The People of Forever Are Not Afraid (8 page)

Most days there were workers in line who didn’t make it through, and the Israeli contractors who waited for their workers at the other end of the checkpoint would curse at us soldiers. And the Palestinian workers would curse at us soldiers. I was usually called a Russian whore, except for one time when someone called me a German bitch. That made me smile, but only for a minute.

T
HE WEEK
before the day I first saw Fadi, one of the Israeli contractors followed me behind the sand dunes where I had just finished peeing and asked me why there were only five soldiers checking people but ten soldiers checking cars. He said that every time one of us went to pee the line slowed and that this was no way for something professional to operate, that a businessman like him didn’t need to be subjected to the mercy of the bladder of a teenager. He didn’t catch me with my pants down, but the fluid that had soaked into the sand stood between us. I had no answer.

“I don’t work for you,” I told the contractor. I thought he would curse me, but instead he asked another question, which was worse.

“Who do you work for?”

When I lowered my eyes and stood without words, I saw that fruit flies swarmed over the wetness.

I
T WAS
getting close to when we would have to start passing the Palestinian men through into Israel. I heard Hebron’s muezzin through the speakers singing the call of prayer and looked at the first rays of sun spreading like dots of ink. I was so tired I had to slap my face so that I would not fall asleep standing up.

I hated so much and mostly myself when I was this tired. There was sour sloshing in my stomach and up my throat, and I could smell the stench of my own breath mixing with the smell of the toothpaste on my yellow teeth. I hated how
disheveled I looked, like a child drowning in a green uniform, playing make-believe. I hated that even though I was wearing a bulletproof vest, and even though I looked like a kid holding a gun, my breasts were so large that I knew they showed through all I was wearing. I hated so many things I said—a long time ago, some lies I told when I was drunk at a high school party, a party I should have stopped but didn’t when I was a senior. But mainly I hated the dumb chatter I exchanged with the Ethiopian and Moroccan girls in my unit outside our caravans on all nights while we smoked our lives away into the smallness of the night. They were worse than the girls in high school.

Waking up every morning was a tragedy, like killing your own mother, or losing your virginity to a guy who will only sleep with you once, and realizing what you have done just as you are forced to open your eyes. The walls pounded my eyes and head and neck like I was waking up inside a white, shiny boom box. And I never liked music. I would give so much, everything, for sleep, or so I thought. The problem was that every evening I would forget just how much, and I became scared of that bed where tragedy took place every morning. I went to sleep only when I couldn’t help falling asleep.

If I could I would burn the blue beret on my head. But it was on my head.

More men. More men. More men.

I wanted to say that day that there was only one of me and demand to go back to my shabby dreams, but my shift was starting. The gates opened, and the metal rotated, and the men went through the machine that lit up green or red, then they stood across from the cement barricade that protected me and the four other soldiers checking IDs and bags.

M
Y OLDER
sister Sarit told me that if I insisted enough, the sorting officer would cave. That all I had to do was say, “I won’t go, I won’t go, I won’t go.” She even specifically warned me that the worst thing that could happen was that they would place me in a military police unit and make me wear a dreadful blue beret. No other soldier would ever want to talk to me, because they would all see my blue beret and fear that I had the authority to write them up and report them for having a red hair tie instead of a black or an olive green one, or for wearing their everyday uniform coat over their official uniform, or for listening to headphones while crossing the road, or whatever stupid shit military police soldiers were responsible for writing other soldiers up for.

I told her to stop talking. So my sister said anyone that got placed in military police was an idiot. She said there were other army positions to be careful of, and that of course the best was what she was, a paratroopers’ instructor, and I told her to stop talking.

“They might tell you that they’ll put you in jail. That no one will ever hire you after that. That Mom and Dad will disown you. That you will never find love. That you will become a homeless person. Whatever it is they tell you, just say, ‘I won’t go, I won’t go, I won’t go,’ and eventually they’ll assign you somewhere else, and—”

“Stop. Talking!” I said.

In the sorting officer’s office the day I was drafted, the sorting officer spoke before I sat down.

“Military police,” she told me. Of course that was what
she said. Naturally. “It is the only boot camp I have open this week.”

“I won’t go,” I said.

“Everyone says that,” the officer said, and crossed her arms. She was smiling.

“I won’t go. I am smart. I got good grades. I can translate things.”

“I don’t have any intel spots. All I have is the spots they give me, and all I have left is military police. Besides, they are trying to diversify the unit, make it more socioeconomically diverse or something, and you have great grades.”

“You mean that everyone there can’t read. I won’t go. I am not about to spend two years of my life handing out reports in some bus station to soldiers who are wearing yellow socks,” I said. I was afraid, shy about how confident I was. This was my first day as a soldier. I was eighteen and spiteful. After graduation, when there were no more girls to be bitchy to, I read a lot and followed sophisticated American TV shows:
The West Wing
,
Sex and the City
. It was just my luck that I was randomly drafted last.

“Look, if you physically resist going, I’ll have to throw you in jail for a few weeks that won’t count toward your mandatory service time, and then when you come out I’ll still place you in military police.”

“I won’t go. I won’t go.”

“There is more to military police than the proper-appearance write-ups. It is actually a really important role. Different soldiers do different things. You’ll like it, I swear.”

“But I won’t go,” I said. I believed it when I said it.

“Oh, but you will,” the officer said.

“No.”

“Your parents will never speak to you again.”

“No.”

“No one will hire you.”

“No.”

“You’ll have regrets.”

“But I won’t go.”

In the end I went, because the officer knew even before I did that I’d go. That I was always going to go.

T
HERE WAS
actually nothing special about Fadi, the man I noticed that day, or so I thought until I looked, and stopped, and thought hard. It had been a few months since I had thought hard, so I wasn’t used to doing it.

He was one of the first men to show me his ID that morning. He passed through the machine with a lowered head and put his ID on the cement barricade. It was a green ID. It said his name was Fadi. Inside the ID was the white permit. It was stained brown, but it was the right permit, the construction-work permit that was the only permit we were allowed to accept at that checkpoint, other than a medical permit. I pointed to his plastic bag.

“What’s in there?” I asked.

“What is in there? What could be in there? Food. Pita,” Fadi answered. His voice exploded at the vowels.

“Can I see it?” I asked. I signaled with my hand. I didn’t always check all the bags. I was supposed to check them at random, so I usually checked every third or fifth one, but suddenly I didn’t want this man to leave me. There was
something about him. His outfit was standard—a cheap old button-down shirt that was meant to garnish him with dignity but only intensified his sadness, its collar mocking his drained, barely shaven face.

He had murky rims under his eyes and hairs in his nose. He smelled of sweat and aftershave. He was like the rest of them, but he stood with urgency. He did not want to be there. He was almost not there, but he was. He was clasping his plastic bag and he was almost not there but he was and I could feel my eyes jolt.

“Can I see it?” I asked again. I was crying, but it was a physical cry, one brought on by exhaustion and the wind hitting my face. I cried all the time, but only physically. The man, Fadi, still would not let go of his bag, and I knew, I decided, that I would sleep that night and think of him. There was something about him, and that something would help me sleep.

Fadi flipped the plastic bag and shook it, and pitas fell to the sand like leaves. This was not the first time one of the men in my line had done that, but there was something different about how he did it, how injured he was by my request. It was more than a gesture. Behind him I could see Yaniv sticking his head inside the car of one of the Palestinians and making small talk. Talking very small, I was sure.

“Here, here you go. I don’t need food. You have it and be happy,” Fadi said, and then took his ID from the cement barricade and walked away, flailing his arms.