After a very long wait, the fighter pilot Avraham returns home. He notifies Aaron of accurate starting and ending times for their meeting, less than twenty-four hours in advance. 

Aaron is ten minutes late, and regrets it dearly. They’ll only have an hour and fifty minutes together. He spent the morning writing, or more accurately, trying to write. He’s broken his previous records for shortest time in bed, and the excellent memory he’s been cursed with stops working, now of all times when he needs it. He doesn’t understand what it is he’s trying to write here, what he’s trying to describe. The events are too weird, even for him, and he isn’t sure if he’s doing them justice. If justice can even be done to them. He doesn’t know if he’s just whining, as someone who didn’t see battle or loss, or if losing it is in fact a valid response to being threatened with annihilation. 

When Avraham opens the front door Aaron barely manages not to hug him like a man saved from drowning. Avraham’s dog, Moose, jumps on them. 

Aaron likes to tell people that it’s been hard to grow up next to Avraham. He’s taller than Aaron, smarter, considerably more handsome. He’s one of the happiest, most well adjusted people Aaron has ever known, a person whose mood is anchored so strongly to the positive side of the spectrum that Aaron saw him in a bad mood maybe four times in the twenty years they’ve known each other. Twice when girlfriends broke up with him, once when he returned from Captive Week¹ and once, when they were much younger, when Aaron decided in a burst of scientific curiosity and/or boyish cruelty to kick Avraham until he produced some reaction that wasn’t understanding, warmth, or tolerance. Now, with his new fiance, a Californian Jewish girl named Aviv Cohavi², after graduating nine years of service as a fighter pilot, these moments are the furthest from him they’ve ever been, even in the peak of the war. 

But it’s not true, what Aaron tells people. Watching Avraham soar was never hard for him, and he never felt jealousy or competitiveness towards him. That might seem strange, especially considering that since the first time they spoke (In Karate class, when fourteen year old Avraham congratulated Aaron on passing the blue-belt test, and Aaron in response noted each and every mistake he made during it,) all of their shared activities were competitive—either Karate sparring where they’ve sharpened their skills on each other all the way to their black belts, or computer games, or puzzles. And yet, it also felt like they were improving together, not against. 

As a fighter pilot Avraham took part in many operations, and as much as Aaron likes talking about things, particularly about things that happen inside of people’s minds in response to external hardships, it took him a long time to notice that they almost never talk about the operations themselves, about the actions Avraham took, the light shakings of the craft³. When Avraham added his name to an official letter of fighter pilots pledging to refuse to serve if the judicial reform should pass, he told Aaron directly, shared his doubts. But never about war itself. 

He takes Moose off Aaron. “I’m sorry. You know how he is with his anxieties.” 

Aaron indeed does. Moose, admonished, understands that his incessant need for positive reinforcement isn’t going to be provided by Aaron, so he goes to harass their cat, Six. Six was already living in the house when Avraham and Aviv decided to bring Moose, and ever since he arrived he dominated the area, pushing her to a small and limited region into which he also invades occasionally to grab her head between his jaws. She retaliates sometimes, but she does so weakly, careful not to provoke an even stronger counteraction. 

“Are you sure you can’t take him back to the pound?”

Avraham clicks his tongue. “Maybe instead of saying things that you shouldn’t say tell me how you are?”

“How am I? I’m a wreck. Even before the war I was a wreck. Not much to say about that. Can you tell me what’s going on with you? What do you do all day?”

Avravham sits down on the couch while Aaron remains standing. Avrahavm, with the grace of someone who’s been a friend for twenty years, grants Aaron his request to avoid answering. “What do I do at the base all day? I cook. We fly at night, and between flights we have quite a lot of free time. I get to cook a lot, which I enjoy doing but also really enjoy when it turns out good, and people come to tell me how much they liked my food. Eyal Shani⁴ arrived to cook with us.”

“Walla?”

“Yeah. He called the day before, to ask what we have on site and I told him we have a stove, some pots, and an open flame outside if we need it. And he said…” Avraham lowers his voice, squints, and appropriates the celebrity chef’s demeanor. “An open flame is a great hope.” He laughs and returns to his normal voice. “Yeah, he really said that. The guy actually talks like that in real life.”

“Awesome.”

“Yeah, and after we cooked he invited me to cook with him sometime. Not a Friday night dinner, to come to his restaurant and chop vegetables. Still, that should be interesting. I really appreciate him, he makes very simple food, but very accurately, and it comes out delicious.”

“Yeah, that’s very you. I’m glad you get some leisure. I was worried they’d be slave-driving you over there.”

“Nah, it’s pretty leisurely.”

“So, if you have some free time, I just finished writing a book…”

Avraham smiles apologetically. “If I have any free time there, I want to spend it with people.”

Aaron admits that’s the reasonable thing to do. 

“What about you? You wanna tell me now?”

Aaron tells him of his vision of everything being destroyed, about how he feels like he needs to get out before the sky falls and the earth is set on fire. 

“Ok,” Avraham says. “Can we be serious for a second?”

“Yalla.”

“The chances of Israel being destroyed, via Lebanese intervention, Iranian, anything—is zero percent.”

“Can we really say that after falling for a surprise attack?”

“Yes. The chances of us falling to another surprise attack like that, or even worse, let’s say up to ten thousand people dead? Is 0.3 percent.”

“Honest?”

“Honest.”

Avraham isn’t the first person to tell him that, but for some reason only he can really get Aaron to calm down. “Okay,” he says simply, knowing Avraham will understand. “Thanks.”

“With pleasure. What else do you want to know?”

“What’s going on in Gaza right now?” Near Avraham, Aaron doesn’t have an issue admitting how little he knows. How much he’d avoided. 

“We get in where Hamas is, usually jets or artillery first to soften⁵ the area, then tanks, then infantry.”

Aaron thinks of Shimson and Menashe, wonders if they’ll return with new stories, or if this time the pin will detach. “Do you know when infantry reservists will get in?”

“There’s still time for that. First they’ll get the active duty combatants to enter, to give more time for the reservists to get back in shape.”

Aaron sighs in relief. Menashe and Shimson haven’t answered his messages in the last couple of days, and he didn’t know if that was because they sent them over the line, or because they were training night and day, getting forgotten skills redrilled into them. “And how many Gazans did we kill?” he asks. 

“The estimates by the Palestinian Health Administration are ten thousand. But how can you know? Every time we collapse a building, we don’t know how many people are buried alive under it. They don’t have the resources to commence rescue. But I think the estimate is about right. Between eight and twelve thousand.” 

“So out of two million, we’re talking about half of a percent. That’s a lot.”

“That’s a whole lot. Not a genocide, but a very large number.”

“And can we topple Hamas?”

“I think so. I’m positively surprised by the back wind the world gives us. If they don’t make us stop, yes, I believe we can kill enough Hamas operatives the organization won’t be able to hold.”

“And how much of Gaza will remain by the time we’re done?”

“Ninety five percent. Maybe Ninety.”

Aaron tries to imagine how he’d feel if he’d been notified that five percent of Israel is going to be devastated in bombings, while being confined in it. He fails. 

Avraham gets up, smacks him on the shoulder. He knows what kind of material he’s working with. “Want some hot chocolate?” 

“Yeah, absolutely.”

Avraham makes the drink according to the same philosophy Eyal Shani follows—simple but very precise. He froths the milk, pours the boiling water from as low as he can, sprinkles salt from above and starts cleaning the machine as soon as he’s done, his movement quick and efficient. Aaron takes the cup and sips. It really is excellent. “Okay,” Aaron says. “It’s time to tend to the important business.”

Avraham doesn’t wait for him to explain. They told this joke hundreds of times already, and Avraham starts up the Playstation before Aaron finishes the sentence. 

In their favorite video game, Towerfall Ascension, each player controls the little avatar of an archer (more accurately archeress, as one can expect from a game published in 2013 by a Canadian company), and each round continues until one the players manages to kill the other. The type of arrow changes each round, and although each type has its own advantages and disadvantages it’s clear to everyone that the bomb arrows are the most fun to play with. Both Avraham and Aaron have passed their golden age—their reactions are slower, their ability to follow the opponent’s movement while moving themselves is limited. And still they think quickly, acting with a decisiveness that has almost no place in their lives. Avraham in the plane, Aaron in the martial arts’ gym, but that’s it. No time to speak, no time to think, they shot and dodge. Aaron sends a bomb arrow in a long ballistic arc, not to where Avraham’s avatar is but to where it’s moving, and Avraham realizes one second too late that his actions have been predicted. 

Avrhama’s avatar’s body, a pixelated picture the size of a thumb nail, flies above Aaron’s avatar, as the wind from the explosion blows in her pixelated hair. Aaron empties his quiver towards the sky, making his spare arrows into a celebratory firework display. There’s a deep comfort in killing your enemy, but it’s short lived. 

“Just you wait,” Avraham says, making intense eye contact with Aaron as he presses the button that restarts the round. They kill each other again. And again. Again and again and again like the thousands of times they killed each other since the game came out. And the bloodlust, that small but very real pinch of a desire for revenge, is never satisfied. 

Aviv returns with a grocery bag. Avraham greets her with an audible longing, but doesn’t pause the game. She knows them, knows they need to finish what they started.

When they’re done, Aaron brings his full attention to her, notices the fatigue and courage, the decision on her face to endure the situation. He asks her what’s up, how she’s holding up with her fiance coming back hardly once a week. The conversation moves freely between Hebrew to English. 

“He’s not my fiance,” she answers. “We got married last week.”

“What?”

“Oh yeah.” Avraham shrugs. “I forgot to tell you.”

“How did that happen?”

“So,” Aviv says in a singsong, Californian kind of way. “In the last couple of weeks I’ve been living with his dad, because I really don’t want to be here alone when there’s a war. When Avraham returns he goes there, to meet the entire family. It’s closer to his mom’s too. So we spend the day there, and in the evening we go on a walk with Moose. Yeah, Moosie sweety, you! And suddenly Avraham stops, and turns to me, and gets the ring out, and I don’t remember what he said because I just started crying so hard.”

Avraham gives his own testimony, but as is common with soldiers in the IDF, it’s not very reliable. “I told her, are you a forest fire? Because you’re smoking.”

“Five out of ten,” Aaron judges.

“He didn’t say that.”

“That’s right. I said—are you L’oreal? Because you’re worth it.”

“Zero out of ten.”

“God.”

“Are you a grave? Because I dig you.”

“Minus five out of ten.”

“Ignore him. He said that we don’t need a rabbi, and that we’re married from the moment we decide we’re married, and like, you are hereby sanctified to me, and I barely noticed as he kneeled and put the ring on because I cried so much, and he got up and hugged me, and when I finally finished crying and I could open my eyes and what do I see? That’s right, my sweety Moosie, kneeling also, and taking a little dump.”

Two hours (Avraham managed to squeeze in ten more minutes) pass in the blink of an eye, and it feels like they just managed to get in one more round (of another game, but that one’s also a murder simulator) and suddenly it’s time to go. Aaron can’t help but reminisce about the days they’d play the same game from 10pm to 10am, and he tells Avraham that. Avraham smiles. And Aaron knows these memories nourish him, when he does what he has to do. Avraham expresses his hope that they meet again before Aaron flies, and Aaron expresses a twin hope, though he doesn’t think they will. His fear of annihilation has dispersed, but he’ll still leave as soon as he can—he just doesn’t want to be there anymore. 

They hug, and Aviv comes out of her study to say goodbye. He hugs her, apologies for the land that eats its inhabitants⁶.

She shrugs, turns to look at Avraham who’s bending over to pat Moose on his exposed belly. “I knew what I was getting into.”

NEXT: Expats

1. A standard part of an IDF pilot’s training. Very little is publicized about the process, aside from the fact that soldiers are kidnapped and go through a period of “torture simulation”, to prepare for the possibility of being taken captive by Hamas. Soldiers who were taken captive after going through training claimed that the preparation proved “highly effective”. ↩︎
2. Coincidentally, that’s also the name of the former Commander-in-Chief of the IDF. ↩︎
3. Dan Halutz, the 18th Commander-In-Chief of the IDF, was once asked how he felt as a fighter pilot when releasing a bomb that is likely to kill bystanders. His outrage-invoking response was “a light shaking of the craft”. ↩︎
4.  Celebrity TV chef. ↩︎
5. Military jargon, meaning to bomb an area where hostile personnel are suspected to be. The function of a softening is to make said personnel less responive when infantry enter the area. ↩︎
6. Numbers 13:32, speaking of the same land in question – “The land, through which we have gone to search it, is a land that eateth up the inhabitants thereof.” ↩︎