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  ‘South Tel Aviv has become Little Sudan!’

  ‘Our trains are always late!‘

  ‘More Israelis die in car accidents than in wars!’

  ‘We’re barely keeping out head above water since we left the EU!’

  And on we went, digging up everything bad we could recall about our respective countries, to the cheers of a carful of drunks. Then finally, smiling victoriously, his little pig-eyes narrowing to threatening slits, he roared:

  ‘We win! England beats Israel! It’s much worse here than it is in Israel!’

  ‘How is that?’ I asked, a little concerned.

  ‘Because, in your country, Israeli boy, at least you see the end!!’ he said, with this evil grin. The entire car exploded with the whistles and howls of the British Mandate grandkids, and I had to cough up one hundred and seventy pounds, cash! For everyone’s beer…’”

  Gershon laughed, but it was not a sincere laugh. He knew in his heart that the joke held a dark truth, frightening and disconcerting.

  “So you see, Gersh? It could have been funny if it weren’t so true, and so sad. That’s why I live on the sea, in my own personal universe. Mooring only for a change of clothes, maybe to paint a little, see you and some rare others. This whole thing is going nowhere, fast, Chief.”

  “Look, Adam, I don’t have all day to for a seminar about Zionism and the future. That’ll wait for some other time. If you like, Saturday at my place, you should drop by - I’m inviting some people you don’t know. Yeah? Everyone invited is someone whose opinion means a great deal to me.”

  “Is that a promise, Gersh? Let me write this down: ‘Saturday, March second, two thousand and twenty-four. Four days from now,” he said, and didn’t wait for confirmation before adding, “it’s your turn, Chief. Tell me, what’s troubling the leader of the A-Team this fine morning?”

  “Well Adam, you know, it’s hard. The suicide bombings, the war still going on after seventy-seven years, the horizon that’s always moving out of reach, the responsibility that I’m supposed to carry in a sector defined and constantly shifted around by others. Constantly.”

  “I know you, Gersh. You knew all this before you took the job. Another day, another dollar, isn’t it?”

  “Do you remember the Al-Dumayr air force base, just east of Damascus?”

  “How could I not? Shmulik Kazir, our commander from Tel-Nof, always told us about the time he led a formation of eight Vautour fighter-bombers in there, back in sixty-seven. He lost one to the Syrian AA fire and its pilot bailed out to be our first POW.”

  “Well done, Adam. So you at least used to know what’s going on. In case you were wondering, the remains of ISIS, which according to everyone should have been extinct by now – the inner circle, Saddam Hussein’s former officers that got kicked out of Mosul, Raqqa and the rest of the Syrian-Iraqi desert, the same ones who’ve lost the war for their caliphate, have recently appeared out of the blue and conquered said Al-Dumayr air base.”

  “Those guys are still around?”

  “Apparently. Came as a big surprise for us, too. The media is already referring to it as shocking, and starting to give us trouble for failing to see it coming.”

  “So what’s the big deal?”

  “Listen to me: this was a perfectly executed commando incursion, planned at length under everyone’s radar, including ours. They came from northeast Jordan and found plenty of help with the ISIS supporters among the refugees.”

  “So what? They’ve already bragged about that, and everyone knows. Aren’t they concerned only with mega-bombings in terrified Europe, or attacking the hesitant Egyptian army in Sinai?”

  “Apparently not. They’re waging a war on our psyche, and they still need big, showy terrorism in Syria and Iraq. Their digital-virtual-caliphate and some lackluster bombings in Europe or Sinai just aren’t cutting it.”

  “And? Why do we care? Hezbollah and the Persians will kick their asses anyway,” said Adam, cynically referring to the Iranians by the ancient designation.

  “Adam, this airport is Assad’s primary stronghold. It’s been renovated and expanded, and today it’s a modern military airport with plenty of runways and a slew of underground hardened aircraft shelters. Not to mention a lot of ammunition.”

  “I think the Mig and Sukhoi squadrons left over by the Russians after they’ve finished bombing everyone are out there, too.”

  “Bravo! So you do know your ass from your elbow! Let me just remind you who else is there: all of the helicopter squadrons, the ones with the barrel bombs, along with their pilots, technicians, ground crews, and their families, of course - about twenty-five hundred people in all, including a shitload of children.”

  “So?”

  “After the civil war, which Assad won mostly thanks to the Russians, the Iranians and Hezbollah, most of their ground-to-ground missiles were brought to Dumayr, from all over Syria, to protect it from ISIS and the rebels. Hundreds of Scud missiles, improved by the generosity of the Russians and the Iranians with ultra-accurate navigation and aiming systems. So right now, those missiles, and those twenty-five hundred poor schmucks, are at Al-Dumayr, in the hands of ISIS.”

  Adam gave him an incredulous look. “Tell me - during the massacres at Aleppo and Homs, and Assad’s chemical attacks a decade ago, were you also this moved, Gershon?”

  “Forget that. Didn’t you see the latest feature from ISIS-Productions?”

  “No. That kind of shit is precisely why I live at sea.”

  “They burned the airbase commander. In a cage, orange overalls and all, in front of the base personnel, the families and children, just to guarantee that they could activate the missiles in case they decide to launch them at Damascus. Or at us… still not getting it?”

  “Okay, so what?”

  “Adam, in the same video, they announced that any attack on Al-Dumayr will lead to the immediate execution of everyone at the base. Families, children, everyone.”

  “Well? And what are the military and air force of the most powerful nation in the Middle East planning to do about it?”

  “Herein lies our dilemma, Adam Ben-Ami,” he replied in a low voice, ignoring his friend’s sharp arrogance. “If we attack, they’ll execute the loyalists. If we don’t, the threat will soon be aimed at us. These guys won’t hold back when the time comes.”

  “And why do we care about the loyalists? Our primary concern should be taking out the missiles!”

  “Because we’re in the Middle East, where the enemy of your enemy is your friend. We need Assad - even though he slaughtered his own people. Even though he cooperated fully with Hezbollah, the Iranians and the Russians. We need him winning, and in one piece. I’m saying this for your ears only, and contrary to the opinions of the head of military intelligence, the commander of the air force and many others in the government and the general staff forum.”

  “So what’s the problem here, Gersh?”

  “There was supposed to be a meeting this morning. It was canceled due to the suicide bombing at the Knesset, on account of which you and I have gathered here today. During this meeting, I was supposed to give my recommendation to the PM: whether to attack or not.”

  “Give your recommendation tomorrow. The Middle East isn’t going anywhere. Not the Arabs, not the Persians, not the Russians and not the Jews.”

  Gershon lowered his head toward Adam’s, speaking in hushed, secretive tones: “I can’t recommend a course of action that I wouldn’t accept if I was the political echelon myself. Get it now, Ben-Ami?”

  “Hmm...Not really. But don’t explain it. I trust you guys’ll know what to do.”

  “Yeah. We will… I’m going into the bedroom; I need to make a short phone call. Give me five minutes of privacy. You can listen to the wind in the meanwhile,” he said, and vanished behind the wall, gently shutting the door behind him. When he came bac
k, he went directly towards the door.

  “Okay, I’m off. I still have the ‘library’ key. For emergencies only, of course,” he added, half-smiling. “Thanks for the coffee and conversation. And keep your big mouth shut, Adam! I hope that’s clear, huh?”

  “Sir!” Adam snapped to attention, clicking the heels of his trainers in a dull thump, and gave a tight salute. His white ponytail smacked against his back.

  “And another thing. I met a Chinese miracle of femininity out on the street. I feel that if I can avoid messing this up, I might even fall in love…”

  “Mazel-tov, Gersh! If you have a weakness for Chinese women, go for it - that’s what friends are for!” he exclaimed, still munching on the remnants of his cold pita. “On the other hand, I don’t trust you with women. Be cautious! She might be the kind of trap that you often use on others. Take it easy. Don’t dive into an empty pool! “

  “Thanks. I happen to be a grown up, mind you.”

  “Just remember who you are, Gersh. Do me a favor, watch out for yourself!”

  “Don’t worry. It’s just… a fantasy. Anyway, I’m off. You’d better show up on Saturday. It’ll be fun,” he laughed, opening the door.

  Adam went out to the hall, watching the broad back disappearing down the stairwell in a slight limp. He walked back inside, the door slamming behind him, leaving him once again alone.

  Only Markovich, progressing beautifully through Mozart’s Turkish March, provided some relief from the dusty silence of his cave.

  “Those’re some heavy bigwig dilemmas,” he pondered aloud.

  Coexistence

  A hard rain had been pelting the valley all that afternoon.

  While the skies above the Knesset in Jerusalem were still dull with the remains of the brownish-gray smoke of the bombing, the road leading down from HaEmek Hospital toward Kibbutz Giv’on was glistening with rainwater. Heavy raindrops shimmered like small diamonds and shattered into roadside puddles. A few sunbeams shone through the heavy clouds above Jezreel Valley, and a blinding glow bounced off the asphalt.

  In his Opel Insignia, Professor Marwan Sultani, MD and orthopedic specialist, was enjoying the drive. The professor had a passion for driving, but withheld this passion from his many friends and extensive family. “The head of the orthopedic department at HaEmek Hospital ought not to express weakness,” he believed. His other weaknesses were coffee, sweets, expensive watches and young nurses. Not necessarily in that order.

  The road curved moderately north by the grand Emek Railway station, proceeding toward Nazareth. It was a broad, straight road, divided by a massive barrier.

  The thunder of raindrops ceased for a long moment when he passed beneath the new railway bridge. Without paying much attention to the road conditions, he happily leaned down on the gas pedal: the car quickly downshifted two gears; the engine growled excitedly and rose to forty-five hundred RPM. Within seconds the screen read 110 MPH...

  “Yessss! We love driving just as much as you do!” he muttered, smiling. “Thank god you can still enjoy an actual real drive without all those autonomic robots; For reading a newspaper behind the wheel - let them go by train and leave us the roads!” he called out loud and affectionately patted the leather-covered steering wheel. He was in a good mood. It had been a good day at work, and he was currently cruising toward his private clinic. He enjoyed the Hebrew word “cruise” and its double meaning when referring to the flooded road.

  But when he approached Kibbutz Mizra, a cluster of red and blue lights appeared through the rain and the sound of the windshield wipers, multiplying as they reflected from the wet asphalt, several hundred yards ahead. He instinctively slammed the brakes and came to a screeching near-stop. The traffic light was blinking a nervous orange. Despite the rain, he opened his passenger-side window as he crept by police cars, a yellow ambulance and paramedics in bright reflective vests, crouching near the ground. A cop in a raincoat with reading POLICE in black letters on orange signaled him to drive on.

  A bombing? Car accident? Any injuries? The standard series of questions flashed across his mind. The sirens whined like a question: “What about your Hippocratic oath, doctor? Do you stop and assist, or slink quietly away?” It’s been a rough day, and my shift was over an hour ago… he debated the siren. I’ve done my part for the day… “So do you stop and help or silently sneak away, doctor?” Persisted an inner voice, speaking Palestinian Arabic.

  He would soon recall his doubts as to who to treat, who to defer, and who to ignore.

  At fifty-nine, Marwan Sultani was an impressive man: heavyset, with a thin mustache and a gleaming bald spot surrounded by thick black hair. The head of HaEmek’s orthopedic department. A professor.

  Marwan was conceived at Kibbutz Giv’on in the sixties: Eight young Arabs had arrived at Giv’on, coming from the Arab villages near the eastern border. They belonged to the Arab Youth Pioneers movement, founded by Hashomer Hatzair Jewish movement and several communist-leaning Arab members of the old Jewish-Arabic Mapam Labor Party. In their shared vision they strived to build a “country for all citizens”: A binational, socialist state, whose citizens are equal in rights and obligations, which holds Soviet Russia as a model for a perfect world.

  The eight young men soon became integrated in every branch of Giv’on’s work activity and began their training as future founders of “Arab kibbutzim.”

  Twenty-three-year-old Isam Sultani was sent to the cowshed, the pride and joy of Giv’on.

  He was hardworking and good tempered, and soon became the dairy farmers’ favorite – especially the women’s. This was how he met Jodie Blecher, a Hungarian who survived the Holocaust as a child and came to Israel alone, growing into a member of the kibbutz. He was very handsome, resembling the Egyptian actor Omar Sharif, and she was single, not particularly beautiful, who had long since passed her twenty-seventh spring. Since every love obeys rules of its own making, their love flourished undisturbed during the long milking-nights and the lavish farmer’s breakfasts that followed. They cared neither about the age difference nor the national-ethnic one.

  In the third month of her pregnancy, he brought her to his village, where she declared her devotion to the law of Islam. He didn’t have to pay a Mohar - a bride-price – because the kibbutz would never have conceived of asking for one.

  And so, they began their married life in a modest Arab ceremony, boycotted by the entire kibbutz: a shared ideology was one thing, but deep in their hearts, they’d never meant a true integration. Not really...

  Marwan, the eldest of Isam and Jodie Sultani’s children, was born as an Arab in Isam’s village. He began studying medicine at Tel Aviv University when he was eighteen. It was a rare occurrence, in those days.

  To pay for his degree, the young mixed-heritage student worked at the Beit Levinstein rehabilitation hospital in Ra’anana, on top of occasionally waiting tables. Marwan grew up to be an Israeli who is proud to be an Arab. To know him was to love him.

  For many years he maintained a strong friendship with Gershon, which began in the distant days of his rehabilitation from his back injury. The pilot from Giv’on thus enjoyed the devoted care of an Arab doctor - the son of a formerly Jewish mother, once a member of the same kibbutz in which Gershon was raised.

  * * *

  Marwan sped up again on the flooded asphalt, driving toward the state-of-the-art, recently opened Asuta Private Hospital in Nazareth.

  The road west was blocked by a police blockade, and he was forced to proceed to Nazareth in the pouring rain. The South Al-Nasira radio station was muted and the sound of the windshield wipers lulled him into a contemplative mood. He made sure the high beam headlights were on. “One of these days, those headlights will save you from hitting someone,” he recited a slogan he once heard in a broadcast about traffic collisions, which many of his colleagues described as a national calamity. Mostly the Jewish ones…

&nb
sp; At the foot of Mount Precipice he encountered the sharp turns leading from the flooded, brown valley up to the city. The mountain range was swallowed by rain, the summit wrapped in storm clouds. He put the car in sport mode, downshifted to third gear and climbed in high RPM up the wet stretch dubbed “Serpentine Road” all the way to the top of the mountain, just below Golden Crown hotel.

  He owed his financial comfort to those who sought his help: They waited, with their aching backs, calcified joints and broken limbs, for him and his four partners, in the waiting room of their spacious, well-equipped clinic.

  There were five of them: four Arab doctors and one Jew, Dr. Shmil Azaria. They often joked: “Listen up, Shmil, in Israel there are eighty percent of you and twenty percent of us, but in here it’s the other way around. So better do as you’re told, and learn to speak Arabic!” and they’d all laugh. Coexistence, of sort…

  When he steered his car west towards the mist-swallowed mountain range, his office phone line sounded a ringtone from the once-popular Israeli song “I Have No Other Land.”

  “Hello?” he spoke to the car.

  “Professor, you need to come back, immediately!” Sigal, the orthopedic department’s secretary, fired into the other side of the phone.

  “What is it this time?”

  “There was a mass-casualty attack in the Tiberias Central Bus Station. Two suicide bombers blew up in a school bus returning from a field trip in the Golan Heights. It’s bad, professor. Most of the staff has gone home. Ambulances keep coming in with more wounded. Once the rain stops, we have military helicopters coming in from Ramat David Airbase.” she spoke with the fast, practical phrasing of her experience as an operations-room coordinator in the Israeli air force.

  “Are they planning any combined surgery? Head, chest or stomach injuries along with extremity trauma?” the adrenaline was already rising, pumping in his bloodstream.

  “Stay on the line. Doctor Golan will brief you momentarily. He’s scrubbing in before surgery. He’ll have to scrub again anyway after he brings you up to speed…” the call disconnected, incomplete.