BEAUFORT
Ron Leshem
Delacorte Press
Fiction
ISBN: 9780553806823

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BEAUFORT
Chapter One

A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE LOST A LOT of people since we lost Yonatan. We’ve lost others since then, too, because another war broke out and everything got more savage. But more indifferent, too. And who’s got enough time on his hands to deal with what happened back then? When it broke out we lost Barnoy. Then another eleven guys. And when the numbers stabilized at nine hundred and twenty and it looked like it was over, we lost Koka’s brother, who’d followed in his footsteps and enlisted with us. We’ve made love a thousand times since then, it’s not like we haven’t, and we’ve laughed a thousand times. We went on to other places, we escaped and came back, we remembered. But quietly. We imagined how we’ll return to the fortress, to our mountain. There’ll be a hotel there, maybe. Or a place for lovers to park. Or maybe it will be deserted. There’ll be peace. And I will lead her along the paths, we’ll walk hand in hand. "Here, baby, this is exactly where it happened." And stone by stone I’ll show her. She might even ask if that’s the whole story. "How can that be the whole story? What made you cry so much, it’s actually really beautiful and peaceful here, everything’ green with trees, and quiet. This is the place where you broke down?"

Try to imagine that they stick you high up on a mountain cliff, higher than the roof of the Azrieli Building. How could you not have a breathtaking view? Here it’s wide expanses of green countryside checkered with patches of brown and red, snowy mountains, frothing rivers, narrow, winding, deserted European roads, and the sweetest wind there is.

Zitlawi used to say that air like this should be bottled and sold to rich people on the north side of Tel Aviv. Christ, what quality. So fucking pastoral you could cut the calm with a knife. Our sunsets, too, they’re the most beautiful on the planet, and the sunrises are even more beautiful, glimmering serenity from the roof of the world. Bring a girl or two here when the sky is orange and you’ve got it made. And dawn, an amazing cocktail of deep blue and turquoise and wine red and thin strips of pink, like an oil painting on canvas. And the deep wadi that twists away from the big rock we’re sitting on. Try to explain how this could be the place where you broke down.

But from that night I remember the lights of Kiryat Shmona, on the Israeli side of the border, as they recede on the horizon, and everyone’s beating hearts—I swear it, I can hear them as we make our way up to the top that very first time. And from minute to minute it’s getting colder. There’s not a living soul around except for us, practically not a single village in our zone, either. The convoy crawls along, gets swallowed up in a thick fog, there’s no seeing more than a  hundred yards ahead. Tanks are spread along the road to provide cover for us. From a slit near the roof of the Safari I try to figure out how far along we’ve come, silently poring over the map of danger spots and racing through an abbreviated battle history, muttering because no talking is allowed.

Where will the evil flare out from? I suddenly have the urge  to shout to the commanding officer that we’ve gone too far, but I bite my lip and remain silent. >From this moment on nobody can tell me anymore "You haven’t got a clue what Lebanon is, wait’ll you get there." I’m there, finally, that’s what’s important. Along line, heavy traffic: a supply Safari, a GI Safari, a diesel Safari, behind these an ordnance truck with a big crane, an Abir truck carrying a doctor and a medic, another GI Safari, the commander’s Hummer, the lieutenant’s Hummer, and an Electronic Warfare Hummer. Oshri asks if I’ve brought my lucky underwear with me. I gesture to him that I’m wearing them. After all, our good fortune depends on my lucky underwear. I’m wearing them, even if that means thirty-two days without washing them.

And I remember how the gate of the outpost opens to let us in, how the Safari comes to a halt inside a cloud. Everyone grabs hold of whatever’s lying around—bags, equipment, your own or someone else’s—and runs like hell inside. The commanders curse under their breath—"Out of the vehicles, run, get a move on!"—and people go down, people come up, you’re not allowed to stand in place, you have to grab some shelter. When the parking area fills up with dozens of soldiers the enemy fires salvoes of mortar shells. And I try, but I can’t see anything, don’t recognize anyone around me, grab old of the shirt of some soldier I don’t know and get pulled along after him. I’m thrown into a crowded maze, surrounded by thick concrete on all sides, long passageways with no entrance or exit, rooms leading to steep dead-end stairways, cul-de-sacs, and a collection of larger rooms lit up in red, with low ceilings and stretchers. Thirty seconds later I’m already in one of the bomb shelters, a long and narrow alcove, a kind of underground cavern with concave walls covered in rusting metal and cramped three-layer bunk beds hanging by heavy iron chains from the ceiling.

WELCOME TO DOWNTOWN someone has carved over the doorway, and inside the air is stuffy, suffocating, a stench of sweat overwhelms you again and again, in waves. This pit, called "the submarine," is where my entire life will be taking place from now on. I consider a quick trip to the toilet. Aseasoned sergeant tells me to follow the blue light to the end of the hall and take a right, but he informs me I’ll need a battle vest and a helmet. I decide to hold it in. What’s the matter, is there a war on or something? I’m really not in the mood to go up in smoke here right now. Back then it seemed like it was light-years away when all it was was thirty, forty feet, three green toilets with a graffiti welcome—I CAME, I SAW, I CONQUERED.

JULIUS CAESAR—and an official military sign commanding users DO NOT LEAVE PIECES OF SHIT ON THE TOILET SEAT so there is never any chance of forgetting where you are living. And in the morning, with the first sunrise, as the view of Lebanon spreads out before us like an endless green ocean, our commanding officer makes his opening statement, which he has undoubtedly been rehearsing for weeks, maybe months, or maybe it has been handed down through the generations: "Welcome. If there is a heaven, this is what it looks like, and if there is a hell, this is how it feels. The Beaufort outpost."

Once, Lila asked me what exactly Beaufort is and I thought how difficult it is to explain in words. You have to be there to understand, and even that’s not enough. Because Beaufort is a lot of things. Like any military outpost, Beaufort is backgammon, Turkish coffee, and cheese toasts. You play backgammon for cheese toasts, whoever loses makes them for everyone—killer cheese toasts with pesto. When things are really boring, you play poker for cigarettes. Beaufort is living without a single second of privacy, long weeks with the squad, one bed pushed up against the next, the ability to pick out the smell from every guy’s boots in your sleep. With your eyes closed and at any given moment being able to name the guy who farted by the smell alone. This is how true friendship is measured. Beaufort is lying to your mother on the phone so she won’t worry. You always say, "Everything’s  great, I just finished showering and I’m off to bed," when in fact you haven’t showered for twenty-one days, the water in the tanks has been used up, and in another minute you’re going up for guard duty. And not just any guard duty but the scariest position there is. When she asks when you’re coming home you answer in code. "Mom, you know the name of the neighbor’s dog? I’m out of here on the day that begins with the same letter." What’s most important is to keep Hezbollah from listening in and figuring out when to bomb your convoy.

You really want to tell her you love her, that you miss her, but you can’t, because your entire squad is there. If you say it you’ll be giving them ammunition for months, they’ll tear you apart with humiliation. And then there’s the worst situation of all: in the middle of a conversation with your mother the mortar shells start blowing up around you. She hears an explosion and then the line goes dead. She’s over there shaking, certain her kid’s been killed, waiting on the balcony for a visit from the army bereavement team. You can’t stop thinking about her, feeling sorry for her, but it might be days before the phone line to the command post can be reconnected. Worry. That’s the reason I preferred not to call at all. I told my mother I’d been transferred to a base right on the border, near the fence, Lebanon lite, not at all deep in—not way deep in Lebanon—so that she’d sleep at night. Gut feeling, you ask? She knew the truth the whole time, even if she won’t admit it to this day.

Beaufort is the Southern Lebanese Army, local Christians, a crazy bunch of Phalangists. Cigarettes in their mouths all day long. Smelly, wild, funny. They come in every morning at eight o’clock and we put a guard on them. They build, renovate whatever’s been destroyed by the air raids, do what they’re told. They’re not allowed inside the secure area, not even permitted near the dining room.

Beaufort is guard duty. Sixteen hours a day. How do you stay sane after thousands of dead hours? We’re all fucked up in different ways, just do me a favor and don’t choke it during guard duty. "Choke it" is our way of saying "jack off." It’s not that there aren’t guys who choke it; they choke it big time. You won’t believe this but a lot of people get super horny from our green jungle atmosphere. I’m not kidding. Nature is totally romantic, sensual. You would lose control, too. And it’s not only nature that makes us horny. The Sayas network at 67 MHz, used for open transmissions between the outposts, can also give you a hard-on sometimes. It’s not an official network—it got its underground nickname from a radio broadcaster who specializes in melancholy late-night chats—but everyone knows it because everyone, at one stage of boredom or another, tunes the dial to Sayas, the guys’ favorite, where they can talk bullshit all night long and melt from the female voices. That’s because girls from the command post are on the other end, in the war room, hot as fire, no AC, no boys, no reason not to unbutton their shirts a little, let off some steam. They sprawl across their chairs—I’ll bet on it—stretching their muscles, spreading their legs, dripping hormones, dying for someone to make them laugh and slowly flirt with them and in the end make a little date with them back in Israel. Why not? Give them what they really need. Sure, baby, I got lots of weapons. I got my short-barrel M16 flat top, a real beauty. And my Glock, a fantastic pistol. And I also have . . . my personal weapon. Measure it? You want me to? No problem, sure, I’m happy to measure it for you, actually forgot how long it is, apologies, baby. That’s the way you talk, making it up as you go along, turning yourself on, and they giggle, toying and teasing on that very thin border, one step over the line, one step back, and you’re dying to believe that maybe at the end of the night, when all the other guys drop out, the girls are left alone, poor things, to satisfy one another. What, you don’t think so? A few strokes, great stuff, nobody’s ever died of it. Just don’t build any major expectations: the nicer her voice is over the airwaves, the more of a dog she is. I take full responsibility for that statement, I’ve been disappointed often enough in my life. A high squeaky voice, on the other hand, means you might want to invest a little time, because she’s got mile-long tits. It’s a fact,

I’m not jerking you around.

Beaufort is going out on seventy-two-hour ambushes with a huge supply of beef jerky in your knapsack. You can’t believe how much of that stuff you can eat in three days. Beef jerky with chocolate and beef jerky with strawberry jam. And how much you can talk and talk without really saying anything. Pretty soon you reach the stage where you know everything about everyone. Who did what, when, with who, why, in what position, and what he was thinking about while he was doing it. I can tell you about their parents, their brothers and sisters, their not-so-close friends, their darkest perversions. There’s a lot of alone time, too, when you’re fed up with all that talking. You think about yourself, your home. You wonder if your mother is hanging laundry just now, or maybe she’s watching Dudu Topaz on television. Lila’s probably showering now, too. Or maybe she’s cheating on me.

Freezing cold—we call it "cold enough for foxes" up here, ice-cube cold, the nose is frozen and the extremities neutralized. The feet have been numb for ages. Fingers, too. That’s Beaufort. You have cold burns all over but your belly is burning hot, dripping sweat even. At these times everyone starts thinking about some asshole drinking coffee on Sheinkin Street in Tel Aviv. And here’s fucking me, smelling like diesel oil, sweating from fear, lying in the middle of nowhere and nobody’s going to help me if I die. Not the guy in that café on Sheinkin Street, that’s for sure. When I’m blown to pieces a few minutes from now he’ll keep drinking from his mug, probably at the very moment it happens he’ll tell some joke and everyone will fake a laugh and then he’ll go screw his girlfriend, he won’t even turn on the news, and as far as he is concerned, nothing will have happened this evening. Because it’s business as usual for him. He drives to his desk job at army headquarters every morning in the car that Daddy bought him, finishes the army every afternoon at four o’clock, and drinks coffee with whipped cream all the time. Blond hair, five o’clock shadow, sort of ugly. Hate him? You bet, it helps sometimes. Hatred is an excellent solution to boredom.

Beaufort is Oshri. He rolls over in my direction, lies next to me, chews my ear off in whispers. Every time. "Tell me, Erez, please, man: how did I wind up here?" he asks. "What am I doing here dressed up like a bush? Why do I paint my face? What am I, a kid? What am I, in some Crusader fortress, you fucking little prick? What is this, are we living in the Bible? Am I some sort of retard, pissing in bottles? What am I doing here in subzero weather, in the snow, waiting to take down some Arab who decides to climb out of bed at three o’clock in the morning? Does this make sense to you? And then going back to that stinking trash can I sleep in up at the outpost? Does that seem logical? Tell me, have you seen where I sleep? It isn’t good for me here, really not good. Grown-ups shouldn’t have to live like this, sinking in black mud mixed with snow at night. It’s a bad fucking trip is what it is. Open your eyes. People have been dying on this mountain for a thousand years, isn’t it about time to close shop? I swear, it doesn’t make sense that there’s such a place as Beaufort. I’m telling you, there’s no such place and we’re all stuck in this nightmare for no good reason. It’s a mistake."

He goads me, tries every time to shoot the matter to new heights on the scale of absurdity, astonishing himself, while I bust up laughing, out of control, but it’s all inside so they won’t see. I take care to hold it in. I know in a minute or two the guy will sober up. I know him. Everything will look normal again, logical. He chose to be here, and he has a good reason for it, the best, and he’ll remember it. He loves the mountain, it’s good for him. And I’m good for him, too. He’s my soul mate, my good luck charm, my best friend since the first cigarette at the induction center. Friend? No way: brother! My brother, who knows what’s best for me better than I ever will. He says, "Erez, draw a black sheep for me," and I draw him a whole flock. He says, "Erez, give me a hug, you pussy," and I climb into bed with him, squash his little body into the wall, fall asleep holding him. He says, "Erez," and I know it’s for life.

And sometimes Beaufort is a one-night ambush. Even then we bring the beef jerky. Of course we do! One night, simple, like the one in December ’97. I’m the squad sergeant, lying in a thorny bush just as dawn is breaking, lost in thought. Calm. Like I’m drugged. That calm. And my whole being is dying to run down that steep, rocky slope covered with undergrowth, run to the edge of the cliff and leap off. An incredible dive from the peak of the mountain to the sweetwater runoff in the deep valley below, a long, whistling plunge that thunders in my ears. I am dying to dip into those waters, to float on my back, get swept away by the current into the blue streams, lie in the shade of the soft, bold, wild vegetation that crowds around the water and snakes after it like a dream jungle. To warm up lying like barefoot nature children on rocks: naked, horny, carefree. Dying to smoke a joint, get high, laze around, snuggle. Oshri says you can hear the splash of the water from below if you really try, but the closer you are the more forbidden and dangerous it is. Beaufort is a cage of ugliness right at the center of heaven. You hardly move one hesitant camouflaged foot to the outskirts of our iron gate, groping, sniffing, then you come back and close yourself inside our little enclave again. If only I could fly along the rivers and by way of the mountains I would be home already.

"Cheetah to Deputy One. Testing transmission."

"Roger, affirmative," I respond into the two-way radio.

"Functioning." I return to my long silence.

Bleary eyes, mountain air, a brown and green desert, orchards and gardens, small stone buildings in turquoise and orange, olive groves. Everything is spread out before us. Are you dozing off? Dozing off? No way! Hey, you see that? You catch that? Is it what I think it is? Yeah, yeah. Are they armed? Yes, absolutely. Armed.

"Cheetah, this is Deputy One," I report. "We’ve got three scumbags north of the Virlist road." Oshri’s got one in his sights, Chaki another, and Bendori the third. They’ve entered killing range, they’ve got packs on their backs, it can’t be anything else. "Deputy One to Cheetah, marksmen on targets. Do I have confirmation?" I wait.

"Deputy One, this is Cheetah. Negative, repeat: negative.

No confirmation, Deputy One."

"Cheetah, this is Deputy One, we’ve got them covered.

Scumbags. Awaiting confirmation."

"No confirmation, Deputy One. Negative, repeat: no confirmation for action."

"But they’re moving forward. Fast. We shouldn’t lost them. We’ve got them in our sights."

"Negative, Deputy One."

Negative? Why negative, you fucking assholes! Does it make sense to you that I should lie here like some goddamn faggot missing an opportunity like this? Does it really? No way. "Squad, on my count. Four, three, two, one, fire. Twenty-one, twenty-two, fire. Prepare to attack."

"Commander Cheetah to Deputy One, do not fire your weapons! No confirmation, stay in position."

"Squad, prepare to attack."

"Erez, you psycho! Stay where you are. That’s an order! Erez, you’re in violation of an order!"

"Squad, attack!"


Chapter Two

But anyway, my name is really Liraz. In basic training, at the very first roll call, the platoon commander ran down the names and when he got to mine he stopped. He didn’t like it, my name. “Wait, wait. What’s that?” he asked.

“What kind of a name is that? Liraz? That’s a chick’s name. From now on you’re Erez, like the cedars of Lebanon. Congratulations.” Erez. That’s who I am to this day.

Was there ever anything I wanted more than to lead --- on my own, as commander --- a squad of fighters to the top of the  Beaufort? You can be sure there wasn’t. But when I came back from officers’ academy I discovered that nobody had any intention of making my dream come true. My company commander said I was too testy, hot-tempered, aggressive, impulsive. That maybe on paper I was an excellent fighter who always looked for opportunities to engage the enemy and always demonstrated courage, but that I was a shithead of a person. Testy people, he told me, can’t lead fighting squads. True, one time, I attacked a military policeman. The little pussy caught me with mud on my boots. I told him, “You piece of shit, I’m on my way back from thirty-five days in Lebanon, I haven’t showered for weeks, and at six this morning we suddenly got clearance and my commanding officer shouted, ‘Run, Erez, get out of here now or you’re stuck here another week.’ So what’s the deal here, you going to fuck me up over a pair of muddy boots?” But this guy, he didn’t give a shit. He wrote out a complaint. But that’s not the whole story. That ass wipe knows me from the neighborhood, in Afula. I said to him, “Gonen, you’re pretty full of yourself, aren’t you? You put a uniform on and became a big shot, eh? You know what? I’m going to be generous with you.

Take your report, rip it up, and get out of here now. We’ll forget about the whole thing.” He didn’t understand the hint and fucked me over. I gave him forty-eight hours to let the earth swallow him up and then I beat the living daylights out of him. To this day, to tell the truth, I haven’t gotten over the disgrace of it: a guy from Afula writing a complaint on a fellow Afulan.

Okay, it’s also true that I was tried for willful desecration of military property when I was a platoon sergeant. I threw a two-way radio at somebody along with a few other small objects. And when someone accidentally mentioned my sister, Vicky, I would lose it. Lots of things would make me lose it. I even got sent to jail for insubordination in that ambush business, when they shouted, “Do not fire your weapons! No confirmation, you psycho!” Sure, it was a long time ago, but turn me into a training officer instead of a commander? No way I was going to deal with paper targets, no way I would train soldiers to shoot without first learning, through my own experience, what it felt like to lead them at the front.

For weeks I stuck to the company commander like a leech. I begged, went crazy, shouted, cried, refused jobs. I even asked to be discharged from the brigade. They’d never seen anyone so fired up before. But it didn’t impress them. Until the hand of fate intervened and one of the officers left unexpectedly when his father died. The position of squadron leader opened up and I filled it. In actual fact I became squadron leader on probation and under a magnifying glass. At the time, the kids were on a survival navigation course at the brigade’s training base. I showed up there one morning without insignias on my uniform and observed them from the side, the thirteen of them. I didn’t introduce myself, I didn’t approach them. They didn’t have the slightest clue that I was their new commanding officer. For several weeks I spied on them, eavesdropped, heard things. Heard things and grew alarmed. For example, I heard Emilio shouting at Bayliss, “What were you touching my bag for?” Just like that, word for word. This is a squad here, you loser. Everyone touches everyone’s bags, that’s the whole idea. Being a squad means stealing Zitlawi’s potato chips, taking underwear from River’s bag, lifting socks from Spitzer --- because his are cleanest, everyone knows his mother uses fabric softener.

Being a squad means that you run to the shower, take off your towel, and get swatted on your butt. The weather’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey and you’re dying to get under the nice hot water of the shower, but everyone pushes you out, slapping you around from every direction, and you just thank God you have friends like these.

But not these guys. I’d been handed a frigid bunch, not a drop of group spirit in them. They weren’t connected to one another, they didn’t put their all into what they were doing, they looked sloppy. I got rid of their sergeant on the very first day, a thickset asshole, too Ashkenazi. I replaced him with Oshri. In my opening talk I recommended they forget the rulebook. Six hours of sleep, an hour each for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and an hour of rest after every three in the sun don’t make a fighter ready for Lebanon. That’s barely training for company clerks, a bunch of girls. I brought them down to three hours of light sleep a day, made them pull allnighters more often than not. When I found a mess in one of the rooms I moved them out to sleep in tents. When I overheard Itamar shouting at his mother over the phone --- “All right already, shut your mouth!” --- I informed them that there would be no more phone calls. Anyone caught with a cell phone would be kicked out. To put it simply, I was on their tails day and night. They did push-ups on their fists on hot gravel until they bled.

“Like in jail,” I told them. “Like prisoners of war. You can shout about it but nobody’s going to rescue you. On the other hand, you can just open your legs and enjoy yourselves.” After a few days you could see a spark in their eyes, first signs of a common denominator. Not just any common denominator but the most toxic of them all: hatred. They hated my guts, all of them, to the very last man.

Well, maybe there was one exception. River, the medic. It started during a complicated week of field exercises. The soldiers crawled, trampled thorns, moved boulders, took out their aggressions on nature. The usual stuff. When they were scratched up from head to toe and Bayliss was dripping blood from his mouth I gave one last and final order: At nine o’clock from where I’m standing, two hundred and fifty feet from here, see that green tree? Bring it down! Within seconds they had scaled it, stormed it, were jumping on it, tearing at it, ripping away, a battalion of elephants assisted by a rodent commando unit. Look at this, I said to Oshri, they’re actually taking the thing down. But before I could wipe the smile off my face I caught sight of River off to the left, leaning on a rock and glaring at me. While I was still contemplating what kind of punishment this unexplained loitering called for, River approached me --- River, the quietest, most disciplined soldier of all of them --- and said without hesitation, “This wasn’t necessary. You should stop them.” I swallowed. I felt so stupid. What had I turned into? A few seconds passed before I muttered that he was right. From that day on I made River work harder than all of them. I tore his ass, I shredded his soul, I wanted to turn him into a fighting machine. Under me he became a stallion, every vein in his body throbbing. At night, when the squad would tuck into junk food and Coke and then a deep sleep, I would leave him outside for medic training and physical fitness sessions that sometimes lasted hours. At two in the morning he would join me for a run around the base with Itamar slung over his back, playing the wounded soldier. Itamar, who’s built like a tank, like a D9 bulldozer. Even in hailstorms we went out. I turned River into a two-way radio and made him run from commander to commander for wake-up calls or to deliver messages. In the end, when he nearly broke, I gave him five minutes to recharge his batteries by leaning on an electricity pole. It’s not easy being the soldier the squad commander likes best. River didn’t bat an eye, didn’t complain. One day, when I let him go back to his tent, I allowed myself to tell him I was happy with him. I think I said something stupid like “It would be my honor to be a wounded soldier in your care.” He said nothing. Gave me that famous penetrating glare of his and I knew --- don’t ask me how, it can’t be explained --- that he was happy with me, too. There’s no making sense of that.

My big brother Guy once told me that to be a squad commander is to love. Thirteen fragile soldiers are placed in your hands, you called them “the kids,” you drag them in their diapers on a long, long journey through a dense forest of breaking points, and the whole time you just pray that nothing bad will happen to them. You worry about them, he told me, not about yourself, and when one of your soldiers tells you that his uncle died of a heart attack and you see the pain in the whites of his eyes, suddenly you hurt, too, way deep down inside. The truth is, I wanted to suffer from that kind of sick love. I swear it, I really tried. But it didn’t work for me.

Sometimes I felt disrespect for them, sometimes even revulsion. Sometimes anger, and every once in a great while a little satisfaction. But most of the time I simply didn’t feel anything at all. For a long time River was the only exception.

I wanted to love Emilio, for instance. He’s a guy who came to Israel from Argentina without his parents, only with his twin sister, left all his friends and family on another planet just to enlist in the IDF. Wasn’t he worthy of respect? Of course he was. But how can you not go crazy from a soldier who pukes nonstop, like some coffee machine gone berserk? On treks, during runs, when he gets shouted at. And how about Tom? The guy’s on a jag: red eyes, sees snails flying in the air, people zoning, drifting, Muslims tripping out in Mecca, has no idea where he is, just goes with the flow, floats. And Spitzer? Too relaxed. Itamar: too fat. Bayliss, too religious and self-righteous. Boaz is too enthusiastic, Eldad too vain, certain that all the girls are hot for him. He’s disgusting, a spoiled Tel Aviv rich kid, an intellectual pretending he’s down-to-earth, one of the guys. And Pinchuk? Juvenile. Sleeps curled up with a teddy bear he calls Yaron, thinks that’s really cool. Gets offended at nothing. And Barnoy’s a bleeding heart and Zion’s dense as a log and Koka’s just plain boring. And we’re actually on our way to war --- as pompous as that sounds --- and how am I, as commanding officer, supposed to love this squadron of weaklings and whiners who aren’t capable of taking in what’s about to happen to them? Two months at the training base seemed like an eternity.


Chapter 3

And most especially, I wanted to love Zitlawi. How could you not love the guy? Zitlawi is warm and funny and happy. He can charm the pants off you. You’ll never hear him complaining. Zitlawi’s a good friend --- the best --- and that’s something I admire. I had a lot of reasons to love Zitlawi, I know, but with all the will and effort it just didn’t work, because Zitlawi doesn’t have an iota of discipline, no respect for his commanding officers, too scatterbrained, spacey, the kind who leaves his gun in the most irresponsible places possible. If you don’t tie his hands and feet to his body he’ll lose them in a matter of seconds. That drives me crazy. Truth is, Zitlawi is a real arse, a small-time punk with a cigarette behind his ear and a way of talking that makes everything sound like a string of curses, even when it isn’t (it usually is). A whole new language took root with us thanks to him, expressions and pearls of wisdom that spread through the entire northern zone in a matter of days. Back then, the IDF dictionary was putting out new volumes every month, thanks to him.

To “ram,” for example. In our language it means sleep deeply. The full term is “to pillow-ram.” It can be conjugated, too: pillow-rammer, pillow-ramming, pillow-rammed. A “rusher” is a quick make-out with a girl. A “double-rusher” is a small rusher. A double can happen between two guys, but not a rusher. An “owl” is a guy who walks around with his cock in his hand, jacking off all the time. A“terror dick” is one that gets nonstop hard-ons, morning, noon, and night. During kitchen duty, watching Schindler’s List on video. “Scud five” is a huge dick.

A “ticket-taker” is a guy who sleeps with all the girls. “Tevye the Milkman” also sleeps with all the girls, but he’s a nerd with glasses. A “fortune-teller” is a girl who puts out (when you’re with her you’re “fortunate” because she “tells you to screw her. See also: “ear-hole virgin,” “boiler heater”). Then there’s a “mezuzah,” a girl that everyone kisses, and a “Pringle”: once she’s open, everyone wants a taste. A“Magic Marker” is a girl that gives blow jobs. “Hook up with a suckbaby” means go fuck yourself. A sexy tourist is called a “foreign fuck,” “ironing board” is flat-chested, “mosquito-bitten” is a girl cursed with small breasts.

A “hummus” is a dumb soldier. A “flip-flop” is someone thickheaded, a “schnitzel” is even more thickheaded, and an “eggplant” is as thick as you get. Athickheaded girl is called a “booma.” A brown-noser is a “tangerine-peeler,” a soldier with no friends. A “Herzl” is a fighter who talks too much about the future, which comes from the guy who envisioned the founding of the State of Israel. “Zionist” is another nickname for a blabberer, or someone who sticks his nose into everyone’s business. “Kapod” is a pet name for Sephardim, “hardor” for Ashkenazim, and “journalist” for Ashkenazim who tell lies. Zitlawi calls everyone a fox, a shark, a hammer, a sleaze. A“panther” is a fox that Zitlawi particularly likes. A “pink panther” is a gay fox.

A“flamer” is a homo. A“momo” is a homo, too. There are lots of ways to call someone gay: ass-checker, for example, and zipper-reader, and doorpost-wiggler. Bed-shaker, wallscratcher, umbrella-opener, pot-opener, soap-dropper. Sheetripper, faucet-stealer, tile-chewer, tree-hugger, sink-gripper, ball-grabber, pickle-dicer, shoe-tier, tea-stirrer, thing-sucker, banana-straightener, horse-whisperer, pillow-biter, feathercougher. Ahomo’s a guy who cries at movies, disappoints his parents, rides a bike without a seat. He’s a suckler, a limper, a bend-overer, an excavator, a nailer. A champagne-boy is a homo, too, and so’s a sharpener, a flutist, a Scout leader, a thong-wearer, a closet-lover, a sit-pisser, an exhaust pipe, a bugler. “Omo” is homo. “Sensitive” is homo. In fact, say anything but “homo,” because it’s not nice to swear. And lesbian? Don’t say that, either. “Carpet-nibbler” is okay, you can use that.

“Strawberry-pisser” is someone who’s scared. An “orange soda” is someone scared shitless. “Toast” is a burnt-out soldier. A “draft dodger in uniform” is a soldier with a desk job somewhere near his home. “Fox-brained” is a code name for someone fucked up by drugs and “rabbit” for a light user. “Enchanted garden” is a hash den.

A “potato-chip-wetter” is a miser, someone who doesn’t want you to hear him crunching. A “marble-shitter” is a monster, a weird soldier, a loner, so ugly he looks like he hasn’t really evolved. A “sprinkler” is a bragger; the female version’s a “Nile perch.” A “futt” is a fat slut. A fox-scarer. A mud pie. A “kebab” is a fat guy. So’s a “sumo,” someone so big he blocks the view. Amale soldier who sits around doing nothing is called a “semen-squanderer” while the female version is “wasting labor pains.” A “yam-peeler” is someone lazy. A “rivet-pisser” is someone who gets too excited about things. “Siamese cat” is a spoiled brat. “Chakhna” means stinky and “karkhana,” a drugged-out mess. A “chocolate situation” is one where nobody’s happy and a “honey situation” is where they are. And to Zitlawi I’m a “pinscher,” someone who barks all the time but isn’t really dangerous, just a moaner. That’s what he thought of me. Sometimes he also called me “gremlin” behind my back, meaning someone with a nice face but whose soul is dark and evil. Zitlawi himself was known as “Psalms,” someone with a saying for everything.

“Jakha” is a personal favor. Do a jakha for me, will you?

Jakha me. He’s jakhad and so forth, ad infinitum. To “drum” is to stir coffee. Turkish coffee, or Beaufort instant, with halva and walnut oil. Zitlawi would spend hours, days, with the finjan and the thermos. If he had his way he would pummel all the guys with blows and pummel all the girls in bed. There wasn’t a single girl he wasn’t prepared to mince, fry, spear, or devour, the horny bastard. No holds barred, no pickiness, if you could believe the words that came out of his mouth along with the drooling saliva.

And then there’s the worst curse of all: May your prayeron-paper be nicked from the crack in the Wailing Wall where you stuffed it.

Zitlawi’s most frequent saying: “Are you making fun of the way I talk?” That’s what he would ask, with a killer look, whenever one of the guys pointed out some mistake to him, corrected his Hebrew, or, worst of all, dared to smile, which naturally happened all the time. He was violent, but sometimes good-hearted, too, like when he forbade guys in the company from squashing the monsterlike grasshoppers that hung around near the lights of the outpost. And Zitlawi had this little box of tapes he would listen to, the collected songs of Hana Harman. Once I asked him where she was from, that singer, and he was really offended. “Hana Harman is not a she,” he told me, “he’s a he.” And not just any old singer but an Arab singer. One of the good Arabs.

I had a head-on collision with him when I took over command of the squad, on the afternoon of the hottest day in history. The boys stood facing me in rows of three on the roll-call field, frightened, dripping sweat, waiting to hear the first new decrees. They were wearing sunglasses on the order of the brigade medical officer --- all of them except Zitlawi, who observed me with smiling eyes. When I asked him why, he said, “What do I need sunglasses for? My mother told me I shouldn’t hide my beautiful eyes.” On the spot he got the first punishment, and then again that night in the tent camp, when he was caught after lights-out organizing “The Prettiest Goober Contest,” a phlegm-spitting competition. From then on he never stopped getting punished. In my first personal interview with him he spoke briefly and dodged direct questions. He was a smart-mouth. The only thing I learned about him was that he came from Tiberias, had three brothers, and liked to listen to Yehuda Poliker’s music while getting a blow job. There was nothing particular in his files from the Adjutant General HQ or his army social worker to raise my suspicions. Three weeks of insubordination passed before I discovered the tip of the iceberg.

It happened when Oshri took the initiative, pulling Zitlawi out of bed at three in the morning and dragging him without permission, without prior coordination, for a walking tour of the cypress forest just south of the eucalyptus grove near us, with a canteen filled with hot tea. For the first ten minutes, as they walked outside the base, Oshri didn’t utter a word, which caused Zitlawi to fill the void with bullshit chatter. He tried to guess the meaning of this hike, he cursed, talked a little about squad matters and mostly about himself in an effort to hide the fact that --- simply put --- he was terrified of the situation. When they came to a clearing in the forest, Oshri sat at one of the three rickety picnic tables that had been placed on the dirt there. He waited a few seconds, then he asked, “Zitlawi, what’s your story?” Yeah, what was his fucking story, what was happening with the guy, what was the source of all this damage he was doing to himself along the way? The kid played dumb, claimed this was what made him happy, he was used to entertaining people and if someone had a problem with it they should toss him out of the military framework. He said he wouldn’t appeal to the IDF chief of staff if he were kicked out, he wouldn’t rat to the radio about abuse or hazing or breaching central command orders, they had nothing to worry about, he would keep quiet, he said. Oshri pulled two thin Indian cigarettes out of a wrinkled pink paper bag, little ones made of dry rolled eucalyptus leaves. He lit them both. Zitlawi sniffed the cloud of sweet, spicy scent that filled the air --- or maybe the smell was bitter, kind of hard to define, the odor of a campfire. “Why not?” he said. “But isn’t there any boof, as long as we’re at it?”

Oshri didn’t even know what boof was. Alittle cube of hash, Zitlawi explained. Everyone has a pothead friend who keeps some boof in the little condom pocket of his jeans for emergencies, don’t they? Something nice for the guys at the right moment. Oshri kept silent, lay back on the damp wooden bench of the picnic table, and let the stars mesmerize him. And he smoked. He has this kind of face that always looks mesmerized, narrow and dark and closed, with especially tiny ears, only his lips big and thick, and he’s all peace and serenity, a rascal who seems to know that everything’s going to work out soon so there’s no need to panic. Zitlawi remained standing, watching him from above. “What do you want to hear?” he asked. “That the crazy boy has unique qualities of his own? That he’s special, different, like the kids in special needs classes?” Oshri didn’t answer. “And what about you?” Zitlawi asked. “What’s your story, Mr. Sergeant?”

Oshri was preoccupied with the halo around the moon and didn’t even bother turning to look at him. Zitlawi lay down on the table, too. They smoked three cigarettes one after the other. It wasn’t until the third that they exchanged another word, and then Oshri took the initiative again, kind of faking it. “You got anybody to fix me up with?” he asked. He told him he didn’t have a girlfriend --- here, something about himself --- and in fact had never had one, because before he ever had the chance to fall in love they always, every time, let him know there was no chance, and now, in the army, the situation was even worse, there wasn’t even anybody to look at and it had been bothering him for some time now that everyone around him was screwing right and left and he wasn’t.

Oshri finished talking and prepared his defenses for attack, expecting a nasty comment. Zitlawi took a Snickers bar out of the pocket of his uniform and broke it in two. “Sir!” he said as he offered Oshri the bigger of the two pieces. “Now that’s actually a matter I know something about. We’ll work something out for you, you can count on me.” He said this in a completely serious tone of voice, with compassion even. And this really was a matter Zitlawi knew something about, because girls of every kind threw themselves at him, insisting that he’s sexy if not particularly good-looking. His face was coarse and his body massive, the manliest guy in the company. And he was funny. Girls love funny guys, especially during sex when you’re getting turned on and talking, it gives them a mega-orgasm. Then Oshri let his head drop backward over the edge of the bench and said, “What’s gonna be?” Bingo. That turned out to be an excellent question, even if it had been asked unintentionally. Zitlawi grabbed on to it and used it to open a peephole into himself. His mother was a fortune-teller, he told Oshri, surprising him. A real one, though, a member of the union, with diplomas and certificates and everything. The kind who knew how to answer questions like “What’s gonna be?” quite accurately. She studied Kabala and read coffee grounds, did palm readings and tea leaves and oil, read tarot cards. She could interpret dreams and do someone’s astrology chart and reverse curses. She could make a former lover come back, get rid of the evil eye, help with fertility and family matters and fears and anxieties and low self-confidence, too, and lead couples to better communication. She handed out charms for good luck and for failing businesses, she was an expert in numerology and astrology, she solved marital and financial troubles. She gave courses, appeared at bachelorette parties and at events in private homes. In short, she brought happiness to people. The only thing she didn’t do was crystal-ball gazing. When people asked “What’s gonna be?” she answered, in detail, and she was never wrong. And ever since she accurately predicted the results of the elections in Tiberias she’d become famous all over the north, and visits to her were scheduled two months in advance at the very least. Her name was Aliza, but people called her Solange and that was also her professional name, and at home you weren’t allowed to use the term “fortune teller.” Instead she was a spiritual advisor, that’s what it was being called in those last few seconds before the new millennium.

Excerpted from BEAUFORT © Copyright 2008 by Ron Leshem. Reprinted with permission by Delacorte Press. All rights reserved.

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