This was an abomination. Similar to what the government was trying to do. This wasn't why I had come to this land, not why I had fought in the War of Independence and nearly died when an Egyptian soldier put two bullets in me. The Nazis would have loved seeing this, us fighting among ourselves. It had to stop.
A few meters to my left, a young man was bent over a fallen policeman, punching him repeatedly. "Enough!" I yelled, catching the demonstrator unaware with a hard shove that sent him sprawling. I showed him my fists when he turned on me with a snarl. "Enough," I yelled again. "No more."
The demonstrator fixed me with a hard stare. For a tense moment, I thought he would lunge at me. But then he blinked, and a look of what might have been shame flitted across his face, and he muttered something I didn't catch and turned away.
I knelt beside the policeman. He had lost his helmet and gas mask in the melee and was bleeding from the nose and mouth. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing, and his pulse was strong and steady. I was about to get him some help when I sensed rushing footfalls behind me. Before I could whirl, a devastating blow slammed into my kidney. A flash of scorching pain exploded up my side, robbing me of breath. Gasping, I crashed down on top of the injured policeman, banging my forehead on his.
An instant later, my hands were wrenched backward, and a ring of cool metal wrapped itself around each of my wrists. Someone slapped the back of my head. "You son of a bitch, you're going to jail for what you did to him."
I opened my mouth to protest, to explain that I had not beaten this policeman, when from the corner of my eye, I caught a black object streaking toward me. I identified it as a boot just before it connected with the side of my head. Then a dark, impenetrable cloud descended upon me, swallowing up my consciousness, choking off all sensation and thought.
2
I came to in the back of a police wagon. I was lying on the hard floor between two benches that were bolted down. Sitting on them were several other men, all handcuffed, some showing signs of minor injuries. The air was thick with the pungent aromas of cooling sweat and wet clothes, with an undertone of fresh blood. My head throbbed as though someone had given it a violent shake, and there was a coppery taste in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue when I got kicked in the head. My vision swam, dark spots dancing before my eyes. My body was pressing down on my cuffed hands, which were sending sharp stabs of pain all the way to my shoulders.
With a groan, I flipped over onto my stomach. The pain in my arms subsided. The floor of the jouncing vehicle felt cold against my cheek. Someone asked if I was all right. "Yeah," I mumbled, which seemed all the speech I was capable of. The fogginess enveloping me began to recede, but then the police wagon went into a pothole, and my head was bounced up and then back down onto the floor, and I was out again.
Next time I awoke, I was lying on a metal cot with a mattress so thin it could only be described as emaciated. Uncomfortable, but I'd slept in harder beds. Much better was the fact that I was no longer handcuffed. A few inches before my eyes was a concrete wall, pitted and scratched and stained. Slowly, I raised a hand to my head to touch the spot where I'd been kicked, and immediately regretted it when pain flared down my face.
Hearing voices, I raised myself on my elbows and swiveled my head to the other side. I was in a jail cell. Made for two men, but with five crammed within its walls. Two of my cellmates were sitting on the other cot; the other pair stood puffing on cigarettes, blowing smoke through the bars into the hallway beyond.
All four of my cellmates displayed signs of recent violence: cuts, abrasions, bruises, torn clothing. They were in the middle of a raucous conversation—mainly lambasting Ben-Gurion, the government, and the police—so it took them a minute to notice I was awake.
"You're up," one of the smokers said, a lanky man with receding dark hair. "How are you feeling?"
"Like I got kicked in the head. Which is exactly what happened."
"A cop?"
"Yeah. How did I get here?"
"From the police wagon, you mean? You walked. Kinda. A couple of us had to hold you up. Not so easy with handcuffs, but the bastards wouldn't take them off until they put us in this cell. I told them maybe you needed to go to the hospital, but they said there weren't any available ambulances, so they'd let you sleep it off. But if you feel you need to see a doctor, I can holler for the guard."
"No. Don't. I'm fine." I came to a sitting position and sat for a moment with my eyes closed, fighting a spell of dizziness and wondering if what I'd just said was true, and then decided it probably was. My head still ached, but the world had stopped somersaulting around me.
"Good," the man said. "We were starting to get worried."
"I told you he was all right," said the other smoker, shorter and stouter. "Way he was mumbling in his sleep, he couldn't have been too far gone."
"I was talking in my sleep?" I asked. "What did I say?"
"Nothing any of us could understand."
An exaggerated sense of relief flooded me. As if I might have let slip some intimate secret, though what that secret might have been, I couldn't say.
"You were speaking Hungarian," the stout man said. "I recognized the language, but none of us speaks it."
"Where are we?"
"Jerusalem. There are a few dozen of us here. They took the rest to other jails. Probably worried we'll riot."
"The rest?"
They filled me in on the news, gleefully delivered to them ten minutes ago by a spiteful guard: The demonstration had ended following the arrival of reinforcements that included army units. None of the demonstrators had made it inside the Knesset. Hundreds had been arrested.
"How many wounded?" I asked.
The lanky man scowled. "Also hundreds, I'd say. A good many of them cops."
He said this with bitter pride in his voice, and two of the others echoed it. I said nothing. Before my eyes hovered the battered face of the cop I'd tried to help. I wondered how he was doing.
"Any dead?"
"Probably not," the lanky man said. He no longer sounded proud, just surly and glum. "They would have told us, I think."
I let out a breath. Lines had been crossed that day, by both sides, but at least no one had been killed.
Testing my legs, I walked to the back of the cell where there was a tiny sink and a toilet. My legs were a bit rubbery, but they managed to bear my weight. I unzipped my trousers and grimaced as I filled the toilet bowl with red. Blood in my urine, and plenty of it. I hoped my kidney hadn't suffered any lasting damage.
At the sink, I gulped several mouthfuls of tepid water and splashed my face and hair. The wound on my head stung like a fire, but I doused it over and over, trying to clean it as best I could. There wasn't a mirror, so I couldn't see how I looked. Judging by how wretched I felt, that was probably for the best.
I studied my hands. One fingernail was partially torn, and the knuckles on both hands were heavily bruised and aching. I shut my eyes, took a deep breath, and tried to conjure up the faces of the men I had punched. No face appeared. The fog of battle had blotted them from my mind. I supposed that, just like not being able to see my own face, that was also a blessing.
Feeling a little better, I returned to the cot. The lanky man lit a fresh cigarette, which made me crave one of my own, but a search of my pockets yielded nothing. The pack I'd been carrying—an almost full one—was gone. Even worse, so was my wallet.