The Marsh Angel Read online

Where’s the kibbutz?

  Dogs were barking in the distance. He started walking towards the sound, but stumbled over something, fell, and hit something else— something hard. Chain, rock, he realized too late. He felt a warm trickle running down his face. Blood. The sound of dogs barking grew louder. They were standing right beside him, but did not pounce. He smiled to them and reached out his palm. His vision was blurring. Suddenly, he thought he saw Polnochi descending down from the heavens, soaring above the mountains of the Western Galilee. Her eyes shimmered in the dark. Her arms were spread like dark, velvety wings. Siberian snow and starlight were weaved in her hair, fluttering like a canopy of night. My god, he thought to himself, she’s beautiful. She’s saying something. What is she saying?

  Are you alright?

  He looked up. Dallal?

  How do you know who I am?

  We were here once, the schoolchildren…

  The kids from the kibbutz?

  Yes.

  And you remember me from back then?

  Yes.

  She laughed in wonder. She towered above him, as tall as a dream. What happened to you? How did you get here now? Did you come out of the thicket?

  He didn’t answer, looking at her in silence. Her eyes were darker than the night, and yet gleamed incandescent in the starlight, like a promise, like a poem.

  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 Kahane’s lecture hall, and he did his best to serve his role submissively and obediently. But occasionally, he couldn’t contain himself and to his own detriment found himself engaging Kahane’s arguments. For instance, he asked Kahane where exactly in the bible it said that all Arabs should be killed. Tamir always loved Arza Sheinbein’s classes, his old bible class teacher, and he vividly recalled her vehement objection to the biblical injunction to smite the seven nations of Canaan. It says Canaanites, doesn’t it? he asked Kahane as if in passing, momentarily suspending the scrubbing motion of his steel-wool pad over the layers of caked, burned oil on the bottom of a large steel pot. What, so you’re a rabbi now?! Kahane exploded. What the hell do you even know about the bible?! He angrily flicked his cigarette to the floor (which Tamir was to scrub later) and stormed out.

  At the end of the shift, Kahane returned to inspect
the cadets’ work. He was clearly after his evening shower. His hair was moist and slick; his body, clad in a pearly white cotton t-shirt, exuded the scent of cheap perfume, blending in with the noxious smell of cleaning supplies which pervaded the Submarine, just barely masking the stench of rotting food. The pots were stacked in a pyramid, bright and shimmering. Kahane approached the stack and ran his finger down the side of one of the pots. He stuck his finger out in front of Tamir’s face. It was immaculately clean. Filthy! he yelled, drawing his angry face menacingly close to Tamir’s. His mouth reeked of cigarettes. He extended his hand and pushed the stack of pots back into the sink. Do it over! he yelled. I’ll be back in an hour. They better be spic and span, for your sake. I could care less, I can be here all night.

  b. We’re All Palestinian

  Classes were held from 8 a.m. till evening-time, after which the cadets remained in the classroom to do their homework and prepare for exams. They would finish as late as 11 p.m. or midnight, and then make their way back to their rooms, famished from their exacting studies. The early dinners would have long-since been digested, so the cadets had a habit of having night meals in their rooms. These were the best meals of the day, since they were comprised of the food they had in their bags, food prepared by their mothers and sent as provisions. Every night, a cluster of chairs served as a makeshift table, which would then be covered in casseroles, avocados, pastries, and assorted sweets. At some point, someone would whip out the electric immersion heater, and shortly after the scent of instant coffee and condensed milk pervaded the room. It was the finest hour of the day. The cadets would exchange jokes and anecdotes about their classes and teachers, and reminisce about their pre-enlistment lives, which now seemed like a distant, implausible dream.

  Tamir shared his room with four other cadets: two kibbutzniks, a studious guy from Be’er Sheva who would sit in his bed with a flashlight until 2 a.m. memorizing the Ayalon-Shinar Hebrew-Arabic Dictionary, and another guy from Jerusalem who spent what he called his ‘recreation hour’— that is, one of the five remaining hours they had to sleep each night— reading Jane’s Defence Weekly, a magazine which published strategic overviews and in-depth intelligence analysis of geopolitical affairs around the world. He was a well-read and articulate fellow with a staunch right-wing conservative world-view, who would regularly and effortlessly argue with his roommates while cheerfully chomping away at the culinary affluence pouring out of their bags. He himself never brought anything in his bag besides books and magazines.

  Tamir didn’t read strategic magazines or dictionaries. He occasionally browsed through his copy of The Lord of the Rings, but his attempts at escapism proved futile. The present-moment was too potent. He found himself repeatedly going back to that one episode where Aragorn, that forsaken heir turned keeper of the woods, sits in the Prancing Pony Inn in Bree, forgotten and anonymous, silently smoking his pipe and observing the brutal, degenerate world around him.

  Occasionally, he’d pick up a newspaper. One night, a particular story caught his attention, on page three of Yediot Aharonot:

  Riots Following the Removal of Bedouin Families Near Acre

  In accordance with the decision of the Regional Committee North of the Planning Administration to repurpose agricultural lands bordering the municipality of Acre, several Bedouin families residing on those lands were removed. The decision arose due to natural population growth in Acre and an increasing need of additional land for residence, industry, and commerce. The lands, settled by the Arab al-Ghawarneh tribe, are public lands, made available for use to the Acre municipality. The lands were promised to the presiding mayor and the residents of the city during the Likud Party’s previous campaign, and now, according to sources in the government, “it’s time to cash the check.” The Bedouin families were offered several alternatives, yet they refused to leave the ground where a new residential area will be erected. In the past, the Bedouin settlement was surrounded by fallow fields and agricultural lands of neighboring kibbutzes, but in recent years, the Jewish neighborhoods of Acre extended to reach the borders of the settlement. The residents of these neighborhoods have filed numerous complaints about the appearance of the Bedouin shanty village, the constant smoke billowing from the settlement, and the incessant barking of dogs. These complaints were compounded by those of the nearby kibbutzes that complained of theft and damage to agricultural equipment. The conflict came to an end yesterday, as the Green Patrol evacuated the Bedouin families. Some of the evacuees resisted forcefully, and several arrests were made. One of the activists, Tawfik al-Bahri, told our reporter: “We’re done with this country. We’d be better off in Lebanon.” Another activist, Sa’ira Zaidani, said: “Now, we’re all Palestinian.”

  c. The Fate of the Russian Nation

  Tamir’s class focused on Syria. Accordingly, they were taught Soviet doctrine. The Syrian army was built on the principles of that doctrine, so cadets were made to read copious amounts of pages of Soviet combat doctrine in dense, technical military literary Arabic. Seemingly, this was the driest, most tedious reading material on earth— minute accounts of offensive and defensive protocols, force deployment, order of movement in offensive axes, and defensive structures— but Tamir was riveted. Growing up, he had always loved military history; he read the histories of the Peloponnesian War and the Punic Wars in Children’s Encyclopedias, and novels such as War and Peace. Now, as he was reading Soviet combat doctrines, they unfolded before him like a story: he imagined himself stationed in Field Marshal Kutuzov’s headquarters, among the generals, standing over a giant sand table, planning their next move. The room was filled with pipe smoke, the generals’ faces were weary with exhaustion, but Kutuzov scoured the sand table with a cool, steely determination, his brow furrowed as thoughts raced through his mind. The fate of the Russian nation rested on his shoulders.

  Tamir dedicated himself to Russian-Arabic terminology and the baroque, elaborate world of combat doctrines, strategies and tactics, weapons systems, and arsenals of ammunition and equipment. He discovered that plunging into this strange world, divorced from his tangible surroundings— kitchen duty with Kahane, guard duty, cleaning duty, scrubbing down toilets with Lysol, whitewashing tree stumps— imbued him with a sense of calmness, like an exercise in Zen Buddhism. He wasn’t the only one who felt that way, apparently; at night, right before they closed their eyes, he and his friends would recite the order of battle of the Syrian air divisions and armored divisions, and the deployment of bases and communications systems, one last time, like novices in their novitiate, repeating sacred mantras before resting in their humble abodes from which they will be rudely awakened in just a few hours’ time for another day of hard toiling and holy work.

  They learned dialects, as well. Tamir’s class mostly studied the Syrian dialect. Their Syrian-Arabic teacher was a prisoner interrogator named Baruch Alfandary, who spoke the dialect with native fluency. He showed them videotapes of Syrian movies, and taught them songs like Fatoum Fatoum Fatoumeh in vernacular Syrian with Turkish influences. He laced his lessons with secret anecdotes from the dark interrogation rooms where he plied his trade. Tamir knew that these stories were embellished and exaggerated, but he didn’t mind. They offered a much-needed respite from artillery corps orders of battle and classroom roll-calls.

  Over time, Tamir acquired a substantial command of the structure of the Syrian army, its weapons systems and communications protocols, as well as a decent command of the structure of other Arab armies, and the histories of Arab nations and their economies. But he wasn’t great at the technical parts— the intricate rules of data reception and processing, antennas, relays, frequencies, modulations and multiplexing. He got the basics of it, but far from mastered its intricacies. He did his best to focus in technical lessons, but could never wrap his mind around the electronic chain of events, the heart of the matter. You are going to be the spearheads of Unit 8200,2 their course commander told them with as much pomp as he could mus
ter, the headquarters SIGINT division. You are going to be intelligence analysts.3 You will be sitting in the cockpit of this elaborate and illustrious system, and to understand SIGINT, you must know its technical details, just like that in order to fly a plane, a pilot must know how the engine works, how the wings are designed, what is lift, and what is atmospheric circulation. Otherwise, the plane will crash. And we don’t want that to happen, right? So, in order to be intelligence analysts, you will need to understand what an antenna is, down to the level of an individual screw. You will need to know what a coaxial cable is, or what an optic fiber is. Those are the tools that will help you do your job, and you will need to know how to extract their maximum potential. Every radio check by an armored regiment near Dar‘a that will reach you will have made its way through that equipment. That’s why you need to know the technical aspects of these system like you know your own service number!

  But Tamir never came to grips with the system at that level, and it was evident in his examinations. He never fully understood how the human voice was transmitted through cables, sent out to outer space, and received at a completely different point back on earth; how the dispatches are coded, and then reverted back to an intelligible human voice. All of that seemed like an incredible marvel to him, infinitely more complex than concepts employed by theologians to explain God. God is a pretty comprehensible concept, and not a very impressive one at that, Tamir thought to himself during one of the lessons. Technical encryption, on the other hand, that was much more impressive and much more perplexing. He thought that he was better suited to serve in positions that didn’t require technical know-how, like translation or open-source intelligence. Yet, there he was, stuck with antennas and coaxial cables.

  Binder! The technical instructor’s shrill voice sliced through Tamir’s daydream, his red pimples flaring up with rage. You’d better not drift off, with grades like yours!