August 7, 2005

Alison on Aliyah:  My Day in Gaza, Part 2:  The Soldiers We Love

I’m not sleeping very well these days, and I find that I’m worrying pretty much all the time.  As of a few weeks ago, I was sleeping like a baby, easily ten hours a night, content in my relative ignorance of the current situation ravaging this country and my friends’ places in it.  This week, I have to say I’m a bit of a wreck.

Let me back up a bit, to a guy named Tziki Aud.

Tziki and his lone soldiers

         Tziki is the head of the Information Center for new immigrants at the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem, and he spends his days fielding office visits, phone calls, and emails by the truckload from “fresh off the boat” immigrants from North and South America, France, Canada, Ethiopia, and Russia who don’t know what they’re doing and have no idea who to turn to next.  He holds their hands and he reassures them that things will be fine, and then he picks up his seemingly magical phone and finds them a place to live, potential options for school and/or work, and a way out of their desperation and fear and aloneness.  This is his day job.

            In every other second of his spare time, Tziki assists chayalim bodedim, or “lone soldiers.”  These are young Jewish boys between the ages of 18 and 23, who have chosen to leave their home countries—often very much against their parents’ wishes—to come to their homeland, become Israeli citizens, and enlist in the Israel Defense Forces.  Some would say this is Zionism in its purest form; after all, “real” Israelis are required to become soldiers.  These chayalim bodedim have no family here; in fact, some of them don’t know a soul in the country.  They cannot rent an apartment because they don’t get enough income from the army, and they can go long stretches without more than one or two weekends off per month.  When they do get off the base, therefore, they literally have nowhere to go.

That’s where Tziki comes in.  He picks them up from the bus station, takes them to his tiny three-bedroom apartment (where he lives with his wife and three teenaged boys, one of whom has also just entered the army), feeds them until they can’t move, does their piles of laundry, and puts a pillow under their heads moments before they collapse from exhaustion.  When they wake up, many hours later, they are treated like kings at his Shabbat dinner table every week.  There are never less than seven to ten soldiers there every Friday, stuffing their faces hungrily with the first home-cooked meal some of them have had in weeks.

And then there’s always me, one of the lucky ones who managed to get an invitation to Tziki’s dinner table back in the first week after making aliyah, and I have barely missed a meal there since.  It’s been almost two years that I’ve been spending my Friday nights with Tziki, his American wife, Aya, their sons, his mother and father (a Holocaust survivor), and all the chayalim bodedim he can fit at the table.

It took me a while to feel comfortable at their house, even though I became fast friends with Aya.  There are still times that I feel out of place, given that I am at least seven years older than even the oldest soldier, and I know nothing about the endless macho games played at the table surrounding army units and 40-kilometer hikes and which type of gun is the best.  Some of the soldiers seem to treat me like a surrogate mother, some like a sister, and most of them just spend most of the night trying to hit on me.

There have also been times when I couldn’t understand why I was even there, and why I was the only female besides Tziki’s wife and mother at the table every week.  A few months ago, he finally answered this burning question, telling me that as soon as he met me, he just knew I would fit in at his table.  Apparently, that same night he came home to Aya and declared, “We have a daughter!”  He calls us all his adopted children, and we delight in having an adoptive family to get us through our tribulations.

I spend most of my time at the Aud house thanking my lucky stars that people like this exist in this world, and in Israel in particular.  I simply don’t know what I would have done without them, from the moment I made aliyah up to and including today.  And I always knew that Tziki spends his time helping these soldiers, advocating for them, steering their way through the army bureaucracy, sending them care packages, and lending them money when they can’t make it to their next paycheck.  But not until my day in Gaza, a few weeks ago, did I truly understand what goes on behind the scenes.

Our own little “Private Ryan”s

        As I drove toward Gaza with my good friend, Amir, our conversation revolved around what we would see and experience inside the territories throughout the day.  My first thought, upon reaching the first checkpoint outside of Netzarim, however, was of the soldiers currently serving there.  A quick call to Tziki confirmed that three of his “regulars” were in the area, although he had no idea where exactly.  One of them, Yehuda, who is the youngest of the group and has been in the army a mere six months, had called Tziki in the middle of the night before in tears because the settlers protesting at his checkpoint had spit on him, calling him a “Nazi” and yelling at him to “Go back where you came from!”  He seemed to be nearing his emotional breaking point, and Amir and I made it our mission to find him.  We had bought cookies and snacks and were determined to deliver the reinforcements to him, face to face.

It was actually a lot like the movie, “Saving Private Ryan.”  Amir and I stopped at every checkpoint, asking if Yehuda’s unit was there and searching for any soldiers with the telltale red boots, signifying that they were paratroopers.  There was always someone who thought he was somewhere else, or someone who had seen his unit recently, or someone who thought he was just around the corner.  No luck.  I put in calls to all the soldiers I knew were there, but none were answering their phones and I knew they wouldn’t be checking their voicemail anytime soon.

Finally, around 5:00 in the evening, just as we had crossed back from Gaza into Jewish territory and were contemplating giving up our search, I got a call from one of the soldiers who had not received my message and was just coincidentally checking in.  Meir, a 20-year-old who was born in Morocco but grew up in France, made aliyah nearly two years ago and has been in an elite unit in the IDF for a year and a half.  He was overjoyed to hear that I was in the area, and told us where he was located.  Amir and I steeled ourselves for another entrance back into the “zone,” accompanied by many more questions and frequent checking of our identity numbers and permission status.

We arrived at Meir’s quarters, and a quick tour of the dilapidated room—complete with no running water, an array of holes in the walls, a visible layer of mosquitoes, garbage in every corner as well as in the toilet bowl, and of course, piled high with army gear and weapons—made me want to put him in the car and take him home with me.  He had been chosen to guard the unit’s equipment for the day, and he was waiting for the rest of the soldiers to return from training.  He was sitting on an inch-thick, filthy mattress on the floor, with a half-eaten can of pineapple chunks in front of him, no spoon or fork anywhere in sight.

Amir and I eagerly handed over some of the snacks we had brought, and Meir’s grateful smile was more than enough of a thank-you.  We sat with him, listened as he explained the complicated ambush mission he had been called in to do (in army-fashion vague detail), and gave him the chance to feel like a civilian for a couple of hours.  He told us that he wasn’t scared, even though I couldn’t help but focus on the fact that his life seemed to be very much in danger.  He said that once he puts on his army uniform, he simply isn’t the same person, and things that cause him fear and anxiety as a civilian don’t even faze him as a soldier.  Given the missions he described to us, I supposed that the coping abilities he has developed must be serving him well.

At one point, Meir remarked that he had not slept in two and a half days, and was ecstatic for the moment when the rest of the unit would return, at dusk, and he would be able to sleep until the next morning.  An hour after Amir and I left, however, Meir called me to ask if we might like to come back.  It was almost comical how he asked, as if he was just hanging out at home and wanted us to just swing by; he clearly had no idea how difficult and fairly treacherous it was for us to get in to the area.  But as soon as Meir asked, I knew instinctively that he had a reason.  He’s a tough guy, and has never asked me for help as long as I have known him.  I knew that if he had made the effort to ask, he really needed it, and there was simply no possibility of refusing.

Amir and I were already on our way out of Gaza (for the second time), but we exchanged a glance that made it obvious that he was thinking the same thing.  We were both tired and hungry and covered in the dust that had been flying around all day because of the army trucks and tanks.  We made a half-hearted attempt to discuss the pros and cons of returning to within the confines of Gaza for the third time that day, the cons being very compelling (nothing had happened so far, why not get out and stay out while we’re ahead; protestors have a tendency to come out and become hostile at night; our government-issued permits might not be valid after a certain hour).  But we both knew we were going back in to support Meir.

A mitzvah like no other

            Since we were already nearly past the main checkpoint, Amir and I decided to take a slight detour and pick up some hot food for Meir.  It took us nearly an hour to get back in and reach his camp, and he was waiting eagerly at the front door.  He had decided to come outside because there were actually more mosquitoes inside the room than out, so the three of us hunkered down on the curb, next to a couple of fairly wild-looking dogs.  Meir rested his gun on his lap and grabbed hungrily for the now-not-so-hot meal we had brought, the temperature of which did not seem to bother him in the slightest.  He tore off the cover, exclaiming that he had eaten nothing but tuna sandwiches for days, as he is adamantly opposed, both physically and in principle, to eating loof, the Israeli version of Spam.

As I watched Meir voraciously filling his pita bread with humus and chunks of chicken, his mouth already full and his eyes shining, I was struck with the realization that what I was feeling must be what Tziki experiences every day.  There was such gratitude in Meir’s eyes, and he was so hungry for civilian human contact (in addition to good food); I instantly resolved to visit every day.  I was filled with a deep satisfaction that such a simple mitzvah on my part had brought such joy to him.  I had always asked myself how Tziki can expend so much time and energy on helping these boys, and what drives him to do so, so selflessly, and in that instant, I had my answer.

So Amir and I sat with Meir for over an hour, talking and laughing and getting to know the rest of the soldiers in the camp who wandered by not so coincidentally, curious to know who these strange civilians were and what they were doing inside Gaza.  Meir seemed fully content to trade his much-needed and much-anticipated sleep for a relatively trivial conversation with us.  Amir and I knew we had done the right thing by coming back in, but we weren’t quite sure what it would be like to get back out.

 Our final mission

          Around this time, I finally received a phone call from Yehuda, who informed me that he was at a checkpoint somewhere between Gaza and Netivot.  He was also ecstatic to hear that we were in the area, remarking that he hadn’t spoken English in three days and begging us to study our map and try to figure out where he was and whether we could make it over there.  It was already past midnight, and Amir and I had both planned to be safe in our respective homes hours ago, but Yehuda had represented a mission of sorts for both of us throughout the day, and we just couldn’t give up now that we felt so close to the goal.

So we bid Meir a fond (and slightly tearful) adieu, and set out to find Yehuda.  On the way, I called him and asked if we could bring him anything special.  As it happened, Yehuda wasn’t interested in a care package of food (apparently, the outer checkpoints receive a steady stream of home-cooked meals from altruistic Jewish mothers) but begged us to bring him cigarettes.  My first reaction was a staunch refusal, as Yehuda is well aware of my moral and health-related objections to smoking.  Then I realized that cigarettes tend to be the primary source of support and calm for soldiers on the “front lines,” and I relented.  Yehuda hooted and hollered, gleefully exclaiming that he had successfully convinced me to contradict my principles and declaring that everything he had been through in the past week was worth it for that moment.  My second mitzvah of the day, apparently.

            Amir and I drove on towards where we thought Yehuda was, ending up at a T-junction that was blocked by a police car and flashing roadblock lights.  “What next?” we wondered to ourselves.  Turning left at this point was to take us back into Gush Katif, while turning right would lead us to Netivot and hopefully to Yehuda on the way.  As we slowed to a stop, curious to see what the next police encounter would bring us, we were told gruffly, “You cannot go right, you must go left, and don’t bother arguing because it is a waste of time,” after which the officer promptly walked away.  Of course, we tried arguing but it was indeed useless.

I called Yehuda to confirm the location, finding out that the road barred to us was, in fact, the road that led to his checkpoint.  We decided to turn left and approach the checkpoint on that road, where we begged and pleaded for them to intervene with the inflexible officer at the other turn, to no avail.  An added bonus, we found out there, was that our entry permits for Gaza were only valid for 24 hours, and since it was nearing 1:00am, we were also not allowed to continue on that road.  Our only chance was to turn back the way we had come, which would lead us back to Kissufim, to another closed checkpoint.  Our predicament was made all the more frustrating by the knowledge that we were literally within walking distance of Yehuda but could not get near him.

Returning to the initial blockade, I did my best to sweet-talk the police officer, receiving nothing more than a forced smile and a “Wait and see.”  So Amir and I parked by the side of the road and waited, not quite sure what we were waiting for.  We sat in the car, debating about when we should pack it in and give up, our conversation punctuated every thirty seconds by an increasingly desperate-sounding phone call from Yehuda, begging us to keep trying and not to leave.  At one point he assured us, “Don’t worry, we have been instructed not to chase or fire at people who don’t obey us; just drive right past the cop, he won’t do anything, I swear.”  After about fifteen minutes, the officer calmly picked up his little flashing sign, slipped a cover over it, placed it gingerly into his trunk, started his car, and drove away.

Barely able to believe our good fortune, Amir restarted the car and we raced to the intersection, eagerly turning right.  Within a minute we saw more flashing lights and a major roadblock.  We pulled over to the side of the road, for a moment back in our “Private Ryan” mode, asking the soldiers where Yehuda was.  Then I turned around, squinting into the bright lights, and saw Yehuda’s form slowly materialize out of the dust and shadows.  He pounced on me, ensconcing me in a bear hug of suffocating proportions.  He had a huge grin on his face, and I’m pretty sure we both had a tear in our eyes.  I had seen him just three days before, at the regular Shabbat dinner, but now it was totally different.  I don’t know exactly what had changed, but everything had.

Yehuda eagerly grabbed for the cigarettes, commenting that he would smoke each one while thinking of me (and my broken morals).  He was completely wired, talking a mile a minute and literally bouncing from foot to foot.  Amir and I stood by the side of the road with him, as he told us what he’d been doing at the checkpoint.  He had been ordered to be sleeping at that point, as it was around 1:30 in the morning and he was set to start another 4-hour guard duty session at 4:00.  He remarked, however, that he had been finding it impossible to do so.

An hour and a half went by on that roadside, and I began searching desperately for more things to give Yehuda, anything I could find.  Cigarettes, I felt, didn’t even begin to suffice, as I felt that the more I could give him, the more I could make him feel cared about and secure in such an uncertain situation.  I handed over a half pack of Oreo’s I had been snacking on, along with a half-empty container of lemonade from the day’s travels.  This previously-not-hungry soldier of ours grabbed eagerly for both in the same manner as had Meir, devouring what was given to him with gusto.  I got the sense that it was the act of receiving something from us that was impacting him, whether it was our time, energy, half-eaten food, or attention.  He seemed hungry for us just to be there, and as I watched Amir’s eyes shine while he was listening to Yehuda’s army tales, I could tell that we were all feeling the same things.

Indeed, it seemed that Amir and I were getting just as much out of the encounter as was Yehuda.  It didn’t matter that I had seen this young soldier tens of times in the past year; this moment was everything for all of us.  The effort that we had made to get to him meant so much to him, and the fact that Amir and I had accomplished what had become such a great feat filled me with a deep sense of pleasure.  The air was literally filled with our shared warmth for each other.

Tziki’s impact.. on all of us

          As it neared 2:30am, Yehuda remarked that he was so grateful to have been able to really talk to us.  “It can be really rough out here,” he said, “and I can’t often find anyone to listen to me when I need to talk.  When I get out for the weekends, I usually just sit with Tziki and let it all out, but I haven’t had the chance to do that in a while.  I have friends here in the army, but no one wants to hear about my problems.  Everyone has the same problems here, and mine aren’t any more important than anyone else’s.”

As he told us this, I was hit with the reality of his situation.  I had never really thought through what this experience must be like for these young chayalim bodedim.  They cannot call their parents in America to talk about being scared, or lonely, or angry about something that happened to them while they are doing something of which their parents don’t approve.  None of their friends in America have any frame of reference to understand what they are doing, guarding a checkpost in the middle of “enemy territory” in a faraway country.  Even their friends in the army can’t possibly constitute a solid support network, as they are dealing with their own worries, fears, and experiences.

Tears sprang to my eyes, and I rushed to hug Yehuda goodbye, so that he wouldn’t see any signs of my worry for him.  He hugged me tightly in return, and I whispered in his ear, “You know you can call me anytime, don’t you?”  He pulled away from me momentarily, looked me in the eyes, and said with complete sincerity and utter surprise, “Really?!”  Shocked and a bit ashamed that I hadn’t managed to convey this to him sooner, I just hugged him tighter.  Amir and I left him there on that road around 3:00 in the morning, his eyes glistening and a huge smile on his face.

I spent the drive home thinking about Tziki, and about the financial and emotional output that he makes on a daily basis.  He willingly gives to these soldiers time and money that he doesn’t have, and sacrifices sleep constantly to answer midnight phone calls from soldiers filled with fear, or anger, or frustration.  They cry with him, and yell at him, and complain to him, and he counsels them all, with the calm (and calming) voice and caring manner of an experienced father.  And we all soak it in, his warmth and his sensitivity and his giving nature.  We all clamor to be around Tziki and his family because they are filled with such love for each other and for all of us, and we become filled with it just by being around them.

Some of us are more aware of it than others, but the time we have spent with the Aud family has changed us, in deep and powerful ways.  I have watched the boys who come to dinner each week grow up before my eyes, and I have seen them become closer to Tziki and to each other over the time that they have spent at his table.  It is a powerful bond we all share, all of us the “chosen” few who have been invited to share in such a special experience each week.  I think the moment I realized this for myself was when Meir and Yehuda both separately referred to me as their “adoptive sister” for the first time, while we were in Gaza.

The next day, Tziki called me early in the morning, his first words, “Kol hakavod, I take off my hat to you.”  Tears came to my eyes for perhaps the gazillionth time in those two days, and I choked out a “Thank you.”  He relayed how Yehuda had called him in the morning to tell him I had visited, and how excited and pleased he had been.  Apparently this experience had cemented Yehuda’s plans to marry me.  Tziki and I have always had a special relationship, mostly because I am older and seem to need less “hands on” support than some of the others, but when he told me he was proud of me for what I had done that day, I was overwhelmed with emotion.  I realized, in that instant, that it was now my turn to contribute, to do my part to help these young soldiers of ours, and to help Tziki to do so as well.

 My day in Gaza changed everything for me.  I have become so much closer to Tziki, and to the boys that he has taken under his wing.  I suppose I have now, too.  Meir and Yehuda call me almost daily now, and I am now privileged to receive some late-night phone calls as well.  I prepare care packages and I try to take them to wherever the boys are, or get them to them somehow.  And now that I know what they’re doing every day, which includes some fairly dangerous missions, I worry a lot more too.  Sometimes I lay awake at night worrying, and sometimes Tziki and I worry together.  Sometimes I wish I didn’t know so much about these boys’ lives—that I could go back to my blissful ignorance of a month ago.  But most of the time I am intensely grateful for the events of the last few weeks, and for the lessons I have learned.