The Marsh Angel by Hagai Dagan (ebooks online reader .TXT) 📗

She reached over and touched his face. You’re hurt! Come, can you stand up? Here, lean on me, you need to be treated. Come inside, I’ll make you tea. I’ll dress your wounds. I learned first-aid in the movement. Her voice was proud.

What movement? he muttered.

The Palestinian Youth Movement. In Acre. But it’s a secret chapter, so don’t tell anyone, she smiled.

He staggered to his feet. He couldn’t even feel his wounds. He leaned on her. She was lean and robust. He placed his head on her shoulder. He felt safe. He felt protected.

1. THE ROYAL FLEUR-DE-LIS

a. The Holy Anointing Oil

Tamir arrived at Bahad 15, the Intelligence Corps training base, on a hot August day in the late 1980’s. The bus dropped him off near Glilot Intersection, and he started making his way slowly down the long road to the base, his huge backpack filled, among others, with boxes of cheese- and mushroom-filled pierogi and pirozhki that his mother packed him, and a paperback edition of The Lord of the Rings. His heavy kitbag, slung over his shoulder, mercilessly sliced into his skin and battered the side of his body. His dress uniform was soaked in sweat, his throat was parched, and his head hurt. He tried telling himself that the death marches were worse, but that was little help. Such was his state when he reported to the inaugural roll-call of the long training course he was about to undertake. Standing there, at ease, alongside eighty other cadets, Tamir was so focused on his own suffering that he paid no attention to the introduction speech in the background. Still, he managed to pick up the main points the course commander and the squad commanders conveyed: challenging course, intensive, hard work around the clock and into the small hours of the night, high expectations, rigorous demands, strict discipline.

The course commander was dressed meticulously, bordering on the ornate; his green instructor’s aiguillette adequately matched the fleur-de-lis on his arm, but his voice was nasal and his cadence effeminate, and the manner in which he pushed his golden eyeglass frames up the bridge of his nose projected an academic composure. Although the course commander was speaking about serious matters, such as the tremendous responsibility the cadets are to bear, the sensitivity of the information they will be entrusted with, and the maturity and seriousness required of them, Tamir noticed a fickly, evasive quality to his voice. But that was not the case when the course commanders spoke. They spoke about the upcoming months of intense studying with grave seriousness. There was something religious in their approach, as if it wasn’t professional training they were talking about, but rather some sacrosanct routine necessitating devotion and awe. Their military rhetoric was sparse, but beneath their concise speech, Tamir discerned a kind of esoteric poetry. It permeated his aching body, awash with torrents of sweat, and infused his self-pity with a strange sense of excitement.

Later, when he would be fully versed in the world he was now only being initiated into, he thought back to what he had heard that day on the sweaty parade-ground and translated it so: Only those who will exhibit the requisite seriousness and gravity, the requisite diffidence and humility, the requisite piety and obedience, will get to bask in the Light of Intelligence shining over the temple and emerging from the Holy of Holies; to reap the light harvested from the great electromagnetic sky by dozens of antennas and satellite dishes, channeled through advanced cables, preserved in sophisticated termini and converted into signals, dispatches, speech, and text; will get to read the sacred scripts unveiled in temples tucked away in the belly of the earth, entrenched bunkers, under-ground halls of the occult; scripts intelligible only to a rare few, societies of secret knowledge, holders of the key to supreme wisdom, both heavenly and subterranean, Riders in the Chariot,1 dwellers of the underworld.

And so, on a scorching day in late August, in the heart of a mundane training base, among dreary military structures, gravel roads, and a few beat-up eucalyptus trees, stood eighty sweaty boys, high-achieving high-school Arabic majors, on the cusp of the road to priesthood, to becoming keepers of the holy seal. The instructors spoke of rules, requirements, and grades, motivation and perseverance, but what they meant was devotion, piety, and sacrifice. They meant to say that those who shall exhibit self-discipline, avoid heedlessness and fickle paths, and renounce the world, the flesh, and the devil, will be anointed in the holy anointing oil and be found worthy to bear the royal fleur-de-lis.

From that point on, the course entered its quotidian routine. Every day, the cadets awoke at 5 a.m. and prepared their living quarters for morning roll-call with frantic urgency, washing the floors and disinfecting the toilets. Breakfast was taken early, and classes followed immediately. Outside the classroom, their obligations at the base included performing guard duty, cleaning duty, and long, arduous kitchen duty; for some reason, Tamir always found himself in the ‘Submarine’— the pot washing room— under the command of an observant soldier named Israel Shem-Tov, who was nicknamed Kahane, since he was a staunch supporter of Rabbi Meir Kahane. Kahane would smoke cigarettes and observe Tamir toiling away, scrubbing mountains of giant, filthy, oil-stained pots. In class, they were instructed on the social structure of Arab societies, as well as social and political trends in Arab countries; but here, in the depths of the Submarine, Tamir was lectured by Kahane, receiving what can only be considered as ‘supplementary instruction’. All Arabs should be killed, Kahane said. Arabs are Arabs, they’re all the same, and they’ll never change. You, the kibbutzniks, you don’t know shit. It says in the bible that they should all be killed. The bible. What can you do? It says it plain and simple, and that’s that.

Usually, Tamir listened to Kahane’s impassioned monologues in acquiescent silence. He knew that the slightest objection would cost him dearly. He was a prisoner in