The hunt

Target. Yakov Hezienski. Family name changed to Hevir. 32 years old. Family owns several restaurants and hotels in the US, Israel, France and Poland. Since Covid they’ve heavily invested in tech tools that allow home officing. Dropped out of college. Tried to get an economics degree, but spent three years womanizing, boozing, partying and playing video games. Black sheep of the family. Lives in a West Bank settlement with his wife and their three kids. Does not have a real job. Claims to be a community worker. Meaning he travels around and tries to convince young Jews to come and live in the West Bank. Not clear if he is being paid for that. Possibly never did a day of paid work, unless you count his service in the IDF as a job. He’s a sniper. Code name Detergent. There is clear proof he has sniped children as young as 8. His specialty is shooting them in the groin or the throat. 

His assigned hunter wonders how someone can have children at home and then travel to a post-apocalyptic wasteland to put a bullet in the bodies of children roughly the same age as his own kids. 

His hunter is 24. His hunter no longer goes by any name. His hunter is only known as Adl, which could be translated as Divine Justice. 

Adl has been stalking Yakuv for 23 days. He barely eats, and barely drinks, he becomes one with the rubble and the filth and the car wrecks. He munches on almonds and raisins his pockets are stuffed with. He visualizes non-stop the moment his bullet will enter Yakuv’s body. Reality is first conceived in the mind. 

Adl has no wife and no children, he is entirely dedicated to his mission. Adl has almost no possessions. He has virtually no attachments other than to his work. He has kept his family at a distance for fear being associated with a member of the armed resistance could get them into trouble. On rainy days he misses his mother, because she would let him sit on her lap and together they would draw or paint blossoming orchards.  

And yet he doesn’t want to be anywhere else. He’s trained for this for years. He does not celebrate his victories, because they are only granted by Allah and so not his victories in the end. Only if he is humble can he serve Allah as a tool of retribution. If he thinks impure thoughts Allah can no longer use him to deliver justice. 

On the 24th day Yakuv is hit right between the eyes. Adl catches a wicked thought and chastizes himself for it. He regrets that Yakuv does not get to suffer more, he asks for forgiveness. It’s wrong to celebrate the death of any human being, no matter how vile his choices in this life. Allah will decide how much Yakuv gets to suffer from this point forward. 

Back at the base Adl refuses to smile when he is complimented. He stays serene. He rejects an offer of lighter duties for a period of two weeks. He only asks for a new profile to scout. 

Adl’s great grandparents were shot and burned alive, along with all their children at Deir Yassin. Except for Adl’s grandmother, who survived by lying still under a pile of corpses. 

60 plus years of postponed payment for sins is but a fraction of a second for Allah. 

When he will be too old to function as Allah’s bringer of justice Adl plans to settle down and put as much effort into growing fruit as he is now putting into hunting. 

First eradicate the jailors, then nourish the liberated. 

Adl knows the cure for all humanity’s illnesses and painful cravings. Humility. A medicine too bitter for most to swallow.