The Clay Urn Read online

  “Fell asleep?” Ilana said.

  “Yep. Almost ended up in Jerusalem.”

  They hugged and walked along a stream that ran out from a small oasis. Ari took off his army fatigues and jumped in. They swam and talked until the sun began to set, and then they dressed and walked to the kibbutz communal dining room. Ilana’s friend greeted Ari with a hug. They rolled joints and walked to their makeshift discotheque, housed in a bomb shelter. There, they were joined by other soldiers that had chosen to do their service on the young kibbutz. The small space quickly filled. They drank, played records, and danced late into the night. Ilana moved across the floor and swayed in and out of Ari’s body space. She watched his eyes focus on her hips. She moved close and touched his body. He reached for her hand to keep her from floating away. She looked into his eyes. They moved together towards the heavy cement door.

  “Leaving so soon?” her friend said.

  They walked slowly along a narrow path surrounded by young date trees. The guest room her friend arranged for them smelled fresh. The bed was draped in crisp, white sheets. They stood close and kissed. His breath was warm. She lifted his shirt. They lay on top of the sheets. She slipped her arm under his waist and pulled him close. She put her hand between his legs. He whispered something and mounted her waiting body and she felt his warmth. A bright star streaked across the open window. She exhaled and rested her head on his chest. He pushed back a strand of her hair that fell across her face. He kissed her forehead.

  “This is good,” she whispered.

  They woke to the hum of a tractor. Pressing his lips against her body she felt him enter her again. They moved in mutual rhythm. Outside the window, a group of birds rustled in the nearby bushes. The sun crept in and spread morning light over their faces. She closed her eyes and felt a surge race through her body. She inhaled. The birds chirped and flew away. She opened her eyes, licked the salt from her lips and looked up at the bare ceiling. In the distance, Ilana could hear the faint sound of water lapping against a receding shoreline.

  Chapter 2

  Ilana showed great promise during her first year of service. The officers in charge of her company liked her positive outlook and ability to get on with her peers and convinced her to sign on for an extra year. She completed courses in social work and was assigned to work alongside combat units. She liked the personal contact with the soldiers and was a good listener. With six months left to go, Ilana received orders for a new assignment: she was transferred to a base deep inside the territories. She worked alongside a company of elite combat fighters whose nightly missions took them inside Palestinian villages and up-close with the local population.

  The base was constructed on a hill next to the site of an ancient Israelite village. Eight canvas tents housed three platoons of soldiers, their commanders and officers, and support staff. The largest tent had twelve folding tables and long wood benches where the company ate and held meetings. The kitchen staff worked in an adjoining tent filled with cast iron pots and pans, gas stoves, an industrial refrigerator, and an electric generator. Constantine barbed wire surrounded the perimeter of the base.

  As the only female soldier assigned to the company, Ilana had her own tent. It was spacious, with a metal desk and a shelf made from wood planks and cinder blocks. Ilana had lined the shelves with sketch pads, colored pencils, and social work course books. On her cot was a sleeping bag and a stuffed animal that Yossi had given to her. A single bulb hung down from the top of the ceiling. In the back was a large, black barrel attached to a metal stand that supplied water to an outdoor sink and makeshift shower stall. When in use, her water heater blew smoke out of its blackened metal pipe and filled the base with a putrid stench of burnt kerosene.

  A guard tower was erected in the middle of the base. Most nights, the cooks prepared sweet tea in sturdy iron pots for the night guards and returning patrols. The three platoons took turns guarding the base. The commanders prepared the list before sunset and called it out at their evening inspection. Two soldiers rotated every hour from 22:00 hours until sunrise. They walked around the perimeter of the base and made conversation to help the time pass. They shared cigarettes and smoked them through soda cans to cover the lit end. Ten minutes before they finished, one of the guards entered the tent to wake the next two guards in rotation. Each company was housed in one tent with twenty-four folding cots. They stuffed their personal supplies, underwear and socks into large duffle bags with a zipper that ran down the middle. This was their moveable storage closet. The new guards would dress, check their magazines and quickly switch out the old guards. Tired and cold from the night air, the old guards crawled back inside their warm sleeping bags and slept until the last night guard woke them at 05:45. Although void of most comforts, their first home away from home suited most of them.

  Ilana’s job was to oversee the soldiers’ well-being. She looked for cracks in their behavior, made notes and suggested ways to help. The company’s mission was to show presence and squash the Palestinian civilian uprising. Israel never had to face widespread disobedience before, and Ilana understood the challenges the soldiers faced. After years of high unemployment, lack of leadership, and a stalled peace process, the Palestinians had nothing to lose, and so the youth, called shabaab, finally took matters into their own hands. They were tired of their situation and wanted the Israeli army to suffer and pay a heavy price to control the West Bank and Gaza. The shabaab resisted and inflicted a heavy toll on the elite Israeli units that patrolled inside their towns and villages. With a clear understanding that they lacked the equipment to defeat the Israeli army, they knew they could sway international public opinion in their favor by creating the impression that they had only stones to fight against a well armed military. Any shabaab killed while resisting the Israeli occupation was immortalized by becoming a martyr. They figured a rising death toll on both sides could make the Israeli government rethink their commitment to the territories and ultimately loosen their airtight grip.

  Ilana understood the overwhelming responsibilities that befell the young Israeli soldiers. Only a year out of high school, they had the responsibility to enforce government policy. In addition to intense physical training, they also learned about the culture and complex social norms of the Arab population they patrolled. Some caught on. Others were indifferent, suspecting that the fathers they questioned at checkpoints had maimed their own fathers. Some soldiers remembered black and white photographs of a bold terror raid on a kibbutz farm. Memories of a bullet-riddled classroom and a bloodstained chalkboard now etched in their maturing minds, the blood dripping over the white chalk, blurring the next day’s homework assignment.

  She understood both groups followed bloodlines that pumped through veins and ended at pleasure points. The euphoria of retribution—an eye for an eye. She pressed her captain to give her permission to accompany the soldiers when they went out on patrol. She wanted to see firsthand how they reacted to situations. When they confronted the Palestinians directly she watched their movement and how they spoke to them. The shabaab’s dark eyes let in enough light to capture permanent images—images that flashed back to them in the middle of the night. Collective images that produced disturbing compositions.

  Our separate histories begin at a point of choice, she wrote in her diary. We choose that point based on our bloodline, and is the core of the conflict.

  In this new era of a Palestinian uprising, Ilana’s company received orders to increase physical presence and break the will of the population. This new direction changed the focus of their training. Ilana grew concerned that these kids would walk through a door that locked behind them. Like her father, who twenty years before had volunteered for special forces, these new recruits trained to engage an enemy from a distance and outsmart them on the battlefield—an enemy they’d never see. Now she watched their young faces inches away from a mother whose children watched in silence.

  She created a checklist for each soldier. Those w
ho showed signs of internal stress often challenged her. They wanted to know about her boyfriends, her likes and dislikes. She was patient with them and didn’t let their diversion tactics bother her. When she returned to her tent she jotted down notes, sketched their facial expressions, and created detailed files on each soldier. After lunch, she taught them Arabic phrases, reviewed Palestinian cultural norms and acceptable ways to approach adults and women. They discussed tactics to pressure the shabaab and weed out troublemakers and cell leaders. The soldiers quickly adapted to their new reality, combating an enemy void of tanks, planes and machine guns. She met daily with her commander and company captain, Boaz, and reviewed intelligence reports and updates on the soldiers’ morale. Each day the shabaab worked on more effective ways to conduct their primitive warfare. They taunted the Israelis with rocks and lined roads with nails to puncture jeep tires. A disabled vehicle gave them time to aim a molotov cocktail for a direct hit. The cocktail would explode upon impact and spread lit gasoline over the vehicles and soldiers. Ilana was deeply affected by this. She had a recurring dream about a soldier so badly burnt and disabled from a molotov cocktail, he begged her to kill him. The dream was so real that no matter how early in the morning it was when the company returned from their night raids, she would be there to greet them and offer hot tea. She scanned their faces to make sure everyone was accounted for. The shabaab continually improved techniques to keep up the pressure and maximize their efforts. When she saw a photo of a dead, charred soldier sitting in a patrol car, hand on the steering wheel, she ran to her bathroom and threw up. The photo created a national uproar among the Israeli public who felt more pressure was needed to squash the resistance. Eventually, Central Command buckled and raised the level of engagement. The military treated the Palestinian uprising, called the intifada, as a new front. A firebomb thrown at a patrol car was treated the same as a rocket fired into Israel from Lebanon. Ilana knew the escalation could spiral out of control at any moment.

  Each night after dinner the soldiers returned to their tents, polished their boots and waited for orders. Ilana visited with them and brought cigarettes, mail and chocolate. They smoked, checked their equipment, and loaded bullets into a metal magazine against the resistance of a coil spring. The last bullet, a tracer, arched and whistled into the night sky to indicate the magazine was empty. They had one second to switch out the old magazine for a new one. Later in the evening she met with the platoon commanders and Boaz to review the night’s mission. He reviewed with them best practices to extract intelligence. Some of the shabaab could be enticed with cash, others with firm persuasion. He reminded them that locals who caved into soldiers’ demands were hung by their necks in the village square and left there until they rotted.

  “It’s our responsibility to arrange for the bodies to be cut down.”

  A picture of a mother with hands raised, screaming to god for someone to get her son down, flashed through Ilana’s mind. She cringed at the thought of having to console her.

  As the weeks went by, routine set in. After morning exercise and breakfast, they washed and shaved and prepared for their patrols. They set up checkpoints and searched for perpetrators. The traffic backups lasted for hours making an hour ride an all-day affair. This added fuel to the resistance and gained more support for the intifada. After darkness fell, the soldiers prepared for nighttime house raids. They polished their shoes and stuffed chocolate and cigarettes into their pockets. With full equipment they moved quickly through homes and searched for information: dishes knocked over, closets and drawers left open, and toys moved from side-to-side. Love letters were unraveled and handed to translators. Each house was meticulously searched while children in colorful pajamas rubbed their eyes and watched. One out of every ten raids landed a prize. In the other nine, the shabaab watched in silence and inhaled the pungent odor of fresh shoe polish.

  Ilana grew concerned that the heavy-handed approach to the uprising could rip open the status quo. The young soldiers manned checkpoints for twelve hours in the hot sun, the potential for an incident to boil over increasing as the monotony wore on. She understood that the territories produced an important security buffer for Israel, but overseeing the population would come at a price.

  After dinner that night, Ilana spoke to Eyal about an incident at one of the checkpoints.

  “I understand that you pushed a father in front of his children,” she said. “So.”

  “Any specific reason why you pushed him?”

  “The orders are clear,” Eyal said. “Besides, he didn’t produce the right documents.”

  “That’s no reason to get agitated. The orders do not say anything about pushing an adult in front of his children. Did you ask him in Arabic?”

  “Yes. But my accent is bad.”

  Ilana watched his lips stretch and expose his white teeth.

  “Probably slow in the head,” Eyal said. “What’s the big deal?”

  Ilana leaned forward and looked squarely into his eyes.

  His smile quickly faded. “What if it was your father?”

  Eyal looked away and inhaled. “I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “So it is a big deal,” she said. “A real big deal.”

  Boaz slapped open the flaps of the tent and poked his head in.

  “You done here?” said Boaz.

  “Yes, Captain,” Ilana said. “We were just talking. We’re finished now.”

  “I need to speak with you, Ilana. Meet me in my tent in five minutes.”

  Ilana collected up her gun, rearranged her bun and walked quickly across the base to Boaz’s tent. “What’s the news of the day, Ilana.” Boaz said. “I’m hearing some things and want to hear it clear from you.”

  “We had a situation yesterday with a local.”

  “Was it resolved?”

  “No, but the son wants to talk to someone. He said he’ll come by tomorrow.”

  “What’s the issue?”

  “His father was pushed to the ground by one of our soldiers.”

  “That’s the whole thing.”

  Ilana inhaled and turned her face to look squarely at his.

  “Did I miss something? Is the father dead?”

  “No.”

  “So, what’s the issue?”

  Ilana studied his dark blue eyes. “Anything else?” Boaz asked. “Yes. He said he has it on camera.”

  “You kidding?”

  “No,” Ilana said. “He said one of our soldiers called his father a moron and pushed him down when he didn’t produce the right documents.”

  “You get the boy’s name?”

  “Naser Abdul Naser.”

  “How old is this kid?”

  “Maybe eighteen or nineteen.”

  Boaz inhaled and reached into his pocket for a cigarette. “You want one?”

  “Not now.”

  He exhaled and let the thick smoke overcome the match

  flame.

  “I lost five of my soldiers in Lebanon. They were also about eighteen or nineteen. Maybe I’ll lodge a complaint with the captain of Hezbollah.”

  “I think if you humiliate a father in front of his son and knock him down, it will circle back,” Ilana said.

  Boaz dragged on his cigarette.

  “Do you know the root of the word intifada?”

  “I can look it up to be sure.”

  She opened her Arabic Hebrew pocket dictionary and brought it close to her eyes. Boaz closed his hand around the bulb hanging from the ceiling and turned it. The light flickered and illuminated Ilana’s face. She jerked her head back, dislodging a lock of hair from her bun.

  “Does that help?” he asked.

  She pushed the strand over her ear, straightened her back, and skimmed through the pages. “Yes,” she whispered.

  Ilana shifted her eyes over the pages. Boaz put his cigarette in his mouth, slid his arms across the table and gently removed the dictionary from her willing hands. Under
his thumb was a fresh and deep wound that ran to the middle of his wrist. He balanced the lit cigarette on the edge of the table.

  “I think the Arabic root of the word—nafada—means to shake off,” Boaz said. “To shake us off. I think in the modern, intifada means to be sick of being fucked by us—or being fucked by their own. To shake off their narrow world and corrupt leaders who inject them with false promises. To be sick of broken roads strewn with rocks that lead to dead ends. Sick of being told when to stop and when to go. Sick of looking at what we’ve built, how far we’ve come, and how little they have. Sick of hard-headed assholes like me, and the stench of my breath on their faces. Sick of my inability to pronounce their names properly. Oh, and sick of sensitive, pretty soldiers like you, Ilana, who pity them through rose colored glasses.”

  She exhaled, grabbed the dictionary from under his grip and slid it into her canvas bag. “I understand,” she said. “I’ll tell the boy you’re not available.”

  She walked quickly along the narrow path, slapped open the flaps of her tent and slammed her canvas bag onto her cot. She inhaled, gathered her pencils, and quickly sketched Boaz’s mouth and jawline. In his hand he clutched a shard of broken glass. A cracked bulb dangled near his head. She leaned closer to the paper and sketched his dark blue eyes and thick eyelashes. She inhaled and looked into the small mirror that hung from the tent’s cross bar. She threw her head forward, twisted her long hair, and pinned it atop her head. Exhaling while turning the page she sketched a sea and a distant shore. She was angry at Boaz’s response and the way she accepted it. Her mother and grandparents taught her to listen to all sides then piece them together, but she was not prepared for situations where blood and emotions came to a boiling point. She could have explained to Boaz that a meeting could have eased the situation, and if it happened again, they would know how to handle it better. She drew herself floating on her back with the sea skimming over her stomach and breasts. She sketched Boaz next to her standing in the shallow water. He rested one hand around her back to support her body. And with the other he moved a lock of her hair from her face and pressed his lips to her mouth. His sweet saliva mixed with the salty seawater. She tried to turn away from him and swim to the shore where Abdul Naser’s father waited on the beach, but his grip was tight. With her blue pencil she highlighted the water and Boaz’s eyes. She looked into the mirror and saw their mascot, a black and white feral cat, scamper across the dirt floor.