to the end of the land' excerpt

8/8/2019 'To the End of the Land' Excerpt

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When they get to the meeting point, Sami pulls into the first parking spot he finds, yanks upthe emergency brake, folds his arms over his chest, and announces that he will wait for Orathere. And he asks her to be quick, which he has never done before. Ofer gets out of thecab and Sami does not move. He hisses something, but she cant tell what. She hopes hewas saying goodbye to Ofer, but who knows what he was muttering. She marches afterOfer, blinking at the dazzling lights: rifle barrels, sunglasses, car mirrors. She doesntknow where he is leading her and is afraid he will get swallowed up among the hundredsof young men and she will never see him again. Meaningshe immediately correctsherself, revising the grim minutes she has been keeping all day she wont see him againuntil he comes home. The sun beats down, and the horde becomes a heap of colorful,bustling dots. She focuses on Ofers long khaki back. His walk is rigid and slightlyarrogant. She can see him broaden his shoulders and widen his stance. When he wastwelve, she remembers, he used to change his voice when he answered the phone andproject a strained Hello that was supposed to sound deep, and a minute later he wouldforget and go back to his thin squeak. The air around her buzzes with shouts and whistlesand megaphone calls and laughter. Honey, answer me, its me, Honey, answer me, itsme, sings a ringtone on a nearby cell phone that seems to follow her wherever she goes.

Within the commotion Ora swiftly picks up the distant chatter of a baby somewhere in thelarge gathering ground, and the voice of his mother answers sweetly. She stands for amoment looking for them but cannot find them, and she imagines the mother changing thebabys diaper, maybe on the hood of a car, bending over and tickling his tummy, and shestands slightly stooped, hugging her suede bag to her body, and laps up the soft doubletrickle of sounds until it vanishes.

It is all a huge, irredeemable mistake. It seems to her that as the moment ofseparation approaches, the families and the soldiers fill with arid merriment, as if they haveall inhaled a drug meant to dull their comprehension. The air bustles with the hum of aschool trip or a big family excursion. Men her age, exempt from reserve duty, meet theirfriends from the army, the fathers of the young soldiers, and exchange laughter andbackslaps. Weve done our part, two stout men tell each other, now its their turn.

Television crews descend on families saying goodbye to their loved ones. Ora is thirsty,parched. Half running, she trails behind Ofer. Every time her gaze falls on the face of asoldier she unwittingly pulls back, afraid she will remember him: Ofer once told her thatwhen they had their pictures taken sometimes, before they set off on a military campaign,the guys made sure to keep their heads a certain distance from each other, so thered beroom for the red circle that would mark them later, in the newspaper. Screechingloudspeakers direct the soldiers to their battalions meeting points a meetery, they callthis, and she thinks in her mothers voice: barbarians, language-rapistsand suddenly Oferstops and she almost walks into him. He turns to her and she feels a deluge. Whats thematter with you? he whispers into her face. What if they find an Arab here and think hescome to commit suicide? And didnt you think about how he feels having to drive me here?Do you even get what this means for him?

She doesnt have the energy to argue or explain. Hes right, but she really wasnt ina state to think about anything. How can he not understand her? She just wasnt thinking.A white fog had filled her mind from the moment he told her that instead of going on thetrip to the Galilee with her he was going off to some kasbah or mukataa. That was at sixa.m. She had woken to hear his voice whispering into the phone in the other room, andhurried in there. Seeing his guilty look she had tensed and asked, Did they call?

They say I have to go.But when?

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ASAP.She asked if it couldnt wait a little while, so they could at least do the trip for two

or three days, because she realized immediately that a whole week with him was a dreamnow. She added with a pathetic smile, Didnt we say wed have a few puffs of family-together time?

He laughed and said, Mom, its not a game, its war, and because of hisarrogancehis, and his fathers, and his brothers, their patronizing dance around her mostsensitive trigger pointsshe spat back at him that she still wasnt convinced that the malebrain could tell the difference between war and games. For a moment she allowed herselfsome modest satisfaction with the debating skills shed displayed even before her morningcoffee, but Ofer shrugged and went to his room to pack, and precisely because he did notrespond with a witty answer, as he usually did, she grew suspicious.

She followed him and asked, But did they call to let you know? Because sheremembered that she hadnt heard the phone ring.

Ofer took his military shirts from the closet, and pairs of gray socks, and shovedthem into his backpack. From behind the door he grumbled, What difference does it makewho called? Theres an operation, and theres an emergency call-up, and half the countrys

reporting for duty.Ora wouldnt give inMe? Pass up getting pricked with such a perfect thorn? sheasked herself laterand she leaned weakly against the doorway, crossed her arms over herchest, and demanded that he tell her exactly how things had progressed to that phone call.She would not let up until he admitted that he had called themthat morning, even before sixhe had called the battalion and begged them to take him, even though today, at nine-zero-zero, he was supposed to be at the induction center for his discharge, and from there todrive to the Galilee with her. As he lowered his gaze and mumbled on, she discovered, toher horror, that the army hadnt even considered asking him to prolong his service. As faras they were concerned he was a civilian, deep into his discharge leave. It was he, Oferadmitted defiantly, his forehead turning red, whowasnt willing to give up. No way! Aftereating shit for three years so Id be ready for exactly this kind of operation? Three years of

checkpoints and patrols, little kids in Palestinian villages and settlements throwing stones athim, not to mention the fact that he hadnt even been within spitting distance of a tank forsix months, and now, at last, with his lousy luck, this kind of kick-ass operation, threearmored units togetherthere were tears in his eyes, and for a moment you might havethought he was haggling with her to be allowed to come back late from a class Purimpartyhow could he sit at home or go hiking in the Galilee when all his guys would bethere? In short, she discovered that he, on his own initiative, had convinced them to enlisthim on a voluntary basis for another twenty-eight days.

Oh, she said, when he finished his speech, and it was a hollow, muffled Oh. AndI dragged my corpse into the kitchen, she thought to herself. It was an expression of Ilans,her ex, the man who had shared her life and, in their good years, enriched the goodness.The fullness of life, the old Ilan used to say and blush with gratitude, with reserved,

awkward enthusiasm, which propelled Ora toward him on a wave of love. She alwaysthought that deep in his heart he was amazed at having been granted this fullness of life atall. She remembers when the kids were little and they lived in Tzur Hadassah, in the housethey bought from Avram, how they liked to hang the laundry out to dry at night, together,one last domestic chore at the end of a long, exhausting day. Together they would carry thelarge tub out to the garden facing the dark fields and the valley, and the Arab village ofHussan. The great fig tree and the grevillea rustled softly with their own mysterious, richlives, and the laundry lines filled up with dozens of tiny articles of clothing like miniature



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hieroglyphics: little socks and undershirts and cloth shoes andpants with suspenders and colorful OshKosh overalls. Was there someone from Hussanwho had gone out in the last light of day and was watching them now? Aiming a gun atthem? Ora wondered sometimes, and a chill would flutter down her spine. Or was there ageneral, human immunity for people hanging laundryespecially this kind of laundry?


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