Chapter 13

“Joshua. Joshua!”

I was awake. Upright in bed. Chest and shoulder aching. Wet sheets tangled around my legs. “What? What?”

Yael was beside me, stroking my back. “You were screaming again. Fighting in your sleep.”

A narrow wedge of light grew in the bedroom. A Shin Bet guard’s face slid into the open door, carefully avoiding looking at the bed.

“Everything’s fine,” Yael said. “Another nightmare.”

A nod. The door closed again.

I looked down. My fists were clenched, throbbing. I turned to look at her as I tried to release them. “Did I –”

She was rubbing her chest. “You elbowed me over the tit.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have grabbed you while you were thrashing around.” Her lips pressed against my shoulder. “It’s okay,” she repeated.

I took a deep breath, plucked the hot, clammy sheet from my legs. “Yeah.”

“Was it the same as before?”

I shuddered. “No.” The nightmare was already fading quickly, sliding back into shadow. “Something was coming for you this time. All teeth.”

“Joshua.” She hugged my shoulders. “It’s okay. We’re home. We’re safe.”

“I know.” I sighed. “Are you sure you don’t want –”

“You’re staying here. With me.”

“Alright.”

She stroked my back. “Want to try for sleep again?”

“Sure.” I lay back down. Yael slid close, her head nestled into my shoulder, fingers over my heart. After a minute I opened my eyes, staring up at the ceiling, not moving.

It had been six weeks. My voice had not returned.

The peace process had stuttered, but not yet failed entirely. Thousands of people, their actions entirely justified to themselves, remained motivated by embedded commands without understanding why.

But it was like watching reruns on television. Government agencies kept working on the same problems, without addressing new ones. Fresh crises were often poorly handled or misjudged entirely.

The plan was working, but it wasn’t progressing. And I was stuck at home, with Yael returned to work and a doubled Shin Bet security detail on constant guard at the ramparts.

“Up, up...”

I groaned, arms straining. A lazy bead of seat rolled down the bridge of my nose, dripping onto the floor.

“Again...”

I hated the feminine voice in my ear. Hated how weak and vulnerable I was. Hated that I was sweating over a ridiculous 2kg weight in my right hand as I struggled to lift it up and behind my back.

“Good.”

I dropped the weight onto the floor of the gym with a groan. The physical therapist patted me gently on the back. “Now the stretches.”

I winced. I hated those even more.

I flicked through the screens. Construction on the Red Line through Gaza was delayed, again. The vote to accept the Jordanian distribution of refugees was bogged down in committee in the Knesset. Work on Solar One was progressing, but had fallen further behind schedule.

Slapping the laptop screen closed, I walked to the lounge downstairs, and found a Shin Bet guard standing in the middle of the room. “I’m going for a run.”

“Bos.” Somehow the term had crept from Yakob to everyone in the security detail. “I’m not sure that -”

“I’ve been in this house for seven weeks. I can run a slow kilometer on the treadmill. It’s time for me to get outside.”

The guard nodded, raising his wrist to his mouth and talking quietly.

Fifteen minutes later I was standing on the beach. A stiff wind came off an ocean that was surging at full tide. It was bright, cool.

My feet shuffled in the sand. Four silent Shin Bet guards stood around me, waiting.

A breath. “Alright. Yalla.”

We set forward in the slow pace that was now my best effort. Every step jarred my shoulder, making it ache. My lungs burned. My skin felt prickly, uncomfortable.

The sun glinted off the waves, bouncing brightly from the apartment windows beyond the beach.

Suddenly everything felt wrong. My heart rate and breathing shot up as if I was sprinting, racing out of control. A tingling sensation swept from my shoulder through the right side of my body, leaving me numb. My legs came to a standstill.

I couldn’t breathe. Everything felt like it was pressing in on me. I wheezed, head slumping forward, hands on my knees. My heart hammered in my chest.

“Bos?”

“Too close. You’re too close.” Blindly pushing away a shadow that loomed in from the right.

“Bos?”

“Shut up. Shut up.”

I took a shallow breath and looked to the left. The black follower car was with us, idling just beyond the promenade. I could see faces looking at me curiously.

I forced myself to stand, turn. “We’re heading back. Now.” I shuffled back to the duplex.

“So how was your day?” Yael asked. We were watching television, the sound low, her legs crossed over mine.

“Frustrating,” I said, taking a sip of my beer. It was my usual reply now.

“Any more of the balls?”

“No. Still just two.”

“And you’re practicing?”

“Yes,” I snapped. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay.” She paused, toes stroking my thigh. “Security told me you went for a run?”

“Yeah.” I looked sideways at her. “What else do they tell you?”

“They talk to me. They -” she stopped.

“What?”

She was quiet for a long moment. “They treat me like I’m your wife, okay?”

I took a breath. The idea sounded ... natural.

“Okay.”

“They tell me things,” she said. “Concerns. They told me what happened during your run.”

“I -” I didn’t know what to say.

Yael reached over and switched off the TV. “I have an idea. Trust me?”

“Always.”

“Come with me.” She stood up and held out her hand.

She led me to the front door as several security guards fell into place. Yael helped me pull on a jacket and light scarf, and we stepped outside.

The moon was full, low in the sky, hidden by a white scudding of clouds.

“This is okay, right?” she asked, slipping her hand into mine.

“Yeah.”

“Walk with me.”

We walked down to the promenade and across to the beach, the guards trailing out of sight behind us.

“How about here? And your shoulder?”

“They’re fine. I don’t -”

“What?”

“I don’t know why I reacted. The way I did.”

We walked in silence for awhile before she spoke. “My brother. Omer. The one you met. He had PTSD.”

I turned my head. “You never told me.”

She shrugged. “We don’t talk about it much. The family, I mean. Something that happened in the West Bank. During his service. I never got the details. I know that he took a long time to recover from it. He went a different way than you. Drinking, drugs.” She looked up. “There’s groups.”

“Not for me.”

She sighed, looking down as she walked beside me. “Joshua. You’re a good man. A really good man. Kind. Observant. Considerate. But you’re so locked-down.” She squeezed my hand. “That’s not a criticism. You’re the man I fell for. But I’ve been giving this a lot of thought, so hear me out.”

“Okay.”

“Your father died before you had a chance to know him. And I know you love your mother, but you’re not ... especially close.”

“Not like you.” In truth, I was a little envious of the hour-long calls Yael had with her mother every second or third evening.

“We’re Israeli. It’s a little different.” She smiled. “But yes. And you had Angelina. And then she died.”

I nodded.

“You never had any other close friends. At least none that you talk about. And the work you do now. The secrecy. You grew up...”

“Solitary.”

“Yes. You solve your own problems, Joshua. Carry your own weight. I admire you for it, truly. But this is bigger than you.”

She stopped, and I looked up, surprised. We’d walked all the way to the Church of St. Peter, built by the first Crusaders.

“You’re suffering, Joshua. We’ve got to work on it together.”

“I can’t -”

She smiled. “You don’t need to tell me everything. I don’t expect you to.” A breeze from the ocean blew a lock of hair across her face. “But we need to start somewhere.”

“I feel -” I stopped. “I feel guilty.”

“For what?” she said gently.

“For burdening you with this.”

“Oh, Joshua. No. I make the choice to be here. Every day. Okay? I make the choice.” She hugged me gently, arms under mine.

After that night, Yael and I started to go out a little. Not every night, but enough. To restaurants, the theater, bars. We met up with Sammi and Moshe. Spent time with Liora. I didn’t talk much: couldn’t, given the state of my lungs. But I listened a lot. Thankfully, the tinnitus in my right ear finally disappeared completely, with no perceptible hearing loss.

It was ... nice. Being a normal couple. Going on dates. There were a few bad moments - a club that was too loud, close and dark, hearing a car backfiring in the street, being stuck in traffic - but we learnt to deal with them, or avoid them entirely.

At some point, I realized that this is what normal life was like. If my lung never healed completely, if my voice was truly gone, this is what my life could be. I could walk away from the plan. I would be freed from the vows I’d made to Angelina. I could be a person like everyone else.

The Foundation would continue to take money: it had contracts and funding commitments that would last years, if not decades. I could take a tiny portion of those funds and live comfortably for the rest of my life. Settle down with Yael. Maybe work on a solution to our personal religious divide. Go to college.

I could be like everyone else. I would be safe. But I’d also be vulnerable to the whims of the world, just like everyone else. And I’d have to live with the tumult I’d left behind.

Nine weeks after the attack, it was my birthday. Yael organised a small dinner party at home, inviting Liora, Sammi and Moshe together with a few of her new friends from her work at i24 news. Discussion of politics or my attack were off the table.

Arrangements with Liora had been interesting. We’d swapped places, in a sense: Yael spent most of her time at the duplex, but two or three times a week she would call from work, or let me know in advance, and spend the evening with Liora. There was no sense of competition or rivalry; both Liora and I recognized that we fulfilled different but compatible needs for her. My relationship with Liora had become warm, friendly, deeply flirtatious, with an unspoken acknowledgement that her coquetry would never lead anywhere.