‘We need some guarantees we won’t kill each other, until we can each crawl back to our side.’
Farid compliments Yonathan on his Arabic. They’re lying in a bomb crater created by an artillery shell. Bullets are whizzing over their heads.
‘Thank you. I had to take a mandatory Arabic course. How come your English is so good?’
‘Youtube, movies, series… I play video games online a lot. We mostly speak English. Except for the Russian players, they only speak Russian.’
‘Shooter games, I assume?’
‘No, dungeon crawlers.’
‘What are those?’
‘Quests set in dungeons. You and other players explore an underground dungeon. Either in some collective effort or competitively.’
‘Sounds cool. The last video game I ever played was Age Of Empires.’
‘Which edition?’
‘The one set in the middle ages.’
‘Yeah, Age of Empires 2, that’s still the best one.’
‘How many editions are there now?’
‘Four.’
‘I missed that somehow. Am getting old.’
‘How old are you?’
‘26’
‘And you’re a captain?’
‘Yop. How old are you?’
’24.’
‘Do you have a rank?’
‘I guess you could say am a squad leader.’
‘Ok, Farid, listen. I don’t want to kill you and you don’t want to kill me. But we’re both armed. I would feel a lot more comfortable if both of us were unarmed right now.’
‘Who says I don’t want to kill you? Am a crazy blood lusting jihadist, remember?’
Yonathan chuckles.
‘Well, you can try killing me later, but let’s agree we both make it out alive, out of this bomb crater today.’
‘Agreed, but pardon me if I can’t find even one gram of trust for you.’
‘The feeling’s mutual.’
Yonathan had got separated from his unit and got lost in the rubble. Farid was carrying hammers and picks to an apartment block across the street. His fellow fighters are knocking down walls inside and connecting all the apartments so they can more easily run around the entire building and cross into other buildings, unseen by the invaders. They both came under artillery fire, literally got knocked together, and now they are stuck in this hole in the ground with a battle raging around them.
It’s the eye contact that prevents them from killing each other. They’ve seen the human in the other. It’s the eye contact that turns killing an enemy into murdering a fellow human being. If they had grown up in the same village with the same family background they would maybe be playing Age of Empires 2 against each other instead of launching mortar shells and grenades at each other.
‘We could count to three and throw our weapons out of the crater’, says Farid.
‘Yeah, am not falling for that. I don’t know how many weapons you have on you. And you could still jump on top of me and try to choke me or find a rock to hit me with.’
‘We love rocks, right?’
‘That’s not how I meant it.’
‘Am not trying to trick you. Here you see my Beretta. This pistol is all I got on me. I was carrying picks and hammers, but I’ve lost those.’
‘The blast knocked away my Tavor gun, so all I’ve got is my Jericho pistol, I swear.’
‘No knife?’
‘No knife. You? Do you have a knife?’
‘No knife.’
‘So you’re saying, on the count of three, we throw away our pistols?’
‘Well, when I think it over a little longer, maybe we could just keep them on us, but agree to never touch them.’
‘Yes, but if one of us makes a wrong move, the other draws his pistol in a reflex and shoots.’
‘True, true.’
‘We could try crawling away right now or at least when it gets dark. But then one of us could still shoot the other in the back.’
‘Am not planning to do that.’
‘Neither am I.’
Silence.
The two are sending out mental feelers to size the other guy up. Try probe the other’s guys mood. They both conclude there is no way to know for sure. They have both been in situations, non-war situations, where someone got into an entirely different state in less than a second.
Farid says: ‘We could hold hands.’
‘I thought being gay was a big no no in Gaza.’
‘You’d be surprised’, says Farid. ‘You guys think you know everything about Gaza, but you know bubkes, nada, nothing.’
‘Alright, alright. What do you mean by holding hands?’
‘If we hold hands, I mean both hands. There is no way for us to reach for our gun.’
‘You’re starting to make sense. But what if my nose itches?’
‘Then you have to announce that and do it super slowly.’
‘What if my butt itches and I have to reach behind me?’
‘Who’s gay now?’
‘Well, give me your hands then.’
And so two enemy fighters are hugging the ground and holding hands.
‘Nobody is going to believe this if we tell them about it.’
‘Surviving is more important than being believed right now.’
‘You’ve got soft hands. Are you sure you are a terrorist?’
‘Stop trying to seduce me.’
‘Am married.’
‘You are? She pretty?’
‘Very. Are you married?’
‘No. First I need a job. Then I can think about finding a wife. Where did you meet your wife?’
‘In college. In New York. Most of my classmates were women.’
‘What did you study?’
‘I did my major in American literature. Almost killed my parents, but they were proud when I graduated.’
‘So you like to read?’
‘No, college destroyed my love for novels. I can’t stand to hear one more interpretation à la, here the author describes the trees, because it’s a symbol of the main character’s thirst for growth, blah blah blah. I think authors describe trees to fill up pages.’
‘You’re funny.’
‘Thanks. You’re going to kiss me now?’
‘Shut up.’
‘If an other artillery shell hits and we die holding hands whoever finds us is going to be in for a real riddle.’
‘I think an other artillery shell would break up this romantic embrace of ours though.’
‘Were you there on October 7th?’
‘Smooth way to change the topic.’
‘Well, were you?’
‘I was.’
‘Kill anyone?’
‘I think I did.’
‘Unarmed?’
‘Armed and unarmed.’
‘You are admitting to me you killed unarmed people?’
‘I don’t know for sure. Besides, you are all reservists in the army, the army that shoots us when we protest peacefully. Did you arrest, I mean kidnap, some of our kids at some point?’
‘I did. I served in Hebron. I did not kidnap them, I detained a lot of them. I had to. They threw rocks.’
‘Did you torture them?’
‘I did not torture them. Honest to God. I did scare them. My commanding officer made me.’
‘What’s the difference between scaring them and torturing them?’
‘I didn’t hit them or anything.’
‘Did you keep them at night?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘They were alone, without their parents or other adult family members?’
‘They were.’
‘They were terrified?’
‘Am sure they were.’
‘That’s torture.’
They could feel the grip of their hands tightening, there was a lot less eye contact between them.
‘This is probably not the right time to be discussing this.’
‘I agree.’
They are silent for a while. They notice the sun is setting.
‘So how do we do this? We count to three and crawl to our side?’
‘We could crawl backwards and not lose sight of each other. Then, as soon as we’re far enough apart we can start running.’
‘Do you intend to kill me?’
‘No. Do you intend to kill me?’
‘No, I do not.’
Again silence.
‘We could also wait till one side finds us. If your side finds us I am your prisoner and if my side finds us first you are our prisoner’, proposes Yonathan.
Before Farid can agree or disagree Yonathan dismisses his own proposal.
‘Forget I said that. We’d both get into a world of trouble if we agree to that. Besides, the longer we stay here the bigger the chance we both get killed.’
Farid says: ‘We have to trust and let go. The one who decides to shoot, condemns himself to hell. Do you agree?’
‘I agree. Let’s shake hands.’
‘We’re already holding hands.’
‘It was a joke.’
And so the two stare each other in the eyes, without blinking, for as long as there is some sun light left.
Then they both nod at the same time and crawl away from each other. When they’re out of the crater, about four meters apart they get up and start running as fast as they can.
For as long as the war continues both will do their utmost to ensure the downfall of their enemies. Both will be praised by their respective commanders for the unwavering zeal with which they worked and fought and endured hardship.
And also true is that Farid will wonder a life time if Yonathan survived the war and Yonathan will wonder a life time if Farid survived the war.
Both regret not having swapped numbers.
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The Confessor 