Gali had her second orgasm that she realized that this was her second, that she had had one before.

The first one was given to her by the Jordan River. Every Passover in her kibbutz the kids would go bridge jumping to celebrate the end of the long Seder in the kibbutz’s dining hall. But despite how tall she was, Gali was actually afraid of heights. She never quite got the courage to jump.

During her last year in the kibbutz, when she already knew she would be moving to Tel Aviv, Gali stood again on the cement wall of the bridge in her yellow Passover dress and looked down. She waited and waited. Everyone else had gone home. The pine trees were shedding their orange needles on the water, and old ripples were budding closer toward the river band and its lilac bushes.

A pigeon flew above her. Gali covered her eyes with her hair. She smelled shampoo; she took a step forward and jumped.

For a second it was like walking in air, and it was so unnatural, it was clear to Gali that something had gone wrong that could not be made right again. Her skin was sucked upward toward the sun.

She hit the water with a splash. A warm signal of feathery fairies traveled all over her body in that instant. Her toes curled. Her shoulders bent. Her funny bone laughed. She
leaped up out of the green water with her mouth open, gasping for air.

But Gali’s second one was on the day she met Tom in tenth grade, at his house after geography class.

And she was completely naked then, and it was still sunny out.

And it was Tom she wanted to think of now.

“You are so strong,” he told her when she found herself in his bedroom on that tenth-grade afternoon.

“Really?” she asked. She was worried she might get sick. She worried Tom would kiss her, she worried he might not, she worried she might have something in her teeth, she worried she was too tall, she worried about the dangers of the city, how loud the city still was, even right then inside Tom’s room.

“You look so strong,” Tom said, and stepped so close to her, the tips of their noses touched. “Look,” he said and pointed to the mirror on his wall. “You look so strong.”

In the mirror, all Gali could see was her old self. But then she saw Tom in the mirror, looking at her.

She wanted his eyes to wash every part of her.

A
VISHAG WAS
breathing so heavily, naked on the floor of the tower, it was as if she had fallen asleep. There was no way anyone was going to visit the tower to check on the girls. No one had ever checked on them.

I
F WE
could look into the seventh tower from the right on the Israeli side of the Egyptian border on August 7 in the year 2007, what we would see would be two Israeli soldiers with their eyes closed. They’d be on the ground. Naked.

S
AMIR WAS
still not really saying anything, and Hamody had already smoked seven cigarettes and boiled two pots of dark coffee, so out of sheer boredom, Hamody decided to maybe try to do what he was in the tower to do in the first place. He picked up his binoculars and looked into the Israeli side.

At first he thought he was imagining, that maybe the coffee mix his uncle had given him was a bit too strong for him, but he gazed and he gazed. He washed his eyes with that sight, and it was real and far away.

On the other side of the border, two Israeli soldiers were lying on the ground, naked.

The first Jewish girl was long, and her breasts were small and firm. Her light brown hair rested on her shoulders. A gazelle of sorts, the type of girl who could give you a run for your money if you ever had to chase her.

The second Jewish girl was soft, big breasted, and altogether perfect. With her eyes closed like that and with her auburn hair around her like wings, she almost looked like the Christian bird from Hamody’s town, the one he knew he could never marry.

Hamody lowered the binoculars and looked at Samir, who was sitting on a white plastic chair with his back to Hamody,
looking back at the base in silence. Hamody thought of saying something, of bursting out in joyous cheers, of laughing the whole thing off, but then he realized he couldn’t, or didn’t want to, at least not with Samir. Hamody realized that he wanted to save this all to himself. And he suddenly didn’t care anymore. His uncle had always told him, since childhood, that God hands his treasures to every person on this earth equally; it is just that some people choose not to enjoy their treasures.

Samir was still looking away, and before he knew it Hamody had his pants low, then lower, and he was using only his left hand to hold the binoculars.

W
HEN
S
AMIR
looked back, he almost couldn’t believe it. At first he thought he was imagining, that maybe the coffee mix Hamody’s uncle had given him was a bit too strong for him, but he gazed and he gazed, he washed his eyes with that sight, and it was real and so close.

Right in front of him stood Hamody. Bright, handsome Hamody, and he was exposed, and touching himself.

It was as if Samir’s hands had a mind of their own.

When Officer Tariq climbed up the tower like a silent cheetah, Samir tried to hold it in. He really did. He could hear Tariq shouting, and he could see him grabbing Hamody by the collar, and he saw when Hamody handed Tariq the binoculars, and he heard Hamody shouting that it was all the Jews’ fault, that it was some sort of a deliberate trick, a new Israeli evil strategy.

Samir could hear all of that and see it, but he understood
nothing of it. He also saw the glance of shock that Hamody gave him, the way he looked at him down there, at Samir
still
touching himself, at Samir with his pants rolled down.

But even as all of this was happening, and even though he had thought his brain had signaled his hands to stop, and even though he knew Tariq and Hamody were looking at him then, and they would know, and they would see it, even so, Samir couldn’t help it. It was going to happen, it almost already happened, and then—

It did.