2023-12-27 00:33:23
by Eshkol Nevo
The Israeli writer: «Every morning I scroll through the list of fallen soldiers, my heart beats fast. I say yes to every request: I fill my diary so that I don’t have time left for sadness»
The first episode was published in Corriere on 7 November,
The second on December 3rd
Getting up in the morning. Open the eyes. Reach for your cell phone. Enter the news site. Scroll through the list of casualties. Every morning the army spokesman publishes the names of the soldiers killed in Gaza the previous day. The eye rests on the names. The heart beats strong. A quick first read to make sure there isn’t anyone I know among the dead. The outcome so far, after two and a half months of war, is: the son of a dear friend. The son of a student. My daughter’s best friend’s brother.
This morning I don’t recognize any names. Thank God. Second reading, slower. Out of respect for the fallen. Who we lost tonight. What young lives have been taken. In the photographs they always look like children dressed up as soldiers. Then get out of bed. Forcing yourself to get out of bed even if your body is heavy, very heavy. It pulls you down into desperation. Wear athletic pants. Go out into the street and start running. I had never understood this running thing. It is unpleasant for the body. There isn’t a plot. There’s no ball.
I used to watch men my age run and think there are better ways to solve the midlife crisis. Since the war started, I’ve been running too. Every morning. I promised myself to continue until it’s over. Like Forrest Gump. I have no choice. It’s impossible to start the day with all this sadness in your throat. We need something to rebalance. Something that injects a shred of hope into the blood. The streets are deserted, it’s very early. Everywhere, on the trees, on the facades of buildings, in the squares, photographs of the hostages are hung. Running I pass in front of it. I wonder which of them has already returned. Who is still there, in a dark tunnel. And who will never come back. Come back in. Shower. I turn on the phone. A photo from A. Finally. I breathe a sigh of relief.
A month ago A. wrote me a message on WhatsApp. He wanted to share that my books accompanied him in the key moments of his existence and tell me that his team is now fighting in Gaza. He asked me if I could send him and his boys my latest book with a personal dedication to each. They would return for twenty-four hours and then leave for Gaza. One evening I left the copies with the dedications in the electric meter cabinet. In the morning they were no longer there. Since then I haven’t heard from A. I was starting to get really worried, I was afraid that something had happened to him. But now photography has arrived. Six soldiers with book in hand, faces blurred by pixels. They were probably enrolled in a secret unit. I don’t know nor do I want to know. I write to him that I wish him all the best, to return home safe and sound. In my email inbox I find another request from a soldier. This time he’s a reservist, his name is Eliezer, he’s deployed to the northern border. He asks if “can I go to them to read one of my stories?”.
I write to him yes, of course. These days I say yes to everything. To any request. I fill my diary so that I don’t have time left for sadness. Later Eliezer and I make an agreement. But the following week another soldier arrives to pick me up at the train station. Not Eliezer. Apparently Eliezer has been transferred to another base. Don’t worry, Oren says he came in his place, you are in good hands.
We pass all the checkpoints, continue along deserted streets and reach an outpost right on the border. All week I’ve been suppressing the fact that this is a war zone and I’m putting myself in danger, and now it’s too late to change my mind. I meet the soldiers. They are waiting for me under a large cloth tarpaulin. We talk about friendship, about the road not taken, about what it means to be Israeli these days. Then I read him a story.
After two paragraphs boom, a roar. Pretty strong. I stop and remember that Oren said that in case of missile launches we would have to rush to the mobile shelter. But none of the reservists takes a step. I think to myself, well, either they find my story really compelling or they know something that I don’t know. And I continue reading. After a few more paragraphs, another boom is heard. Closer. And right before the end of the story, in a sort of dramatic pause, the last explosion, very close. When I finish reading they explain to me that the booms were “caused by our own forces”. Then they ask questions about the story, and about open endings, and about life. Finally Oren walks me back to the train and on the way says that he feels that this moment also contains the potential for an internal tikkun, a repair, of our society. I tell him that I believe so too. We plan to meet again after the war.
Nobody knows when it will happen. Maybe in a month. Maybe in a year. In the meantime, a new everyday life has been created. A pseudo-everyday life. As if the soul was getting used to it. As if life goes back to normal. But it’s not true. Every now and then someone collapses. Sometimes that someone is me. Yesterday, for example. I parked the car near the new football stadium which has remained deserted and unused for two months now. Suddenly a song by Marianne Faithfull, The ballad of Lucy Jordan, came on the radio. The lyrics of the song are not about soldiers. Or war. All in all it tells the story of a thirty-seven year old woman who realizes that she will no longer drive a sports car in Paris as the wind ruffles her hair. There was no reason for this song to make me cry. Yet I cried like a child, in the parking lot of the football stadium. At the end of the song I dried my tears, surprised by my own reaction, and went to teach creative writing. What a choice I had. Students were waiting for me in class and all the classes I have entered in the last two months are therapeutic classes. Everyone is on edge. Everyone is traumatized in one way or another and expects something from me. The responsibility for the energy in the room is mine. The responsibility for the energy in most rooms I enter is mine. So every morning I go for a run and drink an espresso and then another and then a third and I think about the crises I have experienced in the past and then overcome and I think about next spring in Italy and the apartment in Piazza Emanuele Filiberto, then I enter the room and I help other people express their feelings, or forget them, and helping others is the best way to help yourself, Buddhism teaches us this, and students are grateful, for the opportunity to write, for the opportunity to be together, even though during the meeting we ran into the shelter twice because the alarm sirens went off, I say goodbye to them and go back to my car where I cried and I drive away and a minute later another alarm goes off and I follow the directives: I get out of the vehicle. I lie down next to the car. I put my hands above my head. I wait five minutes. Meanwhile, I think about the things I haven’t had time to do yet, like a trip to Colombia, or seeing my eldest daughter under the wedding canopy, and what would happen if I died now. Then I get up and start driving again, I pass through the square where until three months ago we demonstrated for democracy and against the government. There are no demonstrations in that square now. But there will be some. I’m sure. Along with sadness, anger is also rising. It mounts and refines. The time will come when we demand the resignation of the most catastrophic prime minister in Israel’s history. I’ve been writing the article in which I urge Netanyahu to go home for weeks. But I’m holding back. I bite my tongue hard. These are times of war, not politics.
When I get home everyone is asleep, the living room is silent. I turn on CNN to see the images from Gaza. They don’t show images of Gaza on Israeli channels. As if empathy towards defenseless civilians in Gaza could break down the nation’s morale. In Rafah the rain falls on women and children who have no roof to shelter under. There is a little girl who vaguely resembles my second daughter. He is shivering with cold. She is hungry. I’m tempted to change the channel, but I stay. War is a terrible thing. We can’t forget it. Even if it is imposed, and it was Hamas who imposed the war on us and on Gaza, it left us no alternative, war is an atrocious thing. True victory in this war will only come if it is followed by peace.
Translation by Raffaella Scardi
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December 26, 2023 (modified December 26, 2023 | 10:02 pm)
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