23
I woke to moans of pain–whose, I didn’t know because I was surrounded by a curtain. I hadn’t slept much. Every time the bump on my forehead touched the pillow a wave of pain shot through me and I pictured the army boot kicking my head over and over. At some point I gave up and decided to visit Shuli in the emergency room. I had a vague idea that, Bruce Willis-like, I’d probably have to creep past some sleepy guard in order to reach her bed. But the emergency room is on high alert twenty-four hours a day: critical patients coming in, nurses and doctors and beds on wheels, the screams of the injured, the tears of the relatives. Even at 3.24 in the morning, when my ward was as silent as the grave. The nurse at the entrance looked at her clipboard and told me I couldn’t come in. I looked at the board too. I asked how Shuli was doing and she told me ‘stable’. I said, ‘Good,’ though I hadn’t a clue what it meant.
‘Maybe let me in anyway?’
‘No,’ she said, and answered the phone. I crawled back to my bed and I guess I must have fallen asleep for a while, before the moans of pain woke me up.
Breakfast arrived on a tray. The next course was a psychological counsellor.
He started gently with a ‘How are you?’ before moving to a full-on attack. What did I see? What did I hear? What did I do? What did I think? What did I feel? I was to tell him everything and he would write it down. We were going to reconstruct everything that happened to me on the day of the event. It was very important. Even the events before the trauma itself. They were important too.
I answered drowsily and then told him it was my right to know what had happened to Shuli. He agreed with me, then carried on.
‘OK, Eitan. Your system has been thrown out of balance and is still extremely sensitive. Right now, however, there is a window of opportunity. Immediate therapy is critical for your recovery. Do you understand?’
‘Recovery my ass. What are you talking about?’
‘Your condition is highly labile and without therapy it is likely to deteriorate. I suggest a group of nine to twelve people, all like you, in your condition, victims of shock or people injured as a result of terrorist attacks. Some of them might even be victims of the same attack as you.’ He wrote something in his notebook.
‘You think I’m a shock victim?’ I thought he looked more in shock than I did. I couldn’t stop staring at the large beauty spot by his eye and had noticed that he couldn’t hold my gaze.
‘It’s too early to say, Eitan, but it’s best to take all the measures we can in order to diagnose and treat it, if this is indeed the condition.’
‘So what happens in these meetings?’
‘Everyone tells their stories. Group therapy is known to be very helpful in these situations. I recommend that you at least try a few meetings. The mentor’s called Ilan. Look. Nobody’s going to force you if you don’t find it useful.’ He bent closer, trying to establish an intimacy between us. Was there a touch of French in his accent? ‘Being in such an incident causes damage, that’s certain. But the damage is reversible. Without therapy, it will be much harder to turn the trauma around.’ I frowned. ‘Without therapy, I guarantee you will feel much worse in the long run. I guarantee it.’
We were interrupted by my phone and I apologised and answered. It was Yaara from IDF Radio, good morning and how was I doing? They were patching me through? Right after the next song I was on air? I explained to the counsellor that he’d have to wait a few minutes, and suddenly the deepest voice in the history of voices was tickling my ear, an all-business voice rumbling me fully awake.
‘A devastating attack in Jerusalem. Eighteen killed and fifty-three injured. It seems not a day passes this week without news of another tragedy. Joining us from the Hadassah Ein-Kerem Hospital in Jerusalem is Eitan Enoch. Hello, Eitan.’
What should I say? Hello? Hey there? Hi, Rafi?
‘Good morning, hello, hi,’ I said, and regretted it immediately.
‘Morning, yes, let’s just explain to the listeners, Eitan. You were sitting in Café Europa on Emek Refaim Street during the attack yesterday.’
‘Yes.’
Did he want me to say something else?
‘Tell us about it.’
‘Uh…we arrived there a little before noon.’
‘“We” arrived?’
‘Yes. I was with a friend.’
‘OK…’
‘We got our coffees and sat down. I had an egg-and-tomato sandwich.’ I felt like an idiot. ‘It was a very bright morning. She said I’d chosen the table where she always used to sit with her boyfriend. Giora. Uh, he was killed in the Tel Aviv attack at the start of the week.’ The counsellor’s eyes widened.
‘What?’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘Do you remember anything from the…explosion?’
‘No. A foot hit my head. It was dark. I don’t know how I got outside. There was a woman with a South American accent. A guy who looked a bit like Shlomo Scharf shouted at her. Maybe it was Shlomo Scharf.’ What was I talking about?
‘And your…friend?’
‘What about her?’
‘Yes. What about her?’ asked the deep voice.
‘Uh. I don’t know. She’s in the emergency room. No one tells me anything. At three a.m. someone told me she was stable.’
‘Stable?’
‘Yes.’
He went quiet for a few seconds. ‘It must be very hard for you.’
‘Yeah, well. It’s just…When Shuli came back from the toilet she wanted to switch places. To sit where she always used to sit. We made the switch, and right after that it happened. I mean, if we hadn’t traded places, maybe I’d be in a stable condition right now and she’d be talking to you. I don’t know.’ Why had I agreed to this interview? ‘On the other hand, the guy in the Bab al-Wad attack…he was sitting next to me and he died too, so…I dunno.’
‘Eitan Enoch. One of those injured in the bombing in Emek Refaim Street yesterday. And I think that with these two simple words–I dunno–he expresses better than any politician the feelings of all of us this week. And it’s interesting you mentioned Bab al-Wad, because it’s our next song. Eitan Enoch, in hospital in Jerusalem, we wish you a quick recovery. And may we only hear good news!’
At least he hadn’t signed off with ‘May everything pass on the other side’, like that guy in the eighties used to. Whatever the hell that meant.
I hung up and the phone rang immediately, so I rejected the call and it rang again. I turned it off and lifted my gaze to the counsellor’s beauty spot.
‘How was it?’ he asked. He was writing something in his notebook.
‘I don’t know. Pretty terrible, right?’
‘Yeah…no! No, not at all. Not at all. Tell me, what you told him about Bab al-Wad…you were there too?’
‘Yeah. Why? I was on the Little No. 5 in Tel Aviv too. Giora Guetta, Shuli’s boyfriend, was there.’
At last the counsellor looked me straight in the eye. It was the same look of stunned disbelief that I’d seen on a number of faces outside the Café Europa.
‘I’ll go and check on her condition for you,’ he said.
During the morning I gazed at the clouds outside. Around noon the air seemed to grow sourer and the counsellor returned. He said that Shuli was in a coma. She had been moved to intensive care on the eighth floor. It wasn’t clear how long it would last, or even whether she would come out of it at all–a coma could last from two to four weeks, and after it the patient might wake up or deteriorate into a vegetative state or die. Mom and Dad arrived with good food in plastic containers and messages from all kinds of people. They’d been getting phone calls from abroad. Why hadn’t I told them I was going to be on Rafi Reshef? Why hadn’t I told them I was in Shaar Hagai? So I told them everything, and their faces were astonished, but I just wanted to go to sleep.
Experts came and tested me. My head seemed fine but you can never tell with a serious blow, especially if you’ve been unconscious. I would have to remain under supervision for several weeks, if not months. ‘Unconscious?’ I asked. ‘Didn’t you lose consciousness?’ ‘I don’t know.’ ‘Do you remember everything that happened from the moment of the explosion until you arrived at hospital?’ I tried to remember but I couldn’t. Fingers explored my body, and then I was outside. ‘No,’ I said. ‘So you lost consciousness.’ I would receive follow-up tests every Wednesday, before my therapy.
‘What therapy?’
‘The talking group. Wednesdays at seven-thirty.’
They were like a hallucination, my two days in hospital. Visits and doctors. Phone calls and troubled sleep. Walking in corridors and devouring Twixes from a machine. Journalists sitting next to my bed and scribbling quickly in notebooks. Dear, kind Duchi. Jimmy, for ten minutes, running to the airport to catch the flight to Brussels. And I took the lift up to the top floor and saw Shuli. I couldn’t stop the tears. I broke down and they had to take me back to my bed in a wheelchair. And of course, embarrassingly almost, there was adrenalin and a weird exultation and euphoria. I was alive. I felt tremendously alive. I had looked death in the eye and evaded it.
Only sometimes, especially at nights, a feeling seeped through my elation–the feeling that death was getting closer, that death’s interest had been roused and it was looking for me, and that it would eventually, inevitably, find me.
The day after I was discharged I appeared on Noah’s Ark. My memory of it is much fresher for the simple reason that I’ve watched the tape of the show a dozen times. Like a wound you’re dying to scratch, from time to time I can’t stop myself and I stick it on–and then regret it. It swamps me with memories.
The morning I came out, a girl who described herself as a researcher called me, then put me through to Tommy Musari himself. I haven’t had much time to watch TV in recent years but even I know who Tommy Musari is. Even I couldn’t avoid his all-conquering smile and triumphantly gleaming glass eye after Friday night dinners at my parents’ or Duchi’s father’s or (before September 11th) her mother’s. Not one of the three living rooms that hosted family meals on Friday nights (when we couldn’t duck them altogether) managed to avoid one or the other of Musari’s shows over the years–A Little Bit of Musari, Most Musari, The Nation’s Musari. Musari, I should say, happens to mean ‘moral’ in Hebrew: hence the endless terrible puns. But even I knew that the jewel in the crown was Noah’s Ark. It seemed that everyone in Israel except me watched Noah’s Ark, the show that brought together a left-wing widow and a right-wing widow, or a settler and a Tel Aviv resident, or an army dissenter and a general, a cynic and a patriot, a celebrity and a destitute woman. Everyone watched it, left and right, east and west, rich and poor, just like their adverts said they did. Duchi watched it. In Time’s Arrow people discussed it over lunch. Talia Tenne said that the show was even popular in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. So when Tommy Musari himself invited me on to his show, I appreciated the importance of it. And I said no.
‘Good evening and welcome to Noah’s Ark with your host…Tommy Musari!!’ I watched the intro on a monitor in the green room, as I waited to be called up to the stage. The audience was applauding almost hysterically. ‘Good evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Enough…Enough!’ Tommy quietened the cheering with tamping gestures. ‘Tonight is a very special night on Noah’s Ark. Tonight we have…a croc with us.’ A murmur went through the audience–a croc? Tommy broke into a smile and his non-glass eye broke into a twinkle. ‘No, not a real crocodile, but a young guy called Croc.’ He switched his gaze to a different camera. ‘We Israelis have had a pretty rough week. Three major, savage attacks.’ He paused to raise the tension, and continued in a low voice. ‘Are we going to break?’ ‘No,’ chanted the audience. ‘Are we going to give in?’ ‘No!’ ‘Or are we going to link hands until we’re stronger than ever? Are we going to stay here because this is, simply, our land, and we have no other?’ ‘Yes!!’ roared the audience, prompted by the cue cards somewhat superfluously held up by technicians.
‘Hello, Eitan? Am I speaking to Eitan Enoch?’ Tommy Musari had said when he called that morning, and for some reason I’d said, ‘You can call me Croc. That’s what everyone calls me.’ ‘Then that’s what I’ll call you too. Croc, I heard you on Rafi Reshef and I was moved to tears…’ It was him all right: you couldn’t mistake the famous Musari intonations. ‘I understand you were an eyewitness to the attack in Shaar Hagai, and then you were in Café Europa at the time of the bombing?’ ‘Eyewitness? Well, the soldier I’d given a lift to got shot in the neck.’ ‘Two attacks in the same week–an amazing coincidence…’ ‘Three, as a matter of fact,’ I told him. After all, it was Tommy Musari. He said it was simply unbelievable, supernatural. He said that someone was protecting me, that I’d been chosen to show we can stand up to them, that I was a symbol. I told him I didn’t want to appear on TV. But then he hit me with all of his famous ‘Moshe Dayan charm’, as they called it. An intense bombardment. I resisted until I could no longer bear the headache he was giving me. I gave in.
‘Now, the Croc is a very special guy. In a quite astonishing coincidence, he was involved in all three of this week’s terrorist outrages. He lost friends and witnessed things that will stay with him for the rest of his life. He saw death, ladies and gentlemen, but you know what?
He stood up to it.’ Applause: the audience were drinking Tommy in. ‘He looked death in the eye and he said no thanks!’ Tommy gestured to quell the applause. The camera cut to a close-up, his face growing solemn. ‘So Croc is today an Israeli symbol. He is the man who experienced terrorism first hand and said no, thanks. Ladies and gentlemen, I am thrilled to introduce this brave man, the Crocodile of attacks, Croc Attack: Eitan Enoch!’ The researcher gave me a gentle shove in the shoulder and I stumbled forward.
‘Welcome, Croc.’ Wide smile, arms spread in a wide wingspan, warm hug, shorter in reality. ‘In a moment I’m going to ask you to tell us all about your ordeal, and where this name of yours comes from.’ Laughs from the audience, a smile from me. ‘But first, you know how it works on Noah’s Ark…’ The audience shouted, ‘Two by two! Two by two!’ ‘Exactly. Two by two. Couples from both sides of the fence. And this evening we have a very special girl joining the Croc. Don’t go away during these messages!’
After the show, people approached me on the street and said it was the most moving edition of Noah’s Ark they’d ever seen. Kids shouted ‘Hey, Croc!’ at me from the windows of buses. Friends from the distant past and long-forgotten relatives called. Tommy Musari called twice: first, to thank me and say he didn’t remember being so moved in his entire career, plus the viewing figures had been spectacular. ‘Unbelievable response. We’ll invite you again soon. We’ll find a reason.’ The second time he wanted to tell me that the president had called him to congratulate him on the show.
‘Lieutenant Dikla Gadasi served for two and a half years in the territories and was discharged from the army last week. As a military police officer, Dikla prevented countless terrorists from penetrating the border. She saw, close up, the roots of hatred. Please welcome…Dikla Gadasi!’ A thin, bespectacled Yemenite-looking girl entered and sat opposite me. Tommy exchanged a couple of sentences with her. She hated them. Hated their guts. She thought that any soldier serving over there had to hate their guts, in order to keep from slipping up. ‘They’re right under your nose, and sometimes the smell from down there isn’t all that pleasant.’ It got a laugh. ‘You can’t turn the other cheek. You can’t get soft. Until you’re a hundred, a thousand, a million and ten per cent certain that this person isn’t going to hurt you or your people, you don’t give him a thing. Doesn’t matter how much he cries or whatever sob stories he pulls about his pregnant wife or his sick kid or the work he’s missing. I’m really not interested at all.’
‘Mmm…interesting. Noah’s Ark: the two sides of the fence. On one hand, the soldier who protects us from terror, and on the other,’ he gestured towards me, ‘an innocent civilian, a victim of that terror. Croc, you saw the effects of terror with your own eyes. Do you agree with Dikla? Do you hate them?’
‘Uh…’ I thought for a moment. ‘I…dunno, really. I try not to hate anyone. Even someone who wants to kill me. I just think we should stay strong no matter what. I suppose.’ Mild applause. Had I actually said that? The bespectacled girl wasn’t having any of it. ‘I don’t understand why you wouldn’t hate someone who’s trying to kill you. Especially them. You want to be over there in their shit, excuse me, for two and a half years and then you might understand what I’m talking about. All the bleeding hearts ought to actually go out there and see these disgusting places for themselves and then see if they support a Palestinian state.’ Tommy rubbed his hands. ‘Yeah, well, I’m not saying I don’t hate someone who wants to kill me.’ I’d started sweating. ‘Uh…we shouldn’t give in, sure. We must put pressure on them.’ How had it come to this? I didn’t know the first thing about politics. ‘A text from Ran in Ramat Gan,’ Tommy read from a piece of paper he’d been handed, ‘says that we should look at ourselves. “The smell may not be pleasant because we make them live in a sty, they make the—” Hold on, Dikla, hold on, let me finish reading Ran’s text: “It’s our illegal occupation and soldiers like Dikla who are giving them reasons to kill us.”’ Tommy lifted his eyes from the note. ‘Dikla, we know what you think about this, but I’m interested to hear your thoughts, Croc.’ I swallowed half a pint of spit. ‘Yes, I can understand him. We really can’t keep pointing only at the other side.’ Dikla started to say something and I tried to appease her. ‘I can understand your anger, but sometimes their anger is understandable too.’ ‘I don’t believe this–he’s justifying terror! He was in three attacks and he justifies terror?’ Contempt was coming off Dikla like musk. ‘Justifying terror? You’re crazy.’ ‘Let’s not get carried away, Dikla, no one was justifying terror. I assume Croc is asking himself questions. After such a traumatic week in his life–in all of our lives–you can’t stop asking yourself why. Why is it happening? Where is it coming from?’ Tommy looked at me reassuringly. ‘Right. That’s what I meant,’ I said with relief. We moved on to what had happened. I was pretty good at what had happened; I simply said what had happened. When they want your opinion, that’s when you have to watch out–that’s when you know you’re in trouble.
Tommy turned to me. ‘To sum up,’ he said, ‘what do you have to say to our people? Is there anything we should be doing? How do we respond to terrorism?’ ‘We need to be strong, not to be cowed,’ I said, and I saw a glint of vindication behind Dikla’s glasses. ‘Everyone should get on with their lives. Get on buses. Drive on roads. Drink coffee! Because if we don’t have a normal life, what do we have left? We have to remain human beings. That’s the most important thing. That’s the only thing, I suppose. Because what are we if we’re not human beings? If we lose ourselves, then…well, we’ve lost.’ A second of silence and then Tommy leaned over and shook my hand, and the audience exploded in a wave of aggressive-sounding applause. I was dripping sweat. People I didn’t know shook my hand. My chest was frighteningly constricted. I went to the toilet and I don’t want to describe what came out there. I had nausea. I didn’t understand why I’d come or what I’d said. I went out to get some air and once outside I didn’t see any point in going back so I went home, and kept sweating and trembling and checking over my shoulder the whole time to make sure I was on my own, the audience’s violent and hysterical applause ringing in my ears all night long.