And suddenly alone, very much alone. An empty space in my heart. Imagine me in the middle of all this confusion. Sitting among the soldiers, beside the chain of the half-track, hiding in a scrap of sweltering shade, in the sickening stench of burnt gasoline. My clothes so filthy you’d think I’d gone through two wars already, seeing all the preparations being made for my death. Troops milling around us endlessly, encircling us. Tanks, half-tracks, jeeps and artillery, the crackle of radio sets, the shouts of soldiers hailing their friends. I begin to understand, I won’t leave this place alive. Shut in from every side. A nation ensnaring itself. Suddenly I wanted to write you a postcard, but already urgent orders were arriving, we must prepare to move immediately.
We moved on a kilometre or two, advancing in a broad formation, then they halted us. We waited there, trussed in our belts, helmets on our heads, drivers at the wheel, for four long hours, watching the dim, threatening horizon where the battle was noiselessly in progress. Watching the plumes of dust rising in the distance, the smoke of distant fires, signs that my companions interpreted eagerly. Slowly the desert turned red about us and suddenly, on the dusty skyline, the ball of the sun caught fire, like a flare thrown up from the burning canal, a weapon of war, a part of the battle. And as evening came the sun began to disintegrate, as if it too had been caught in the cross fire, and our faces, our vehicles, the weapons in our hands were painted purple.
And in that same place, still deployed in advance formation, we waited two days, as if frozen where we stood. And personal, linear time, the time that we knew, was blown to bits. And a different, collective time was smeared over us like sticky dough. Eating and sleeping, listening to the radio and pissing, cleaning our weapons and hearing a lecture from an eccentric instructor who came to us with a little tape recorder and played us rock music. Playing backgammon, huddling together in tight circles, leaping onto the half-track at false alarms, watching the aircraft going out and returning. And somewhere else, beyond us, there were sunrises and sunsets, twilight and darkness, burning noons and cool mornings. They cut us off from the world so they could kill us more easily, and I, a stranger twice over, or, as they called me, the runaway who returned, I wandered about among the young men, hearing their foolish jokes, their childish, adolescent fantasies. And they, not knowing how to deal with me, still impressed by my ravenous hunger of the first day, would offer me slices of cake, biscuits and chocolate, which I took absent-mindedly, munching moodily among the armoured half-tracks. Once, in the middle of the night, I thought of trying to escape. I took some toilet paper and started walking towards a distant hill that I thought was deserted. To my surprise I found troops dug in there as well. The whole desert was alive with men.
At last we began to move, slowly, like struggling out of quicksand. Already exhausted, advancing a few hundred metres and stopping, stopping and advancing. Moving south, then north, then east, then turning back to the line of advance. As if some moon-struck general were controlling us from far away. Suddenly, without warning, the first shells fell among us and somebody was killed. And so the battle began for us. Lying flat on the ground, scratching trenches in the sand, then up again onto the transports and moving on. Sometimes opening fire with all weapons at sand-coloured targets. They too were wandering like sleepwalkers on the dusty horizon. I didn’t shoot. The bazooka was slung over my shoulder all the time but the bombs were tucked away under one of the seats. I sat there huddled, the helmet over my face, turning myself into something inert, an object without will, a lifeless creature, only at intervals looking out at the nearby scene, the endless, never-changing desert. Our unit was changing all the time, disbanding and regrouping. The boy-commander had been killed, another, an older officer, had taken over. The half-track broke down, they put us aboard another. Changes all the time, handing us over to somebody new, taking us away from him. Sometimes under bombardment, short or prolonged, hiding our heads in the sand. But advancing, that much was clear. Men trying to whip up enthusiasm. Victory, the breakthrough, at last. But a hard, bitter victory. One evening we arrived at an important field headquarters. We were set to guard a staff officer who was sitting among a dozen radio sets, surrounded by wires and receivers. A tired man, his eyes narrowed by long days without sleep, sitting on the ground, taking up receiver after receiver with endless patience and fearful slowness, in a sleepy voice, sending out orders to faraway units. All night we sat around him. I tried to follow his conversations, to understand the course of the battle, but it seemed that matters were growing always more complicated. In the morning twilight, in a brief lull, I plucked up my courage and approached him, asking when he thought the war would be over. He looked at me with a fatherly smile and in that same sleepy voice, very slowly, he began to speak of a long war, a matter of months, perhaps even of years. Then he picked up a receiver and in a weary voice gave the order for an assault.
Now the young men around me were beginning to look like me. Ageing prematurely. Hair white with dust, beards unkempt, faces wrinkled, eyes sunken through lack of sleep. Here and there, bandages around filthy heads. Already we could see in the distance the sparkling waters of the canal. They ordered us down from the transports and set us digging deep into the ground, each man his own grave.
And then I heard the singing. Chanting, prayer, live voices, not from the transistor. It wasn’t yet light, just the first flutterings of dawn. Shivering with cold, wrapped in our blankets, wet with dew, we woke up to find three men dressed in black with side curls and beards, leaping and dancing, singing and clapping hands, like some well-trained dance troupe. They came closer, touching us with warm, thin hands, rousing us from our sleep. They came to cheer us up, to restore our faith, sent by their yeshiva to circulate among the troops, to give out prayer books, to bind tefillin on the young men.
Already some of our men had joined them, drowsy, bedraggled soldiers, laughing nervously, rolling up their sleeves and repeating the words of the prayer. They were blessing us. “A great victory,” they said. “Another great miracle, by the grace of God.” But it seemed they weren’t sure, their voices lacked conviction. This time we’d disappointed them a little.
The morning came and quickly the air grew warm. Men started to prepare breakfast, smoke rose from campfires. Transistors broadcast the morning news. And they, having finished their mission of awakening, folded up their equipment, the tefillin and the rest, sat down on a hillock, took out little cardboard boxes from their jeep and laid out their morning snack. We invited them to take breakfast with us, but they refused politely, bowing their heads, smiling to themselves. They had their own food. They were even afraid of touching our water bottles for fear of contamination. I went closer to them. From among their sacred objects, among the prayer books and tassels, they took out bread, hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes and giant cucumbers. Sprinkling them with salt and eating them complete with the shell. From a big red thermos they were drinking some yellowish liquid, apparently cold tea that they’d brought with them from Israel. I stood and watched them, more and more fascinated. I’d forgotten that Jews like this still existed. The black hats, the beards and the side curls. They took off their jackets and sat in their white shirts, patches of colour not of this world. Two were adults, about forty years old, and between them sat a pretty youth with a sparse beard and very long side curls. He seemed a little shy and ill at ease in the middle of all the bustle, picking with a pale hand at his breakfast, which was laid out on an old religious newspaper.