"But how can this be, Neta, my darling, a big girl like you, look how your little brother is sitting quietly."
He instantly regrets his words, as a squawk of deep humiliation cuts into the weeping.
So they sit, the three of them, trapped in a loop of lamentation and monotonous wailing whose immediate cause is by now forgotten, as if performing a ritual of ancient, prehistoric loss. And her brother sits on his bed, still waving his foot. He is only two years and a few months old, but his broad, strong face testifies that he is bound to grow into an aggressive man, if not a violent one. He reminds me of somebody. But who? It is a question Ya'ari has asked himself countless times. He smiles softly at his grandson and asks for advice: So what now, Nadi, how do we calm your sister down?
"Nana wants her Imma," the toddler sums up the situation for his grandpa.
"I WANTED THE feel of that roof at night, but the military would only approve a visit in the daytime. Finally we compromised on late afternoon, which extended a bit into darkness. The company commander was friendly and tried very hard to satisfy my curiosity and to help me understand. And because he was an experienced and serious officer who knew the local residents well and wasn't afraid of his shadow, he gave himself the authority to deviate slightly from the instructions of his superiors and allowed me to remain standing on the roof, on the spot where Eyali stood, until after sundown, when lights began to go on in the houses."
At the African farm, evening is also not far off. Yirmi sits with his back to the open window, facing his bed, where his sister-in-law now lies with the novel she read slowly through the afternoon spread open at her side.
Yirmi has obviously slept soundly, without interruption. His eyes are wide open, his face is free of anger, and he exudes a pleasant, freshly washed smell. He has exchanged the sweaty clothes of his nighttime trip for clean and ironed ones; he knocked delicately on the door to his room, and only after verifying that Daniela was not asleep and was quite willing for him to enter did he do so, and turned his desk chair toward the bed and sat down with the luminous African plain stretching behind him.
"And of course it never occurred to Shuli that you were going there."
"Of course not. You think I would scare her, let her worry that she might lose me too in the same place? Even after I went there I told her nothing, because I knew she would be sure, and rightly so, that I would want to go back."
"And you did want to go back…"
"I didn't only want to, I did. But alone, without any Israeli beside me."
"And you didn't tell Amotz either."
"That's right. Because I knew that there were no secrets between you two, and the minute you knew — you, who can't keep a shred of a secret — it would get to your sister at the speed of sound."
Daniela tries to object, but she knows he is right: it is hard for her to keep a secret from her loved ones. She pulls at the blanket to cover her bare feet and suddenly longs for her mother, who died two years after Nofar was born.
"But how could you get permission to go on that roof?" she asks testily.
"It wasn't hard at all, amazingly enough. In the bereavement department of the Defense Ministry, there's this little office set up especially to deal with odd requests from parents, or children, or siblings who have lost a loved one. A middle-aged official sits there, who is himself a longtime bereaved father. He works as a volunteer alongside a woman officer who is very skilled and efficient. She makes the connections with army powers that be. A visit by parents to the place where their child fell is not unusual, provided that the area is no longer a war zone, such as Sinai or the Golan Heights or even the Lebanese border. But in the occupied territories, it's a complicated affair because there's no battlefield and yet the whole thing is a battlefield. But they still have enough flexibility to accommodate a parent, or even a brother or sister, who wants to experience the feel of the place where their loved one was killed, and perhaps also to understand why, for what. You get what I'm saying?"
"Every word."
"And my request received special attention. Because we're talking here about Israeli gunfire, where even after the official investigation is done there's always some hidden aftergrowth. So one could say that not only did the office move quickly to assist me, they were expecting me."
"What did you want to know?"
"I wanted to check."
"To check what?"
"Why for the soldiers lying in ambush he turned from a hunter into the hunted."
"But they explained it to you. He got the time wrong and came down too early from the roof."
"He did not get the time wrong, Daniela. I've already warned you more than once to drop that idea. Eyali was not a man who got the time wrong. The watch they returned to us, which was on his wrist when he was killed, showed the correct time."
"Maybe he got excited, maybe he was scared."
"No, he was not scared. Your Moran was a cowardly child, but not Eyali. Enough of your maybes, and don't try to teach me what I know better than you do. Just listen."
She reddens. But she can feel his inner torment, and without saying a word she nods, giving her full attention.
"I had never been in Tulkarm, even though the town is half an hour's drive from Netanya. We once dared to go to Hebron, and we visited the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. We went to eat at a restaurant in Ramallah, we drove through Jericho, and many years ago we might have also visited Nablus and Jenin. But not Tulkarm. What is there to do in a small border town? Just a town, not terribly neglected, rather clean, with wide streets, avenues, and groves and orchards here and there. And houses of all shapes and sizes. Private homes of one story, or two or even three. Also houses higher than that. And of course a little refugee camp on the side. But not so bad. It's livable. There are surely worse places in the land of Israel.
"And sometimes soldiers are assigned to the rooftops. As a lookout, for an ambush. For one night only, or a few nights. And there are some prominent rooftops, strategic ones, where a whole platoon sits for a month. And under those rooftops live people. Families with children, with loves and hatreds. Not so bad. The world does not collapse. The main thing is to live.
"Remember that our story took place before the second intifada, when the whole thing was a mess, when chaos reigned on both sides. And this officer — he was a successful lawyer who had returned to the army in search of adventure — Eyali's company commander, was altogether on the other side of town that same night, also staking out that notable wanted man, who came to what end I still have no idea. Maybe he's hanging out with the heavenly tribunal, which is what that clown from the security services said, or maybe they gave up looking for him. And this officer, he knows everything, and tools me around Tulkarm as if he were in Ramat-Gan, in a fancy jeep, heavy and armored, with a silent soldier sitting in it with a machine gun. And he shows me the place where Eyali was shot, near a pile of building material, standing by a water faucet, and he points out to me the doorway of the building he rushed out of and explains where the ambush was, and with his two hands he demonstrates the angle from which the bullets were fired, one and then another. I've still got my agenda of identifying the shooter, so I ask him, By the way, if that's where the shots came from, who was the soldier that fired them? And the officer, an intelligent man, winks at me and says, Why do you care? After all, you've gotten to know them all; they're all good guys. Why should we incriminate one of them?
"All right, I say to him, then at least let's go up on the roof. It was five o'clock in the afternoon, and I, Daniela, remember every detail. I climb the stairs, and some of the flights have no banister, and here and there the wall isn't plastered either, and I pass open doorways and nod shalom to entire families, children and adults, old men and women, cooking, sewing, doing homework — whole lives in this building, three actual floors, though not completely finished, but with this wide roof in place at the top, full of laundry hanging to dry, colorful sheets flapping in the wind. And the tenants did not seem surprised that again the Jews wanted to see the world from the Palestinian rooftop, and if they are bringing along an elderly civilian, it must mean something important."