The Tel Aviv Dossier E-Book

Lavie Tidhar

• Herausgeber: JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc.
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 307

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Into the city of Tel Aviv the whirlwinds come, and nothing will ever be the same. Through a city torn apart by a violence they cannot comprehend, three disparate people — a documentary film-maker, a yeshiva student, and a psychotic fireman — must try to survive, and try to find meaning: even if it means being lost themselves. As Tel Aviv is consumed, a strange mountain rises at the heart of the city, and shows the outline of what may be another, alien world beyond. Can there be redemption there? Can the fevered rumours of a coming messiah be true? A potent mixture of biblical allusions, Lovecraftian echoes, and contemporary culture, The Tel Aviv Dossier is part supernatural thriller, part meditation on the nature of belief — an original and involving novel painted on a vast canvas in which, beneath the despair, humour is never absent. Experience the last days of Tel Aviv. Praise for The Tel Aviv Dossier "The weird and unsettling Lovecraftian bits? On a scale of one to ten, those are cranked up to about twelve. This book is very, very strange, which means it's a great read!" — Little Red Reviewer "One word review: fun! This novel is insane. It is an often pessimistic mosaic of modern Israeli culture, society, and beliefs. It captures moments of clarity and meaning while examining what happens when our mundane reality butts up against an absurd apocalyptic event. (6 out of 6 He'Brew: The Chosen Beer)" — Southern Fried Weirdo "A deranged sci-fi extravaganza... a neo-Gnostic apocalypse narrative for the iPod generation." — The Jewish Quarterly

Leseprobe

The Tel Aviv Dossier

Copyright © 2009 Lavie Tidhar & Nir YanivAll rights reserved.

This electronic version published in 2013 by Jabberwocky Literary Agency, Inc., in conjunction with Zeno Agency LTD.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-625670-39-7

Cover image "Augustsonntag (Selbstbildnis)" (1943) by Karl Wiener.

OTHER BOOKS BY LAVIE TIDHAR

NOVELS

Osama*

Martian Sands*

The Violent Century

The Tel Aviv Dossier, with Nir Yaniv*

A Man Lies Dreaming*

Central Station

Unholy Land

By Force Alone*

The Hood

The Escapement

Neom

Maror

THE BOOKMAN HISTORIES

The Bookman

Camera Obscura

The Great Game

Also available in omnibus form as The Bookman Histories

NOVELLAS

An Occupation of Angels*

The Vanishing Kind*

Cloud Permutations*

Jesus & the Eightfold Path*

Gorel & the Pot-Bellied God*

New Atlantis*

The Big Blind*

COLLECTIONS

Black Gods Kiss*

The Lunacy Commission*

ANTHOLOGIES

The Apex Book of World SF (as editor)

The Apex Book of World SF 2 (as editor)

The Apex Book of World SF 3 (as editor)

OTHER BOOKS BY NIR YANIV

The Tel Aviv Dossier, with Lavie Tidhar*

A Fictional Murder, with Lavie Tidhar**

STORY COLLECTIONS

The Love Machine & Other Contraptions

One Hell of a Writer**

* available as Jabberwocky ebooks

** written in Hebrew

*available as a JABberwocky eBook

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Other Books by the Authors

Table of Contents

Epigraph

Part One: Preliminary Sketches

Part Two: The Mountain

Part Three: One Year Later

Part Four: War

Part Five: The Last Testaments

About the Authors

Houses lie, bleached white, along the empty highways. Pylons jut at angles like bones, the soft black hair of power-lines obscures the stumps of the phone towers. There is a silence in the air. No radio, no phone, no television signal penetrate into that silence. The city lies entombed in sand and sun. The sea is black with tar. There are no cars. There are no children playing in the yard. Forgotten laundry flaps on lean-to balconies, in bathrooms taps run empty, burping air. We are not there. Where did we go? Beyond, beyond. On top a hill a man looks far and sees a promise he will not now reach. There are no songs. We who were there are here no more.

Lior Tirosh, The Last Days of Tel Aviv

PART  ONE:

PRELIMINARY  SKETCHES

VIOLENT CHANGES, A DOCUMENTARY (VIDEO RECORDING, PART I — HAGAR)

I’m standing in the old bus station filming the refugees from Darfur when it happens. The sky turns almost imperceptibly darker, and where before the air was hot and still now a breeze picks up, running against my cheek like a wet tongue, and I taste salt. I am annoyed because I need to take another light reading now and the scene in front of me is shifting, but I have no choice. I am making a new documentary, my third. You might have seen my previous work — A Closed House, about that orphanage in Be’er Sheva, or The Painted Eyes, about the Russian immigrant prostitutes that I filmed right here in the old bus station of Tel Aviv. I take social issues seriously — I think it’s important to bring them to the public’s attention, even though it is hard to make a living this way and I still have to work as an usher at the cinema three days a week. I don’t mind, at least it’s still working with films, and at least I don’t have to be a waitress like all the wannabe actresses and singers and dancers in Tel Aviv.

I am here at the station to film the refugees that are smuggled into Israel across the Egyptian border. They’re from Darfur, in Sudan, and they came here looking for a place where they won’t be killed or tortured or raped. In response, the government locked them up. Our local human rights organizations petitioned the supreme court, which held that the imprisonment was unlawful. Following that, the refugees were abandoned in the streets of Be’er Sheva and elsewhere in the country, and today a group of them was being dumped in Tel Aviv.

While I am filming I can’t help notice that the sun seems to dim and the sky is no longer a bright blue but greying and there are streaks of colour running through it, red and black, and clouds are forming in crazy spiral shapes. It is all happening very rapidly. On the ground the refugees are just milling about, looking lost and hopeless, and the few civil rights people waiting for them are handing out sandwiches and trying to see if they can match people to the lists on their clipboards. I hope they can find everyone accommodation. I’d offer too, but I’m sharing a flat with two other people already. Anyway, now almost everyone is looking up too. The wind is picking up and the air feels strange, like there’s a raw current of electricity in it. It makes the hairs on my arms stand and I feel sweaty. I point the camera at the sky. Points of light are prickling in the swirling vista of a storm. They look like stars, but —

The wind picks up even more, pushing me, as if it’s trying to jerk the camera from my hands. I spin around and the camera pans across the old terminal and someone screams.

I don’t know what is happening. The camera is showing the refugees running, though since they don’t know where to go they are just shooting off in different directions. There is a low thrumming sound and the earth seems to vibrate. As I turn I see a shawarma stand and there is the sound of an explosion and I think — terrorists. It’s a terrorist attack. They always go for the old bus station. The front of the shawarma stand explodes outwards and bricks fly over my head. There are more screams and I am still filming the source of the explosion. The old walls seem to wobble, they move almost like jelly, and something is pushing out of them, vast and incomprehensible, something like glistening air and the smell of salt gets stronger and the wind pushes me and again I almost fall and all the angles suddenly become crazy.

Something, like a column of air, is moving through the bus station, tearing apart buildings, the road, lifting up people. I watch through the camera as a Darfur family gets sucked into the air and shredded — their bits like blood oranges fly in all directions and splatter the ground. I try to run but the maelstrom of air is sucking me towards it, more people are torn apart and I watch an old Chasid in black as he rises in the air and then explodes. There’s a rain of blood over the old bus station and the sky darkens further above and the wind moans between the buildings. Another thing rises slowly from the ground and then another one and now cars are flying through the air and I see one bus crushed with people inside it, flattened on the road and blood is sipping out through the cracks that are all that’s left of the windows. I’m running, I’m holding the camera but it’s not pointing anywhere, all I can think of is trying to get away. I weave a path between the things and the wind sucks me once here and once there but as long as I stay in a half-way point I manage not to get sucked in. Everywhere people are screaming and I realize I am screaming too. Something hits me in the face and I try not to look but as it falls I see it, someone’s hand, I even notice the wedding ring and the thick black hairs on the knuckles, a man’s hand. Is this happening all over the city? Does Iran have a new type of weapon and they’ve finally used it on us? Is it Hezbollah? Is it Hamas? The Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades? I run as hard as I can, away from the station, without direction. I think the camera is still on.

THE FIREMAN’S GOSPEL, PART I (ELI — APOCRYPHAL?)

It has been, all in all, a very good day, though it didn’t start like one. We rescued a kid who got stuck in a locked bathroom somewhere in Dizengoff street right after beginning our shift, and then spent the rest of the morning sitting in the station, doing nothing except arguing about the proper usage of axes in general and my own axe in particular, a subject upon which Avi and Yekutiel were rather too willing to dwell.

“Couldn’t you have at least tried to open the door in some conventional way before chopping it up like that?” Avi said.

“You almost hit that kid’s head with it, you crazy bastard,” Yekutiel said.

As letting anyone know that I don’t give a yesterday’s falafel about the life or death of children or anyone else is never a good idea, I didn’t bother to reply at all, just applied the old trick of lowering my head and staring at the floor.

“Oh, now you’ve insulted him, Kuti,” Avi said. “I mean, you’ve got to give it to him, he got the boy out of there in five seconds.”

Less than five seconds, thank you very much.

“He almost scalped the boy in five seconds,” Yekutiel said. “I’m telling you, this guy is dangerous. He has no feelings at all.”

I do have feelings. I remember how I felt when I saw the Twin Towers falling, on TV. Or rather, when I saw the firemen working there. I envied them. I wanted to be in their place, every day of my life. Because if there’s one feeling I cannot stand it’s boredom. I’m an all-action kind of guy. And all I got so far today was this silly kid and a wooden door. I have feelings — strong feelings, you idiot — they’re just not like yours.

“Well, just leave it,” Avi said. “Is it lunchtime yet?” But it wasn’t, and when it finally came it wasn’t we who were eating.

“Too early,” I said, and just as I was saying it I felt something, a momentary loss of balance, maybe a tremor. “Did you feel that?”

“Oh, so now you do feel something!” Kuti said.

“Enough, Kuti,” Avi said, and then there was another movement, a rumble, and all of us felt it.

“What the…?” Kuti said.

“An earthquake!”

Israel isn’t very big on earthquakes. The minor ones that do occur here are rare enough to be mentioned in the papers. The last serious one happened in the early twentieth century. We’re not used to them. We never expect them.

“It can’t be an earthquake!” Kuti said, and then, well, it felt as if the whole building went up, then down, and then all the windows broke.

“Holy — !” Kuti said.

“I don’t believe…” Avi said.

There was a terrific noise outside, that of crashing metal and breaking concrete and the eruption of a water jet, which promptly became visible through our second floor window.

“Holy!” Kuti said.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Avi said, the most reasonable thing he’d said all day. We all ran to the firepole, which at that point was already leaning at a rather mischievous angle. Avi slid down first, and I followed immediately after. In the yard, our initial-response fire truck was belly dancing. The other, a Hawk fire truck, however, being heavier and steadier, was only gently moving on its wheels, as if contemplating its response to all this, its long ladder clanking loudly above the din. Pieces of wood and concrete were raining on us, as well as all sorts of equipment — hoses, gas masks, fireproof coats, axes, hammers, cutters and some light pornography. After a while, Kuti also fell down on us. He was never too good with the fire pole. Avi grabbed him and dragged him away. The air smelled funny. Everything looked funny. It was great. And I had just thought of something which could make it even better.

“We’ve got to get out of here!” Avi said again.

“Wait!” I shouted. “I have a better idea!” And I ran towards the Hawk. Beside it, the smaller fire truck was all but hula-hooping.

“You’re crazy!” Avi shouted, but dragged Kuti towards me and the Hawk anyway.

“Get in!” I said, and opened the driver’s door and got inside. “We’ll get out of here — in style!”

Bless the makers of fire trucks, they never have ignition problems. Avi pushed Kuti into the passenger’s seat, and he himself climbed over to the rear standing position. And so, tires screaming, ladders clanking, we drove away from the station, which was, by now, seriously breaking apart — and from the smaller fire truck, which was overturned and blowing water and foam in all directions. The whole thing brought to my mind the history of the old Petach-Tikvah fire station, which burned down twice in less than ten years. What a pity that I wasn’t stationed there at the time. But more than anything I was thinking: it’s starting to look like a really good day!

THE ORI TRANSCRIPT (CHAT LOG OF BEN ZIMMERMAN, NYC, NY , USA)

<BenZ> flight on wednesday, then.

<Ori> cn’t wait 2 see u, bro! i teach you how 2 curse in heb

<BenZ> you already taught me how to say “ben zona”, this is like “son of a bitch” right?

<Ori> y, but the best is 2 curse in arab

<BenZ> arab? but they’re your enemies, no?

<Ori> arab’s an official lang of israel, like heb and eng

<BenZ> i didn’t know that. so what can you say in arab to piss someone?

<Ori> say KOOS EMAK

<BenZ> what’s that?

<Ori> means, the vagina of ur mother

<BenZ> nice. i’ll try to remember that. KOOS EMAK.

<Ori> wrks every time, remember 2 say KOOS like MOOSE

<BenZ> koos like moose. i’ll remember that.

<BenZ> so how’s the weather in your area? is it hot like a desert? is it summer there now?

<Ori> spring, lemme go 2 the wndow 2 see, brb

<BenZ> hello? you still there?

<Ori> sorry, something weird going on, i dont know

<BenZ> ?

<Ori> earthquake or something, dunno, funny stuff in the streets

<BenZ> what?

<Ori> ur not going 2 believe it but i think i see a tornado

<BenZ> WTF?

<Ori> people are flying, i dont blv it

<BenZ> you’re kidding, right?

<Ori> i swear! w8, taking my webcam, try to show you

<BenZ> is this some kind of practical joke? cuz it’s not funny.

<BenZ> you there?

<BenZ> ori? you there?

<Ori> sory, webcam connected, u c?

<BenZ> no.

<Ori> i put it on the window, u c?

<BenZ> i see something, not sure what it is.

<Ori> people fly! u c people fly!

<BenZ> it can’t be. you’re doing something! you put your webcam in front of the tv or something, your showing me a movie. i know that trick.

<Ori> i swear its real! ill show u myself in the webcam, see?

<BenZ> i don’t buy that. nice try, but it didn’t work.

<Ori> KUS EMAK

<BenZ> hey!

<Ori> i swear its real, im telling you, its crazy, i dunno how long i can hold

<BenZ> i’m not that gullible

<Ori> wind like tornado

<BenZ> come on, get off it.

<System Msg: Ori Disconnected and is now offline>

<BenZ> KUS EMAK.

THE MOYSHE FRAGMENT, AKA THE LUBBAVICHE TESTIMONY (APOCRYPHAL)

They came out of the yeshiva to find the world transformed. They were three: at twenty-seven Moyshe was the oldest. All wore fedora hats. “Does not the Lubbavitche Rebbe say, ‘The time of our redemption is nigh’?” Moyshe murmured. There was a scream in the distance, and the wail of a siren, abruptly cut off.

“Long live our master, our teacher and our rabbi, King Messiah for ever and ever!” said Noam, half-singing. He was the youngest, and most recent to the yeshiva. Above their heads the stars seemed to form in crazy patterns. A strong wind blew across the street. There were gun shots in the distance, and more screams.

“But friends,” said the third, Daniel, and adjusted his fedora against the wind, “can there not be another interpretation? This is death and destruction all around us!”

“Really, Daniel,” Moyshe said. He pulled out a packet of Noblesse cigarettes and tried to extract one, but the wind snatched it from his hand and hurtled it away into the rising darkness. He stared after it with a mournful expression. “Did not the Rebbe’s son-in-law say, ‘Ask me what I say and I will tell thee that soon it will come true the words and the dwellers in the earth shall rise and rejoice and he, the Rebbe, will bring us from exile’?”

“It is true,” Daniel admitted. “Why, what then is your opinion of this carnage, Moyshe?”

“Clearly,” Moyshe said, “this is the end of days. As had been prophesied so it is. And as you know, when Moshiach comes — ”

“Long live our master, our teacher and our rabbi, King Messiah for ever and ever!” said Noam.

“Yes, yes,” Moyshe said. “Now, as I was saying — ”

A fire truck sped directly at them. A grinning, demented man was sitting behind the wheel. The three yeshiva boys leaped back as the madman drove past them. In the distance they saw a yacht floating in the air, upside down, with its sails dragging on the ground.

“You crazy bastard!” Noam shouted. There was a loud explosion. Soft, warm drops of rain began to fall, staining the three men’s heavy black coats.

“I think we should… we should go and see if we can help people!” Daniel said. He was surprised when Moyshe, who had assumed a half-crouching position with his hands on his knees and was breathing rather heavily, suddenly straightened up and leaped at him, pinning him against the wall. “Only the righteous shall live, you fool!” he said. “The Messiah is returned to us. What did you expect? This is not Jerusalem! This is Tel Aviv, the city of the shvarts-yor, the city of sin! What do you expect, that God would let the goyim and the non-believers rise alongside us?”

“I’m not sure about this, Moyshe… let me go.”

Moyshe released him. Daniel massaged his throat. “This is wrong,” he said. “I’m sorry. I… we must try and help.” He didn’t wait. Before Moyshe had time to react, Daniel moved. He sprinted down the street, shedding his heavy rekel coat as he ran.

Moyshe stared after him. It took him a moment to gather himself together at this affront. Then — “Ruen zolstu nisht afile in keyver!” he shouted after him, the Yiddish words like poison darts following him. May you find no rest even in the grave!

Beside him, Noam began rocking. “Mosiach,” he sang. “Mosiach, mosiach, mosiach, na na nana na. Mosiach, mosiach, mosiach — ”

“Oh, shut up,” Moyshe said. “Zol dir lign in keyver der eyver!” he shouted after Daniel. May your penis lie in a grave! Noam turned and looked up. “Oh, look,” he said. “It’s so pretty.”

There was a trail of fire in the sky. It looked strangely familiar to Moyshe. It looked like something out of — out of —

The Gulf War, he thought. The first one, he thought. Missiles, he thought. He started to run but there was nowhere to go. He heard the beginning of an explosion; then there was nothing. Nothing at all.

THE LETTER TO THE BROTHER (DIGITAL ARCHIVE RECONSTRUCTION)

Sababi babi babi, my brother! Ahu! How you are? It is some strong shit, man, it is making the ground she shakes! Ahu! Yabba-dabbadabba! Remember when we were in Lebanon and those fucking Hezbollah shot that missile on the fort and it killed Yossi? It is like this only there is fireworks, very pretty, and Yossi isn’t screaming like a girl! I am sitting on the veranda and watching the world go by. You are missing one big fuckin’ show here, my man. Remember that model I telling you about, Tali, the one with the big titties? She and a friend came by last night, talking, laughing, smoking some doobie, I put on one of those movies in the TV, a bit of whisky, yaddi-yaddiyadda, then we make our own movie in my bed. Yeah, man. And then the friend, she is like, biatch, she goes down on me and comes up and she has a piece of paper in her mouth and she kisses me and passes it to me and I says, “What’s that, like?” and she says, “It’s the good stuff, Mr. Goodstuff,” and I’m laughing so hard I mean what the fuck, Mr. Goodstuff? And then I fucked her from behind. Yo.

So this acid is like just kicking in and the girls left and I’m on my own, chillin’, thinking about you my brother, so far away in India with the Scandinavian girls all naked on the beach and the full-moon parties and all that shit and I’m making my own full-moon party, why not? Only it’s kinda morning, but then the acid is making movie in my head. One movie! It’s like The Wizard of Oz but in reverse! And all the pretty colours are sucked out of the sky and the world becomes this grey and black and Tel Aviv she is burning and the buildings are collapsing and from up here in the penthouse apartment, with the big cheese daddy gone to LA to schmooze with Milchan and Arad and all the Israeli boys down there in movie-town, I have the whole place to myself, high above the city like a god, brother of mine, like a fucking god. Like, what’s his name in that movie with the Ten Commandments. Whatever. Ahu!

There’s this things moving through the city, like “This ain’t Kansas no more, Tanto,” you know what I’m sayin’? Like, what’s the English for it hurikan? Huriken? — ah, hurricane, Word spellchecker is my bitch. They’re like hurricanes moving through the city and tearing it up and throwing people and cars and tanks around. I think they got your house! I think they got yo mama! OK, my brother, I won’t let you down! Maybe I am tripping a little but by god I am an Israeli soldier and I will not let the monsters, Arabs or otherwise, ruin this town and take my best buddy’s mama and turn her into a tomato sauce. That’s it! I’m taking the gun, you know my dad’s hunting rifle with the telescopic sight? It’s right here, baby! I put the stand up and — here we go! Here we go — !

Bam!

Nailed her baby! Some biatch running around down below and screaming, I mean, a man can’t concentrate writing to his best friend, can he? Bam! I always wanted to do that! Bam! I’m shooting those fuckers up, man, I just got someone through the window of his apartment while his scared little face was staring outside — bam! Bam! Bam!

Man, fuck India, fuck Goa, this is it! I’m like a fuckin’ god up here, d’you hear me? I’m like James Cameron in Titanic. I’m the king of the world!

Hey, one of those tornado-thingies is passing down below. It’s pulling into itself like cars and cats and potted plants — hey, it’s like a song, my brother — cars and cats and potted plants, cars and cats and potted plants — wo-wo-wo! Easy! The whole building is starting to shake, like, all it’s missing is a Kylie Mynogue song, lalala, lala lala la, la la la, and this thing, it’s got people inside it and they’re spinning, I think they’re screaming, I can’t even take proper aim, the wind is pulling me, it’s trying to grab the laptop, wo-woho! My brother, I —

THE FIRST CHILD’S STORY (RANI, APOCRYPHAL)

Shula, our neighbour from the second floor, just flew like Superman out of her window. I saw that because I was looking at the things outside, and she passed right in front of me. I want to fly too, but Mom will shout at me if I try. Last time I tried I was really careful: I had a Spider-Man mask and I invented a special sticky rope just like Spider-Man’s webs, only a bit thicker because I took it from the washing lines and put raspberry jam all over it. In the end I sprained my ankle and she was so pissed and I didn’t get any allowance for a month. She can be like that sometimes. She says that she has enough trouble as it is, but I don’t believe that. I mean, she can do anything she wants, buy anything she wants, eat anything she wants. So she has to work — so what? I can work too. Last summer I worked in the minimarket across the street, packing stuff in nylon bags, got ten shekels an hour. I got enough money to buy a cool model of the Boeing AH-64D Apache Longbow, which is, like, the best attack helicopter ever. But of course Mom didn’t let me get it. She wants me to save my money. I explained to her that even if I save my money, in the end all I want to do with it is buy the AH-64D model, so why wait?

Everything is shaking, and the walls are making a weird sound. Outside, there are screams. Once I heard Mom scream, when that social worker came to visit. She screamed like crazy then, but when I asked her about it she was very quiet, which frightened me. I used to scream some myself when I was little, but grown-ups are not supposed to do it. Mom said so. And now many grown-ups are screaming outside, in the street. Some of them are flying too, just like our neighbour Shula. Maybe a bit slower. They’re very loud. Mom said that if anything happens, if anything scares me, I should call her at work. But I’m not scared. I’m not a baby anymore, I’m the man of the house, that’s what grandpa says to me all the time, and I have to protect Mom. Maybe she’s in trouble. Maybe there’s social workers everywhere, so everybody screams. Mom hates social workers. Maybe they bite you, or sting you, like bees. I once got stung by a bee. I cried for two days — but I was little then. The screams outside don’t stop. Mom’s at work now. Maybe she got stung by a social worker. I really need the AH-64D — I could fly there and rescue her.

Now there’s smoke in the street, a bit like what happened when we put out our Lag-Ba’omer campfire, but cooler, because this one has colours in it. And I hear loud boom and boom and boom, like the thunder that we had in the winter, but I’m not afraid of thunder anymore. I’m a big boy now. I need to find Mom.

I go to my room and wear the blue sweatshirt that I hate but Mom likes, I take my schoolbag and empty it on my bed, then put back only the useful stuff, like the little knife that Mom doesn’t know about and some masking tape and some batteries and a poster with the detailed internal design of the Lockheed Martin F16I, which I got from Aviation Magazine, because you never know. Everything is moving, and in the kitchen stuff is breaking, so I take my keys and go out and make sure to lock the door because Mom will kill me if I don’t. I go down the stairs and out to the street.

There’s wind, and there are dirty puddles all around, and some buildings look funny, and there’s smoke in colours. There are no people in the street, and nobody’s shouting any more. This is a problem, because I thought that maybe someone will help me to get to Mom’s work. But there’s no one. Then I remember my cell phone. I dig in my schoolbag, hoping that it’s still there. Usually I hate it, because Mom insists that I keep it on, and she always calls me just when I’m in the middle of something. Now I think it’s a good idea. But the phone doesn’t really work — it says there’s no reception. I never saw it like that. I hope that Mom’s phone has reception, because otherwise she might scream even harder than that other time. Mom just hates it when things break down.

I’m going down the street, to the bus stop. I hope a bus will come and I could ask the driver to take me to Mom. And then I hear something new, and the smoke is going all around itself, and something huge comes out of it.

It’s a Boeing AH-64D Apache Longbow!

This is so cool! I saw them only on TV, and in pictures, like in my Aviation Magazine and The Big Book of Planes and The Full Combat Helicopter Guide. It’s the Longbow, not the usual AH-64, I can see the difference. Mom can’t, but I can. And it’s for real!

And it’s shooting! Yeah! I think those are Hellfire missiles, and they fly above and I can’t see where they’re going to hit, somewhere over the buildings. There’s a great booming noise, more than thunder, more than anything, and I think I hear a building falling. And then there’s smoke coming out of the Longbow… no, there’s smoke around the Longbow, the smoke with the funny colour, and now the Longbow takes a turn… no, maybe something is moving it, like when I play with one of my models, like the one of the McDonnell Douglas F15E Strike Eagle, which is cool but not as cool as the Longbow. Especially the real one. And now the Longbow is on its side and its going down and I feel the wind of the rotor — it’s huge! — it’s going down right at me, the rotor is coming at my hea —

THE BOOK OF DANIEL, PART I

For Daniel, running away from the Yeshiva was an affirmation, not a negation. He was relatively newly come to the yeshiva; had grown up outside of Haifa, in an entirely Epicurean household; his grandparents had survived Auschwitz to come away convinced of one thing, which was the absence of God. At the age of sixteen, and following an unhappy, and unfulfilled, love affair and an abortive suicide attempt, he began the process of conversion to Orthodoxy. His parents were unhappy. His grandfather refused to welcome him in his house. But Daniel, with the stubbornness of the young, retained his course.

He abandoned his jeans for pressed black trousers, grew peyes, the long sidelocks of the observant, began attending a boy’s yeshiva and studying the Mishna and the Gmara, the two parts of the Talmud, attended prayers, put on teffilin, the long leather straps one wraps around one’s arm and head with every morning and evening prayer. In short, the boy Daniel became a miniature Chasid, spending his days in study and his nights in faraway dream lands where the lord God was a compassionate warrior and he, Daniel, his prophet and companion.

Long before that moment on the sidewalk, with the city torn apart before his eyes, Daniel had dreams in which nameless horrors were plotting to seep through and suffuse the waking world. They were shapeless, formless things. They were not evil, nor were they good — they simply did not fit into a Jewish moral framework, or even a generic human one. At the same time, Daniel had dreams of women in various stages of undress which made him wake up sweating, so consequently he did not pay much attention to the first sort of dream.

Seeing the things tearing up the buildings, however, made him remember. Watching as a screaming, terrified child was lifted up into the air, hovered there and then — he tried not to look but couldn’t — the child’s neck had twisted impossibly and through the torn neck the child’s bloody insides were sucked out in slow motion, the intestines like a question mark hovering in the air, each drop of blood like the pip of a pomegranate. The boy was spat out: his empty shell bounced against a wall and came to rest beside his bicycle. Daniel didn’t see where his head went. The boy’s insides hovered for a moment longer before they, too, were spewed into the street below, forming a shapeless, formless puddle that erased the no-parking lines drawn on the road. How could God allow such things to happen?

He had had doubts; his faith was like a building with weak foundations; it needed constant repair. There were those in the yeshiva who spoke with utmost certainty of the messiah’s return. Such a return would herald a new era: no more wars, and peace alone would reign; all Jews would keep the mitzvahs, the commandments of God, and all the goyim would recognise and know the Jewish God. And others still spoke of the End Days, and the time the dead would rise: but it would only be the dead of the Jews, and a few selected goyim, perhaps.

His grandparents believed there was no God. In that they were very much like the Orthodox, for it was belief that powered them. But he, Daniel, did not believe as much as sought belief; did not live so much as dream. And the dream lands which he saw were vast and alien and terrifying places where human faith was a small and inconsequential thing, in a universe which cared nothing for those tiny pinpricks of light in a dark cloth who called themselves people.

He passed through streets that looked like what he saw on CNN — like Beirut looked after the Israeli bombings, like Baghdad looked after the Americans came to visit, like Sarajevo after everyone else in Yugoslavia was finished with it. He ducked between buildings and searched for survivors, but all he could find were corpses. The smell of destruction burned his nose; it was the stench of smoke and rubble and blood and singed flesh. It made him think of his grandfather’s stories, of the time he was a boy in the Warsaw Ghetto, running between shelled houses, knowing he only had moments to live.

He wanted to pray, but which prayer? The She’hecheyanu? Blessed are You, Lord our God, king of the universe, who has kept us in life, sustained us, and brought us to this moment?

On second thought, perhaps the Kaddish was more appropriate. He ran, not knowing where, and as he did his fedora hat fell and was snatched by the wind. He raised his hand to his head and, on an impulse he couldn’t quite understand pulled off the yarmulke that was there.

Bareheaded before God, Daniel ran.

THE YURI ARCHIVES, PART I (AUDIO/VIDEO RECORDING)

Dubi is taking too much time setting the scene. We’ve got to evacuate this cellar in two hours, and he’s still stuck in scene three. Rami, the cameraman, is growling under his breath. I’m holding the boom, so I’m being quiet, though I have a bad feeling about this whole thing. Something is wrong, but I don’t know what. Amir, who’s playing the Golem, is really suffering, because he’s wearing this ridiculous cardboard outfit Dubi’s girlfriend created. This is probably the most horrible part of being a film studies undergraduate — having to rely on your fellow students’ girlfriends, boyfriends, parents and, in at least one case I know of, a grandchild, for all the auxiliaries. For poor Amir, of course, the horrible part is right now, being stuck as such an auxiliary, no doubt melting under the two improvised lamps Dubi got in the flea market after finding out that all the university’s lighting equipment was already taken for other students’ productions.