Love Beyond The Fence

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Love Beyond the Fence
Claudia Radici
claudia.radici.123@gmail.com
Copyright © 2013 Claudia Radici
All Rights Reserved

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Summary
Chapter 1........................................................................................................................................................ 5
Chapter 2...................................................................................................................................................... 43
Chapter 3.................................................................................................................................................... 115
Chapter 4.................................................................................................................................................... 145
Chapter 5.................................................................................................................................................... 205
Chapter 6.................................................................................................................................................... 247
Chapter 7.................................................................................................................................................... 277

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Chapter 1
“Help! Aiuto! Help!” “Yalla! Yalla! Yalla!” It was almost night time in the small
village of Dayr al-Hatab, in Samaria, a region in the center-east of Israel. Three
girls were fleeing, chased by three boys. They threw their backpacks towards
them in order to run better and shouted for help from the men who were calmly
strolling in the alley, but nobody stopped them and nobody even looked at them.
On the contrary, the bearded faces turned to look the other way, while the boys
gained ground screaming. One boy grabbed the sweater of the girl with red hair,
she fell and he threw himself onto her back, he tore her sweater and t-shirt,
pushed her arms back and turned her around to open her jeans, while the other
two girls kept running in front of the two boys who were getting closer and closer,
no longer seeing her, but hearing her desperate cries.
The sound of an engine approaching fast awakened the peaceful men in the alley,
making them all escape together like a school of fish, and sent the girls’ attackers
flying in three different directions.
The jeep stopped next to the girl on the ground and two young soldiers jumped
out, one chased the guy who had attacked her and the other bent down to help
her. He gently lifted up her shoulders and softly spoke to her in Hebrew,
switching immediately to English because from her lost expression he saw that
she couldn’t understand his language. The girl answered in English stammering,
“No, he didn’t ... have the time ... oh, Jesus, if ... if you hadn’t come by ...”
“Do you want to try and get up? Let's see if everything is all right?”
“Yes ... thank you ... yes, I’m fine ... just my sweater, my t-shirt ...”
The boy took off his military jacket and lightly rested it on her shoulders, she
wrapped herself around in it and, kneeling down, she started crying. He sat back
on his heels before her and stroked her dreadlocks and the black and white
keffiyeh that was sticking out behind her neck, the same look of her two friends
who were approaching with the other soldier, who had preferred to take them to
safety rather than search in the dilapidated apartment buildings for the attacker,
that had vanished into a courtyard.
The two friends embraced the assaulted girl, caressed her hair and her back and
spoke to her. Yet she embraced the boy who had saved her and clung to him,
saying that she was okay, that nothing had happened, that everything was fine
now. The two friends remembered the backpacks and the other soldier left with
them to help to get the packs, while they remained on the floor hugging next to
the jeep.
Then the other soldier said, “Come on, get into the car, let’s go to a safe place,
let's move to the C Area.” and he got behind the wheel.
“The C Area?” asked the girl who got into the front, while the other two got into
the back: the assaulted girl in the middle, between the soldier who had helped
her and the other friend.
“The C Area, yes, under Israeli civil and military control, didn’t you know?” asked
the boy who was driving and said, “Dayr al-Hatab is in the B Area. We only have

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military control, while the civilian control is Palestinian. It’s not a safe place for
girls alone in the dark, especially foreigners. However, girls, nice to meet you, I
am Eyàl.”
“And my name is Yaròn,” said the soldier who had stopped to help the girl.
“Thanks guys, I am Lucia,” said the girl sitting in the front, a beautiful chubby
brunette.
“I’m Paola. Thank you indeed,” said the very thin blonde girl sitting behind the
driver.
“Marina,” said the assaulted girl with a faint voice, sitting at the back between
Paola and Yaron.
The girls were frightened but very pretty: a brunette, a blonde and a redhead.
Also the soldiers were two handsome boys, tall and thin, with short black hair.
“Your names are beautiful. Are you Spanish?” Eyal asked.
“No, Italian,” Lucia explained.
So Yaron moved a bit away from the window, he moved closer to Marina and
smiled, he took a dreadlock in his fingers and whispered in an attempt to speak
Italian, “Fusilipomodoro?”, but Marina moved away saying, “Please, leave it.”
“Sorry, you’re right,” he said to her at once, letting go of her beautiful knotted red
hair and wondering how he could have been so insensitive: after what she had
just been through, she obviously didn’t feel like joking.
“Hey, Yaron! Her friends told me that they have to catch their plane in Megiddo
tomorrow morning at 7,” Eyal said in English, so that the girls could also
understand, and continued in the same language, “Do you think we should follow
the Jordan or work around the fence?” and then, as if at the nod of the
conductor, Paola and Lucia shouted in unison, “The wall!”
Eyal turned around and said, “Girls, but do you know that it’s a mesh? It's a wall
only in three points around Jerusalem, and in two other points near here, in
Qalqiliya and Tulkarem. If we don’t follow the river we’ll see them as they are
right on the road. In total, over the whole length of the metal fence, the wall part
is less than thirty kilometers, 6% of the route.”
Lucia, the brunette sitting in the front, replied, “That’s not true, almost all of it is
a concrete wall! And it is also in Bethlehem, we saw it, we specifically came to
Palestine to make a documentary.”
Yaron was incredulous and asked, “You have made a documentary about it, but
didn’t you understand that you’d seen it on the border between Bethlehem and
Jerusalem?”
“No, well,” said Paola, the blonde behind the driver, “Actually we didn’t manage to
make the documentary. In front of the wall we filmed a bit the only guy who let
himself be interviewed, then about ten men plunged upon us, they snatched the
camera away and made this gesture to us, I'll cut your throat.”
“So much for freedom of press,” Yaron said, adding, “That's how they influence
the Western press, girls.”
“But we stayed there for two more days,” continued Lucia, “And went even higher,
and yet we saw miles and miles of wall, and even if we could not film anything we

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saw the plight of the Palestinians, who must pass through the wall every day,
morning and night, to go to work.”
Yaron looked at her puzzled and said, “That’s not possible! Despite violence you
have suffered tonight and in Bethlehem, are you still ready to defend to the hilt
the fairy tales of the Arab propaganda?”
“They are not fairy tales!” Paola interrupted.
“That’s true, they are dangerous lies,” Yaron commented, shaking his head.
The two girls held back their answer, so as not to insult the lads that had just
saved them. In the meanwhile Marina remained silent, sitting between Paola and
Yaron who exchanged exasperated looks. Marina knew that if she closed her eyes
she would start to cry, and so as not to see them argue she pressed herself back
against the seat. Yaron looked at her while she seemed concentrated on the
ceiling of the jeep, and tried to imagine what was going through her head. “Poor
thing, all she needs is quiet, and instead ...” he thought, and so he asked Eyal to
stop for a moment, if they all agreed, now that they were safe in the C area, to
recover slowly out in the open. Eyal pulled over and they all climbed down leaving
the lights on. They stretched and walked in the night breathing in silence. Yaron
asked Eyal if he had already alerted the base about this change in plans, and his
friend told him that the commander had authorized them to escort the three
tourists to the airport and stay with them until their departure, since the two of
them were not on patrol that night and would have returned to the base only to
sleep.
After a few minutes’ walk they returned to the jeep and all sat on the ground,
leaning their backs on one side of the car. The two soldiers were on the sides:
Eyal was the first one sitting against the driver's door, and he still had the
brunette Lucia beside him; next to her was the blonde, Paola; then Marina, the
redhead, and Yaron. Thus Marina was still between Yaron and Paola, as before in
the car.
Paola and Lucia started talking to Eyal; Yaron preferred not to say anything to
Marina because he was afraid of bothering her again, so he simply watched the
road and smiled every now and then at her to give her courage. She looked at his
handsome face in the moonlight: long black eyes, bushy arched eyebrows, short
straight nose, high cheekbones, white teeth between his full but not too fleshy
lips. He was really handsome, “handsome and impossible, with your black eyes
and your middle eastern flavour”, just like the song (translator’s note: it’s part of
the refrain of “Bello e impossibile” - “Handsome and Impossible” - a very popular
song by the Italian singer Gianna Nannini). It crossed her mind that maybe
Gianna Nannini had foreseen this encounter, and this thought made her smile for
a moment. Yaron saw her smile and tilted his head to the side, and he narrowed
his eyes as if to ask her a question, but didn’t ask anything for fear of being
intrusive.
Eyal was explaining to the girls that he had decided not to follow the River Jordan
but to travel the road coasting the fence, so they could see it with their eyes for
about thirty kilometers. “For five kilometers you’ll see a concrete wall, exactly

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where we’ll pass close to it, and for the rest you’ll see that it’s a metal fence, a
thing that can be dismantled in a day if it’s no longer needed.”
“But what is it for? Only to create a closure, to separate,” said Lucia, and Paola
added facing Yaron, “You’ll never have peace in this way.”
Yaron explained to her, “The fence is to protect us. The day they stop hating us, if
they ever stop, we’ll remove it. It has almost zeroed the attacks by suicide
bombers, and the two sections of wall that you see now will also protect you from
snipers.”
“This is what you say!” Lucia replied, “It’s only meant to exclude the Palestinians,
to make their life impossible! Only you need the wall, to keep the land that you
stole from them in '67!”
And Paola added, raising her voice and looking straight into Yaron’s eyes, “Not to
mention what you stole in '48!”.
Yaron would also have liked to shout in order to make himself heard, but he saw
that Marina was uncomfortable as with the altercation in the car. So he didn’t
raise his voice and tried to explain calmly, “Girls, we didn’t steal the land from
anyone. This land has belonged to the people of Israel for thousands of years.
Palestine has never existed.”
“What the fuck are you saying?” screamed Paola and Lucia getting up and going
to stand in front of Yaron.
He remained seated and said, “Listen, calm down, okay? Do it at least for Marina
who is still frightened.”
The two girls replied, “Well then keep quiet, ok? Otherwise obviously we’ll get
pissed off and she’ll get scared!”
“Ok, I’ll keep quiet, it doesn’t matter.”
Paola and Lucia sat down again and Marina looked at Yaron: this discussion was
definitely close to his heart and if he renounced to continue it, it was only to
protect her once again. In fact, he kept his head down and had a disappointed
expression on his face, but when he realized that Marina was looking at him he
smiled at her, and, forgetting that he didn’t want to be intrusive, he winked at
her. She smiled back at him and thanked him, “Thank you, you’re kind. Thank
you also for before, ah ...” and she started to cry again. Her two friends
immediately turned around still angry, but they saw that Yaron was consoling
her, telling her that everything was alright, that now they were safe and there was
no more danger.
Marina calmed down and said, “Tell me what you were saying before, I'm
interested.”
She saw his face light up and was happy to give him a chance to talk about it,
but as he began to speak, she was reminded of the song by Gianna Nannini and
lowered her eyes not to blush, concentrating on the seams of the jacket’s sleeve.
So, without locking his gaze with her green-gold eyes, Yaron while speaking to her
could get a good look at her delicate profile with a small round chin, upturned
nose between the wide cheekbones and the gentle curve of her forehead, below
the strands of red hair that fell down onto her shoulders: Marina's face was so

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beautiful that it seemed to gently impose proportions, as if everything around
were to lay about in harmonious curves.
Behind them the jeep reflected the nearly full moon, slightly concealed by the
fast, long and high clouds above the clear horizon. The current of a bright river
seemed to pass through the doors that created a backdrop for their almost
overlapping five dark figures. Paola and Lucia were telling Eyal about their
journey, and Yaron was talking to Marina about the fence, explaining how it had
helped to prevent the terrorists from blowing themselves up in the major Israeli
cities, mainly in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Marina drove the song from her head and studied Yaron’s thin luminous face,
and the shadow that the clouds left on his cheeks, on his forehead and in his
eyes. She struggled not to miss a word, now that Yaron had begun to tell her of
his childhood in Jerusalem, of the terror that paralyzes you when you hear an
explosion nearby and dozens of ambulances pass in front of you, of people torn to
pieces as they danced, ate a pizza or were out shopping. Of the rows of children’s
bodies under the white sheets, with the distraught mothers arriving to scrutinize
the shoes and hoping not to recognize them. Of how his parents used to put him
and his little brother on two different buses to get to school, so at least one would
survive. Yaron went on to explain, “Since the fence was built, the bombings in
Jerusalem have dropped by 99%. It’s the fence that has blocked them, that has
prevented them from continuing to burn us, dismember us, slaughter us. Before
building the fence, the terrorists had killed 4,000 people and injured 10,000, left
without an arm or a leg or without skin or blind or deaf or scarred or paralyzed.
And the terrorists were all from here, that’s why we had to fence in Judea and
Samaria.”
“What do you mean? Judea and Samaria? Two Jewish places?” Marina asked,
and Yaron explained to her, “They are the Israeli territories occupied by
Palestinian settlements.”
“What?”
“If you think like your friends then you’re used to the opposite concept. Judea
and Samaria are what you in Europe call the West Bank, and what you certainly
call Occupied Palestine don’t you?”
“Certainly, the Palestine that you invaded in ’67!”
“We didn’t invade anybody. We defended ourselves from the umpteenth attack
that our Arab neighbours were about to launch upon us, and we won back the
land where we had been living for thousands of years. In fact, you also recognized
its biblical names, which just goes to show how the people of Israel had already
been living there 3500 years ago.”
“Yaron, you are kind and you saved me tonight, but don’t speak to me anymore
about Israeli territories occupied by the Palestinians, because it’s you who
invaded their territory in '67 and you don’t want to give it back to them!”
“Okay, Marina, I give up because I don’t want us to fight. But reflect on this one
thing: you are repeating exactly what the Palestinian terrorists say to justify their
attacks. Don’t you get a doubt that, who taught you these things is using you to

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spread hatred against the Jewish state, to the point where they justify the
elimination of the only free and democratic nation in the Middle East, as
Ahmadinejad, the dictator of Iran, hopes to do?”
“Let’s leave it, Yaron. I also don’t want to fight with you.”
They remained in silence and Marina tried to get involved in the discussion of the
others, who were laughing at unlikely Hebrew-Italian translations because they
couldn’t always find the English words to explain themselves. But she really
didn’t feel like laughing that night and turned back to Yaron. “Let's walk, shall
we?” she asked him, and they moved away from the others after having informed
them, passing a curve overlooking a small cliff.
“Do you like walking?” Yaron asked her.
“Yes, it allows me to think in peace.”
“So here it’s perfect, with the sky in front of and the hills below. Are there places
like this where you live?”
Marina leant against the parapet of the road and looked down at the gently wavy
plateau of rolling hills and valleys. Some dim light emerged as a mist from the
small villages scattered here and there. “Yes, it reminds me of my Upper City,
because from there you can see the hills below. But there it’s different, it’s flatter,
and at night there is a whole sea of lights right up to the horizon.”
“Do you live there?”
“Under it, amidst the sea of lights. In Bergamo, near Milan, in the north of Italy.”
Yaron also leant against the parapet and they remained in silence, gazing out at
the landscape. Then he looked at her and realized how tired she was, he asked
her if she wanted to go back to the jeep, but she replied, “No, it's beautiful here.
But let’s sit down.”
They left the street and sat on the sand, resting their backs on large white stones.
“Come on, continue what you were saying,” Marina said to him. “I’m sorry for not
having let you speak, I could see that you care.”
“You let me speak about my childhood, it’s ok.”
“No, Yaron, finish what you were saying.”
“I don’t want to make you angry, with what you went through tonight. Tell me
about your childhood, ok?”
“No, finish what you were saying, I owe it to you.”
“You don’t owe me anything at all. We were passing by and we helped you, we
couldn’t just leave you there.”
“But all those men just ignored us.”
“What did you expect from people like that?” Yaron said shaking his head.
Marina pursed her lips for a moment and then sighed, “Well, yes, maybe you are
right. Come on, go on with what you were saying.”
“Ok, as you wish. Stop me when you want, though.”
“I promise.”
“So, in 1947 the UN decided to formally assign this land to the Jewish people, the
land where they had lived for 3500 years, and that in spite of all the exiles and
persecutions they had never abandoned, neither spiritually nor physically.”

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“Stop, Yaron, I must stop you at once. It’s true that you had been persecuted in
World War II, and I’d have something to say about the numbers ...”
“What?”
“Let me finish first about Palestine. How can you ignore the fact that you were
given the land where the Palestinian people had always lived?”
“Marina, the Palestinian people have never existed. The Arabs who lived in these
areas before 1947 were Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians, Saudis, who had
immigrated here since the end of 1800 because they were attracted by the better
living conditions in the Jewish villages, more freedom and more well-being than
what they might have aspired to by remaining in the tribes, the clans, the
religious sects that make up the so-called Arab states.”
“The so-called Arab states?! Yaron, first you want to de-legitimize Palestine, now
also Egypt and Jordan?”
“Listen, states such as Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Sudan are inventions of
British colonialism, which created them arbitrarily after 1920, regardless of how
the Arabs have always been divided in ethnic and religious groups, that often
have nothing to do with the land given to them. It’s the big problem of the Arab
states, which do not reflect populations with their own unity, as we can see now
in the conflicts that are tearing them apart in the so-called Arab Spring.”
“So-called spring! For sure you are one of those who name these revolutions
“winter”, these revolts of the people against the tyrants.”
“Yes, it’s the Arab Winter, because unfortunately the people can do very little,
squeezed between the tyrants and Islamic extremists. Why don’t you demonstrate
in order to give support to those people, rather than turning a blind eye while
they are being slaughtered? Why not try to give support to the common people,
who aspire only to having better living conditions? It’s easier to always go against
Israel, the one country that will surely never massacre you, as you will always
find an excuse: the pseudo-Palestinian pseudo-refugees are always there, forced
to rot in refugee camps by their Arab brothers full of space and full of money!”
“Pseudo what? How did you call them?! Look, Yaron, I’d better keep quiet,
continue what you were saying otherwise you won’t be able to finish it in a year,
let alone in a night!”
“Listen, Marina. Pseudo or not pseudo, throughout the vast Arab lands they still
haven’t found them a little place in which to stay. And the Arabs are sitting on
the oil, and receive millions of dollars from the world for these pseudo or non
pseudo-refugees, but have still not been able to build them a single decent house!
Hey, what wouldn’t they do to keep Israel at bay! Just to have something to
justify to the world their hatred towards us Jews, those golden hearts of the
Arabs are even willing to make their brothers live in shameful conditions!”
“Yaron, you are the ones who created these shameful conditions! You stole the
land where they lived!”
“Marina, I explained to you that Israel has been the land of the Jewish people for
3500 years, but you don’t believe me. You won’t believe me either if I explain that
the 500,000 Arabs who fled Israel in 1948 weren’t driven away by us, but they

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left their homes to escape the war unleashed by the Arab states against our
nation, created not even a day before. And you still won’t believe me when I say
that we had even made a law so that nobody would dare take possession of their
homes and their lands, and that we would have welcomed them back immediately
if the Arab states hadn’t forced them to stay away from us. Very well, think all
your beliefs are true. But now explain to me why the Arabs leave these people in
refugee camps instead of integrating them into their cities, as we did with the
600,000 Jewish refugees that were kicked out from the Arab States in 1948,
upon the birth of the state of Israel. They drove them from their homes where
they had been living for generations, and without anybody from the world
protesting or giving us money to help us to integrate them into Israel! They were
kicked out, their houses, land, savings were stolen, many of them were killed,
and the survivors came to Israel with nothing. And we, a nation that had just
been created and already burdened by the war, that had just welcomed
thousands of survivors from Nazi persecution rejected by all the nations of the
world, we did everything in our power to allow these 600,000 refugees to live in
dignified conditions. And we did so for the one million Russian Jews who have
been coming here since the seventies, persecuted by the Communist regime like
my mom and her family. And for the 20,000 Ethiopian Jews oppressed by
Mengistu at the turn of the eighties and nineties, that we went to fetch secretly at
night with planes because they didn’t have the means to reach us ... and then we
are the racist state!”
“Racist towards the Palestinians! Not against the Jews, whatever their colour may
be!”
“The Arabs are the real racists against the Palestinians, because they cram them
into refugee camps in their big, generous and civilian Arab nations ... But do you
know that the Palestinian refugee camps are only in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, in
the Gaza Strip and in the areas of Judea and Samaria under Palestinian control?
In Israel, where we govern and not where the Palestinian Authority governs, the
refugee camps don’t exist. We give equal dignity and equal rights to all of our
citizens whether they be Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, Bedouins, Druze,
Circassians, atheists ... You are a Christian, I imagine.”
“Yes, a Catholic.”
“Well then, aren’t you going to tell me that you believe that Israel is the
persecutor of the Christians?”
“But Yaron, who is driving us away from the Holy Land, hey?”
“Here is another milestone of Arab mythology, Marina. But don’t you see that we
are the only country in the Middle East that protects your safety and freedom?
Open your eyes, you are disappearing from all the Arab states! In Islamic
countries you cannot even walk around with a pendant in the shape of a cross!”
“You're right about that, because I couldn’t bring my baptism pendant, here into
Palestine.”
“You mean in the Israeli areas under full Palestinian control, the A Zones.”

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“Call them as you wish, Yaron. However, it’s always the same story. You're telling
me that you have integrated many Jews, well then integrate the Palestinian
refugees as well!”
“But there are 5,000,000, Marina!”
“You just said they are 500,000!”
“They were 500,000 at the very most those who fled in 1948, when we were
attacked by the Arab states. Only these would be called “refugees” by any person
with common sense. But no, the UN established that, only for these refugees
among all those around the world, the definition of a refugee extends also to their
descendants. Today there are five million, do you understand, Marina? In Israel
we are seven and a half million inhabitants, how could we have almost doubled
our population? We are such a small country, moreover, we must be one-tenth of
Italy, not even! But the main problem is that these pseudo-refugees ...”
“Again you call them pseudo-refugees?! Don’t make me laugh, Yaron!”
“But over sixty years have passed, and of the initial 500,000, only 50,000 must
still be alive. These are the only genuine refugees of war! Apart from the fact that,
to be honest, even on those initial 500,000 we have to do a good skimming. But
do you know that the UN established that, in 1948, any Arab who had lived for at
least two years in what was to become under all effects the state of Israel, was to
be defined as a “Palestinian refugee”? Two years, Marina, do you understand?
Even among those initial 500,000, who knows how many pseudo-refugees there
were, because if they had lived in any Arab state until ‘46, in ‘48 they could also
go back to live there! What's more, I was telling you that there is no other group
of refugees in the world in which this social status is passed on from father to
son. Because one escapes from the war and is well or badly accepted by those
who welcome him, and he does everything to fit in where he finds refuge, in order
to no longer be a refugee but a citizen of his new country. It’s normal to be like
this, it has always happened in the world! Maybe you also know someone in Italy
who escaped from a war, you have so many immigrants, don’t you?”
“Yes, indeed ... My grandmother’s caregiver ran away from the war in the
Balkans, she arrived in Italy after having travelled for days and nights on a
tractor with her husband, their little son and another family. They left their farm
and fled, they arrived in Italy with nothing. They started working, I know of some
people who helped them, they must also have received some official help, maybe,
I don’t know. Anyway, now they have settled down, their son goes to university,
he also gets excellent marks. Yes, you’re right, in fact, Yaron.”
“You see? They came to your country without anything yet they worked hard,
they are good people who give you a hand with their work, they respect your
country. Instead they want to impose five million anti-Semites upon us! In the
refugee camps they cultivate hatred toward us in every way, from papering the
schools with posters of their acclaimed martyrs who committed suicide killing our
children, to distributing textbooks in which Israel doesn’t even exist on the maps,
and as not to mention the actual weapon factories that we found in there!

14
Welcoming them would be suicidal madness, they would immediately take
advantage to destroy Israel.”
“Well, maybe ... But never mind, Yaron, okay? In any case, neither one of us will
change our mind, so it’s useless to argue.”
“I’ll stop just so as not to exasperate you, Marina. However, it would be good for
you to hear these things, because at home, from what you told me, I guess you
have the possibility to hear only the Palestinian propaganda. It could help you to
listen to my point of view, and not because you have to change your mind at all
costs, but at least you’ll have the information to assess for yourself what seems
more sensible, more likely.”
Marina sighed and didn’t answer, leaning her elbows on her knees and her
cheeks on her fists, and gazed out at the thinning clouds that were unveiling the
stars. The furthest ones from the moon were very bright and their irregular
twinkling reminded her of the flickering lights that can be seen from her Upper
City, among which one, impossible to discern, that is her home. She broke off a
twig from the half-dry bush which was sticking out of the large white stones they
were leaning against, and drew a sad face on the sand because she was sorry to
have ended the discussion with Yaron. He watched her tracing two simple dots
for the eyes and a downturned curve for the mouth, and was about to caress her
on the head but stopped through fear of disturbing her. She saw his gesture and
smiled, “Ok, come on, Yaron, continue. I don’t think that I'll change my mind, but
tell me everything.”
So he also broke off a twig and began to draw on the sand. He traced the borders
of Israel and the Arab states surrounding it, and outlined the rest of Asia and
some African nations. “Here, Marina, all of this big space is the group of Arab
nations, and this little piece is Israel. Our small country is 0.2% of the land of the
Arab states, that is where the main language is Arabic, and it’s 0.1% of the land
of the Islamic states, that is where the main religion is Islam. Like I said, in 1947
the United Nations established that this small piece of land was to become under
all effects the Jewish state. At the same time, for fear of the Arab reaction, they
decided to assign a part to the Arabs: Judea and Samaria.”
“Occupied Palestine.”
“Ok, call it as you wish. So, the Jewish people accepted the division into two
states: Israel to the Jews and Occupied Palestine to the Arabs. And what did the
Arabs do, Marina? I'm asking you if in 1947 the Arabs accepted the division into
two states, what you call Occupied Palestine to the Arabs and the rest of Israel to
the Jews.”
“Honestly, I don’t know.”
“Two states for two peoples ...”
“But of course! Two states for two peoples!”
“So, did the Arabs accept or not?”
“Yes, of course!”
“Instead the answer is no, they didn’t accept it.”
“Are you crazy? That’s exactly what they want!”

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“That’s what they say they want. “Two states for two peoples” is just a refrain,
that they have been repeating since 1967 when we conquered Judea and Samaria
defending ourselves from Jordan. An empty refrain that hides their true hope of
wiping out Israel, of getting rid of the Jewish people from their civil and peaceful
Arab land ... So, as I was saying, in 1947 only the Jews accepted the provisions of
the United Nations, and so the following year the UN proclaimed the creation of a
single state, Israel, which didn’t include Judea and Samaria. It was May 14th,
1948. The next day we were attacked by all the neighbouring Arab states, and the
attacks were repeated several times, every ten years or so, but every time we
managed to win.”
He took her right hand, extended her index finger and guided her hand along the
drawing to show her where the attacks had come from in 1948, in 1956, in 1967,
in 1973: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Libya,
Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Sudan. Every Arab country had directly invaded Israel,
or sent money and resources to those who could do so more easily because they
were located closer. Marina didn’t object, she lost all her anger, she found it hard
to follow the conversation because Yaron was holding her hand and, whatever he
was saying about the map on the sand, was nothing in comparison.
He moved her index finger to the south of Israel and the Gaza Strip, to take up
once again the subject of the fence, because he thought that she cared very much
about it having come all this way from Italy to make a documentary out of it, and
said, “This is Israel and this is the Gaza Strip, which can be considered a small
Palestinian state. At the border, there is a wire fence between them and us. It’s
made just like most of the fence inside Israel, the one that surrounds Judea and
Samaria, the one you came to film. In the Gaza Strip, the Palestinians bypass the
fence from the top and bombard the Israelis who live across the border, in cities
like Ashkelon, Sderot, Ashdod, Beersheva, and many smaller further villages,
depending on the range, endangering a total of one million inhabitants. There the
siren sounds every day and you have to escape into the shelters because the
Palestinians fire missiles, kassam rockets and mortar shells into homes, schools,
offices, wherever people are trying to live their lives in peace. In six years they
fired 9000, it’s an average of four rockets a day! Do you realize what it means for
those who live there? And what would the Palestinians of Gaza do to the Israelis,
Marina, if there were not even the fence? They would attack them more easily,
wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know ... yes,” she stammered, because Yaron was still holding her hand
and her entire being focused only on that. She clung to the memory of the sound
of the last sentence, and tried to answer, “Yes, they would attack you even more
easily, maybe.”
“Maybe? You are so naive.”
“But ... that’s what I continue repeating to you. You stole their land, that’s why
they hate you, that’s the problem you have to solve. You have to give their land
back to them, and they’ll stop attacking you.” - yet don’t stop holding my hand, I

16
beg of you, whatever I say, - Marina thought to herself and looked for a second
into his eyes, before trying to concentrate on the map on the sand.
“We gave them that exact land in 2005,” he told her keeping her hand on the
same point of the drawing, “The Gaza Strip. It was to become a first attempt of a
Palestinian state, the first land all to themselves that they could govern alone in
order to live in peace, and instead they turned it into a launching pad to bomb
us. And to think that in 1967 we had conquered it with our blood, defending
ourselves from the Egyptian aggression. Did you know that in 2005, in order to
give it to the Palestinians, all the 10,000 Jews who lived there had to leave? The
Gaza Strip is an apartheid state because it doesn’t tolerate religious minorities, in
fact it didn’t leave a single Jew on its land, whereas in Israel there are more than
one million Muslims. How could we have hoped that by giving the Gaza Strip to
the Palestinians we would have obtained peace, on this basis? And yet we gave it
to them, and those who lived there had to leave, they were desperate ... you can
imagine, Marina ... leaving your home, and to those who hate you! But they left
them all in order, ready to re-lived in. And what did the Palestinians do? They
immediately razed them to the ground, and we’re not talking about a population
swimming in gold, at least not to have to rebuild them from scratch, they could
have kept them! But they hate us, unfortunately this is the truth. Any
concessions we may make, it’s all for nothing, only to weaken us. They hate us,
Marina. Everywhere so many people hate us and do everything possible to
discredit us, inventing lies or concealing truths. For example, did you know that
this boundary is a wall?” he asked slightly moving her hand, always on the Gaza
Strip but on the border with Egypt, no longer with Israel.
“No ... but, Yaron, I thought you had said it was a mesh.”
“The border between Israel and the Gaza Strip is only a wire mesh, yes! But at its
border with the Gaza Strip, the Egyptians built a concrete wall. I'm talking about
this border here.”
Marina looked at their hands on the map, she observed Egypt and the Gaza Strip,
and said to him, “What? Sorry, maybe I didn't follow well. A wall between the
Egyptians and the Palestinians?”
“That's right. The Egyptians don’t want to let the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip
enter freely into Egypt, because they are afraid of these brothers of theirs and
consider them illegal immigrants, criminals and terrorists. Nobody knows it,
nobody says it, because nobody wants to offend the Arabs. It doesn’t matter
about the Jews, go ahead and offend us, in any case even if you call us terrorists
you know very well that we aren’t going to come and cut your throats.”
He let her hand go and broke the spell. Now she was following him carefully, their
eyes locked, but also vigilant, on the defensive.
“Meanwhile anti-Semitism rises, Marina. Two birds with one stone, maybe
someone will finally exterminate us completely and we’ll disappear forever from
the face of the earth.”
“Oh God, Yaron, I’ve never thought things like that, I’ve never hated anybody.”

17
“But you came all the way here to film a wall, you just looked at the part you were
interested in and ...”
“But I thought it was all like that!”
“Then tell everybody when you return to Italy, tell them what you’ve seen. Tell
them about the mesh that we’ll follow here in Samaria, about the short stretches
of wall that we’ll come across, and explain why we built them. If you learn about
the wall between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, you'll see that what I’m telling you is
true: it follows the entire 12 kilometers of the border, it’s 8 meters high and goes
30 meters underground to block the tunnels. Tell everybody all these things, tell
your friends when you get back home.”
“Forget it, Yaron, they won’t want to know.”
“But you must open their eyes!”
“Look, I don’t want to argue with them. They have their own ideas, and maybe I
can change my mind a bit, but I definitely won’t be able to change theirs.”
“At least tell them these things. Inform them!”
“Well, but first, as you said, I’d like to verify the things you told me.”
“But of course!”
“Because it’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m sure that you are sincere, I can see
that. Yet, I can’t believe that everything you told me is true. You grew up hearing
only your propaganda and obviously, listening to you, you all seem to be pure
and innocent angels! But you also do many bad things, and they are really bad,
hey Yaron!”
“Many bad things that we do ... come with me then, there are plenty of bad
things, and we don’t do them.”
He led her back towards the road. The olive-green colour of his uniform and that
of the military jacket she was still wearing was almost phosphorescent, under the
light of the beacon that lit up the road. They leant against the parapet and looked
at the plateau below, but he couldn’t find what he was looking for, then he took
her hand and guided her to the next darker corner and, leaning over the parapet,
he pointed to a cluster of lights in a valley and said, “That’s Itamar.”
“Itamar?”
“Doesn’t it mean anything to you, Marina?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I may have heard of that name.”
“Six months ago. At this time, two Palestinian terrorists left,” he said and moved
his index finger towards another light that was just a little further away, and
added, “From the Arab village of Awarta. Two youngsters.”
“Oh! My God, that massacre of children ... My God, Yaron, I saw the photos, all
that blood!”
“They slaughtered a family in their sleep: Hadas Fogel, 3 months old; Elad Fogel,
4 years old; Yoav Fogel, 11 years old; and the mother, Ruth Fogel, 35 years old;
and the father, Ehud Fogel, known as Udi, 36 years old.”
“Yes but, Yaron, they were colonists, they had stolen their land and so of course
...”

18
“Yes but? Colonists? Stolen? And even if that were true, would you justify a
massacre of children, entering into their bedrooms to slit their throats? No,
Marina, there’s no hope if you also find an excuse for the deaths of those
innocent people ... it’s all over if even you think that, if you’ve also lost all
compassion ... You don’t know history? Never mind! But you cannot lose your
humanity! You are a kind, sweet person, I’m sure you’d cry for a little bird with a
broken wing ... but for little Hadas who was almost decapitated, hey? A little baby
of three months ... No, Marina, no. You have been brainwashed but most of all
your heart has been washed out, and if they’ve done this to a good person like
you, they can really do that to everybody.”
Yaron leant on the railing and put his head in his hands, he looked at the lights
in the distance and then turned around. He sat down on the road with his legs
stretched out and now he was the attacked one and she was the one who leant
over him and stroked his shoulder with her hand, but he moved away, he got up
again, and walked away saying, “Let's get back to the car, enough now. Let’s just
forget it. There’s nothing more to do, enough, it's useless.”
She took his arms, she pushed him towards the railing until his back was
pressing against it, she stood in front of him and looked him straight in his eyes
that were two slits filled with tears, and she said, “Yaron, please, I’m not
justifying them at all, that’s not true! But also the Palestinian children, you also
...”
“We what? We what?” he shouted moving away from the railing and turned
around to go back to the jeep, but then he stopped and stood in front of her,
blocking her way. “Can you imagine me? Can you imagine me going into a room
to cut the throat of a child? Chasing a child in a school, grabbing him by the hair
and shooting him in the head? Choosing the fullest bus of kids, so I can get on
and blow myself up in it? And if by chance I survive, without eyes, without arms,
without legs, then living with the only regret of not having killed enough kids?
That’s happened, you know, watch the interviews with these monsters! Then tell
me if you can imagine me! Me, Eyal, or any other Jew you’ve met in this Land of
Israel that you insist on calling Palestine!”
He returned to the jeep and Marina followed him in silence. They all climbed back
into the car and he got behind the wheel. Eyal sat beside him and the girls were
all in the back together, mute. Paola and Lucia looked at Marina who was
pressing her forehead against the window, pretending to watch the road, the hills
of clear stones covered with bushes, the small isolated woods, the moon, the ever
thinning clouds, the lights approaching along the road.
Yaron pulled over after a few minutes, he turned around and said to her,
“Marina, I wanted to bring you here. We’re in Itamar. Will you come with me for a
moment?”
“Okay, yes.”
The others also got out, and they all went silently towards the village entrance to
the male and female soldiers on guard, and there, without going beyond the sign
with Latin, Arabic and Hebrew characters, they divided themselves into two

19
groups as before. Eyal, Paola and Lucia talked to the soldiers who tried to explain
the Hebrew alphabet to the girls, while Marina and Yaron walked slowly alone.
“Have you ever heard about the Shabo family, Marina?” Yaron asked her.
“No.”
“They also used to live here. They were massacred by a Palestinian terrorist nine
years ago.”
“Oh God, them as well ...”
“That night the father and three children were out, the mother and the other five
children were sleeping. That beast entered throwing grenades and shooting
uncontrollably. He killed the mother Rachel, who was 40 years old, and her three
sons: Neria, 15 years old; Zvika, 12; and Avishai, 5.”
“My God, Yaron, another small child.”
“He didn’t kill the other brother, Asael, 10 years old, and the sister Avia, 13,
because he had injured them so badly that he thought they were dead. Avia
landed under the bed, but Asael was on the floor in a pool of blood. The terrorist
kicked him in the head to understand if he was dead, and Asael managed not to
move, not to even open his eyes.”
“Good Lord, how can anybody do that to a family, to a 10 year old boy? Are he
and his sister ok now? At least physically, I mean.”
“Avia is ok, the bullets didn’t cause her any permanent damage. Whereas Asael
lost a leg, but now that he is 19 years old, he is one of the strongest disabled
swimmers in the world.”
“Really? My God, what a beautiful person! He must have an incredible inner
strength.”
“That strength comes from here, from this remote village. They are surrounded by
hate yet filled with love, you can see it from how they look after their things so
well, with such incredible care.”
“That’s true. You know, while you were driving, looking at these tidy little lights
was like entering into a fairytale place.”
“That’s right, that’s the exact same impression it gives me. You should see it
during the day, Itamar is really the gem of the hills, as we call it. It’s amazing.
Plus all the flowers of the season are in blossom, but everything is always so tidy,
every vegetable garden, every little vineyard. So much care, so much patience, it’s
something you can’t imagine.”
“It’s incredible. They have experienced two such ghastly tragedies, and it’s such a
small village that surely everybody knew each other, and yet they’ve never lost
their love for these little details.”
“And for people. Do you know that here I’ve never heard a word of hatred against
the Arabs? Not one, even if they’d have every right, because here everybody has
gone through a ghastly tragedy. Every family mourns the death of a loved one,
killed by a Palestinian terrorist.”
“What?”
“For example, Yosef Twito, a thirty-year-old neighbour of the Shabos’, he tried to
defend them and he was also killed. Neria, the Shabos’ fifteen-year-old boy, three

20
weeks before had escaped a night assault at the school where he studied and
slept. A Palestinian gunman killed three of his school mates, and Neria had
brought home his pillow with a bullet hole.”
“My God, and then he was also killed ... Yaron, tell me the truth, I beg of you! Are
you exaggerating? Are you trying to convince me and so you exaggerate? Because
it’s not possible that every family has been hit!”
“Sadly yes, Marina. Here in Itamar you can’t build a fence, as you can’t build one
either around all the other Jewish villages of Judea and Samaria surrounded by
Palestinian villages. It would mean imprisoning half of Israel in a tangle of wire
mesh. This is why every Jewish village is well guarded by soldiers, only they can
defend them. But obviously something every now and then escapes them, and the
Arab villages around take advantage. That's why it’s impossible, now, to think of
two states for two peoples. Judea and Samaria are in the centre of Israel and
make up 30% of Israeli territory, if they became a Palestinian state under all
effect, their army would attack us immediately and it would be virtually
impossible for us to defend ourselves.”
“But if you give them their land, why should they attack you?”
“Because they hate the Jews, they even hate our children, whether we give them
our land or not. Do you remember what I was telling you before, about the Gaza
Strip, that in 2005 10,000 Jews were exiled to leave the land to the Palestinians?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“Some Jewish families exiled from Gaza had come to live here. One of these was
the Fogel family, the first family of Itamar that I told you about, the one that was
exterminated six months ago by two Palestinian terrorists who slaughtered the
mother, father and three children. Do you remember I told you about little Hadas,
who was only three months old ...”
“Oh God, they had been exiled for the Palestinians, and they were killed by
them?”
“Yes. And in Gaza, once news had spread about the massacre, they celebrated in
the streets by giving sweets to children, because usurper colonists had been
killed, the thieves of their Palestinian lands.”
“Oh God Yaron, the same words that I used!” Marina hid her face in her hands
and then started crying. “You were right, Yaron, I should have at least continued
to have compassion ...”
He tried to say something to her yet she moved away alone, because she didn’t
want to be consoled. Yaron looked at her, sitting on the floor not far away,
embracing her legs and crying with her face on her knees. After a few minutes
Marina calmed down and went back to him. “Yaron, I want to do something, I
don’t know what, a gesture, anything ... I want to leave something here, a flower,
a stone, I don’t know, something of mine that shows I was here and I
understood.”
“Do you want us to pick a flower? You can leave it there, at that sign. Is that ok?”
“But then it‘ll wither. In Italy I want to think of something that’s mine that will
always remain here, a reminder, to show I’ll never be so nasty again.”

21
“You’ve never been nasty. After always hearing the same lies being repeated you
began to believe them, that’s normal.”
“Oh no, you were right. I should never have lost my compassion.”
“Little one, you found it again. You should be happy. You mustn’t cry.”
“Well ...” she dried her eyes with her hands. Yaron gave her a tissue but didn’t
dare even caress her shoulder.
“My watch, Yaron. I can leave my watch here.”
“Of course, that’s a beautiful idea.”
“And what’s more, when I want to look at the time – a thousand times a day –
when I don’t see it anymore I’ll remember Itamar.”
“That’s true, it’s a wonderful idea, you know. You’ll leave a memory of yourself in
Itamar and you’ll take its memory with you.”
They both went to the sign, where the other three were still chatting with the
soldiers because nobody had dared to enter the village, so as not to cause any
bother or fear. Eyal had only mentioned the massacres because the two girls were
so carefree that he had preferred not to sadden them. Maybe when they got back
home Marina would explain to them what Yaron must have told her, judging from
how serious she was as she approached the sign, shrugging her shoulders with
downcast eyes.
Marina knelt below the sign and, while Yaron explained in Hebrew to the soldiers
what she was doing, she unlatched her watch. A beautiful little watch with a very
small round metal dial, and a slightly worn leather strap. But she immediately
got up with tears in her eyes and said, “Yaron! The strap is too short, I can’t tie
it!”
“Come, in the jeep there are strings, ropes and chains of all types. Come and
choose what you want to attach to it so you can tie it up.”
Behind the rear seats there was anything and everything: sleeping bags, a
compressor, a ball, a battery charger, a large tool box with screwdrivers,
wrenches, nails, padlocks, bolts, twine, pieces of wire, and chains of all types,
from thin like necklaces to large and covered with transparent plastic.
“No, Yaron. Twine isn’t good, it’ll get ruined.”
“A piece of wire?”
“Well, but it’s really ugly, it’ll seem as if we hadn’t made a great effort.”
“These little chains?”
“I don’t know, it almost seems as if I’m putting there something really pretty.
Even the watch, I was looking at it earlier, it looks far too beautiful, too perfect.
How can I match it to a tragedy? At least the strap is ruined ... what do you
think?”
Yaron watched her carefully: she really cares about this, this choice is important
for her. In the compartment next to the steering wheel there were keys, gate
remote controls, flashlights, compasses. “Look here, Marina. I think this is
perfect.” He took a black compass attached as a pendant to an olive-green oilcloth
strap. “It’s my compass. I also think that the meaning is nice: you can leave it
here and you’ll never lose the way to come back.”

22
“Yes, that’s wonderful. And it’s yours, is it really yours? It’s not Eyal’s, or do you
both use it?”
“No no, it’s only mine.”
“Then we have to absolutely put it with my watch, because you explained all
these things to me with all your patience for the whole night, you wasted all your
time and rest for me, and without you I’d never have come to Itamar and I’d never
have found the good things that I’d lost.”
“Marina, I’m glad you found everything you were looking for. And I often pass by
here, this is the area that was assigned to me, and when I see your watch with
the compass I’ll think about this night and I’ll always remember, every time, how
beautiful it is to speak to you.”
Marina took his hand to give him the watch and to grasp his hand between hers.
Then they went back to the sign, they snapped together the buckles of the watch
and compass, and attached them to one of the two poles. They left them on the
grass and stood watching them in silence. Their heads were bowed, their arms
were folded, they were side by side.
When they returned to the jeep, Eyal got behind the wheel and Lucia got in next
to him. Paola, Marina and Yaron sat at the back, as in the first stretch of the
road. Paola and Lucia didn’t understand why Yaron and Marina had attached the
compass and the watch to the sign, they thought it was some superstitious habit,
like throwing coins into a fountain, and seeing them sitting quietly they thought
they were still angry as before, when Yaron was driving. So Lucia tried to liven up
the atmosphere and asked Eyal if she could try and drive, “Come on, let me try! A
military jeep, that’s cool! I’m the only one with a driver’s license here, the
nineteen-year old granny! You two little seventeen-year old girls ...”
“She is still sixteen. She’ll turn seventeen in the middle of the month. Isn’t that
true, Marina?” Paola interrupted her indicating Marina, who didn’t answer.
“But sorry, shouldn’t the two of you be going into the fifth year?” Lucia asked.
“Yes, but Marina went to school a year before,” Paola explained to her.
“And how old are you two?” Lucia asked Eyal, and the discussion continued
between the two of them.
“Yaron turned twenty in July, he only has one year left in the army. I’m like you,
I’ve just turned nineteen. My birthday was in August.”
“Me too! What day is your birthday?”
“The 23rd, and you?”
“Mine’s on the 17th, so you can leave the jeep in my hands without any problems!
I’m older than you!”
“And how much experience do you have behind the wheel?”
“I’m an excellent driver, Eyal, trust me ... Come on, please. Only for two minutes.
We’re not going to find a traffic cop around ...”
“Ok, two minutes. Go Lucia, the timer’s on.”
The jeep nearly reared at the start, then went to the centre of the road and
continued with a series of jerks, tremors and jolts.

23
Yaron spoke to his friend in Hebrew, “Eyal, they’ve got a point in Saudi Arabia,
don’t they?”
“They certainly have!” Eyal answered in their language laughing.
“Huh? What?” Lucia asked.
“Nothing,” Eyal replied in English, and the conversation between him and Lucia
continued in this language.
“Come on, I want to know in English why you were laughing before, otherwise it
looks as if you are criticizing me!”
“Never, Lucia!” Eyal exclaimed seriously.
“I want to know what you said, otherwise I won’t let go of the steering wheel until
the airport!”
“Ok, Lucia, relax! We were only saying that in Saudi Arabia they’ve got a point.”
“Meaning, Eyal?”
“Well, you know Saudi Arabia?”
“Yes ...”
“That they discriminate against women ...”
“Huh?”
“But don’t you know these things in Italy? What type of an emancipated feminist
are you, Lucia? Have you never paraded for the poor women oppressed by Islamic
regimes?”
“Go on with what you were saying, Eyal, don’t lose track. Come on, we’ll sort out
the other things later.”
“Well, maybe you don’t know, Lucia, but in Saudi Arabia there’s actually a law ...”
“Hmmm?”
“A ban.”
“Yes?”
“Lucia, in Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive!”
The explosion of protests by Lucia jeopardizes further the grip of the jeep until, as
the second minute ended, Eyal moved her bodily away, got hold of the steering
wheel and started driving again.
After a few kilometers he looked at Yaron and Marina in the rear-view mirror and
said in Hebrew, “What a pity.”
“What?” Yaron asked him in their language.
“That you won’t see each other anymore,” Eyal replied and, even if they had
spoken in Hebrew, Lucia didn’t protest because she understood that they weren’t
speaking about her. Yaron nodded, he sighed sadly and closed his eyes, then he
looked at Marina and they smiled at each other. Eyal saw them in the rear-view
mirror and said in Hebrew, “Who knows, maybe ...”, and then silence fell over the
jeep.
After a few kilometers, Eyal had an idea and said to everybody, “Listen, we’ll be
arriving at the airport in three quarters of an hour. There’s nothing to do there.
Let’s stop and stay here for an hour. All clouds have disappeared, at least we can
do something.”

24
But Paola didn’t want to and said, “And what are we going to do here? There’s
nothing! Let’s go back to Itamar!”
“I’ve got an idea, Paola. We’ve got a ball,” Eyal told her pointing to the back of the
car.
“For goodness sake, Eyal! Absolutely not!”
“But why, Paola? You are girls, but you’re still Italian!”
“Oh yes, ah! In fact you are boys, but how many world cups did you win, eh?
Lucia, Marina, let’s go give them a lesson!”
“Italy-Palestine, four-zero!” Lucia shouted.
“Israel-Italy, eight-zero!” replied Eyal and guessed well. In fact, as long as they
played alone against the two boys, the girls didn’t even see the ball. So they split
into the two usual groups: Eyal with Lucia and Paola, and Yaron with Marina.
After a while it ended as always: two girls at the goal posts, one girl refereeing,
and the two boys playing. Yet after half an hour, feeling compassion, they put an
end to the game.
“Wow, you’re really good, eh?” Yaron said to Marina.
“Yeah sure! I caught the ball only when he kicked really softly!”
“Well, it could’ve gone in all the same.”
“Are you pulling my leg?”
“A bit.”
“But now I’ll show you a cartwheel that not even in your dreams ... And then I
want to see if you’re able, you great athlete!”
“Great! Well done! No, I won’t even try, I know my limits. Not like some people
who claim to play football while being completely unable!”
Marina laughed and pushed him away. Yaron went towards the car and said to
her, “Let’s go to the jeep. There are binoculars, let’s see if the sky is the same as
in Italy. Here we are a little more to the east but maybe we aren’t much lower.”
“Great! Maybe we’ll also see some shooting stars!”
“But it’s already the beginning of September, it won’t be easy.”
“Did you see them, on August 10th?”
“Yes. Many went past, especially the slow and not very bright ones. Do you know
what I mean?”
“No ... In Italy we only see those sort of bright points, that drop quickly and
switch off immediately. Maybe what you saw were airplanes?”
“No, I’m sure. I managed to focus on one with the binoculars, and I followed it for
the whole time that it was travelling. It was like a smaller, more grey moon, it was
round and you could see the craters. It was the first and only time in my life that
I managed to see what the slow shooting stars are like. I think it was a meteorite,
with that shape and those craters.”
“I wonder what special wish you expressed with that star ...”
“Oh yes ...”
“And what was that wish?”
“I can’t tell you, otherwise it won’t come true,” he replied mysteriously with the
hint of a smile, while they arrived at the jeep and took the binoculars.

25
Then they chose a sandy area where to lie down. Yaron tried to indicate some
constellations to her and some reference stars, but Marina was unable to locate
them and said, “The moon is too bright! What a pity!”
“A real pity. It’s beautiful when there’s no moon, it’s full of stars. But we can see
the North Star very well, look,” Yaron told her, sitting up to look at the horizon.
“But is it so low?” Marina asked him, sitting up as well.
“Yes, here in Israel it’s almost at the bottom, on the horizon.”
“In Italy it’s much higher. Well not in the middle of the sky, eh!”
“Oh well, you can see it in the middle only in the North Pole!”
“Oh come on ... but of course! I’d never thought of that, you’re right, Yaron! It
points to the north, but you’re a genius!”
“The Genie.”
“What an idiot! And what star is that over there?”
“Oh, no, that’s a planet. It’s Jupiter.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, we have to study stars to orient ourselves ... as soldiers, one never knows.”
“And do you really use them?”
“Yes, to stay trained. Yet I hope I’ll never need them, ’cause if you have to orient
yourself with the stars, it means you’re really in trouble.”
They put the binoculars back into their case and continued to speak about
constellations, carefully avoiding the discussion of military risks, each one
embracing their knees. After a few minutes they heard a jingling that was getting
stronger and they saw a flock passing. “Yaron! Lambs! A donkey! Look, there are
also hairy sheep! Look at those, with horns and beards! They are goats! And the
dogs, look how they run around them, it’s amazing, they send them back into the
flock slowly, look!”
“You really are a city girl ...”
“Oh yes, you’re right, Yaron. You don’t find sheep in Bergamo!”
“Maybe you can find them where you live, seeing that there are places that look
like this, like the Upper City you were speaking about. Maybe you don’t see them
because they go past very early, like now.”
“I don’t know, maybe. But they are so beautiful! You must have seen so many
animals in this area!”
“Well, apart from sheep, little animals. Mice, frogs, the other day I rescued a toad
from the road.”
“Eww!”
“But you know how beautiful it was Marina? It looked like an alien, you know,
with that face without a nose. Look, I’ll show it to you on the cell phone because I
took a photo of it.”
“My God, it really has that face! The little face of an alien! It looks like a little
person. This is how the fairytale of the toad that became a prince after being
kissed must have come about!”
“And one day, last week, I saw an enormous porcupine. It was as big as a cat.”
“And have you ever seen a hedgehog?”

26
“Yes, I saw a whole family, right here in this area, on the road to Itamar. They
were magnificent, really, a thousand times more beautiful than the porcupine. All
round, trotting around, the two big ones in front with the row of little ones
behind. They also looked so soft.”
“Did you try to touch them?”
“No, I think they really prick.”
“I once took one in my hand and it didn’t prick me, maybe because it was small,
it must have been a young one. Poor thing, it finished up on the bicycle path just
outside Bergamo, so I took it to the little woods nearby, attached to the bicycle
path. I hope it’s ok now!”
“Of course, Marina. They seem to be intelligent little animals and, if the bicycles
frightened it, it won’t leave the woods anymore.”
“I hope so. I really care about it, you know? Because I always consider myself as a
hedgehog, so it consoles me because I tell myself that it’s true that I have a bad
temper, I’m closed, but also a hedgehog can live well, and others may also be
happy to come across one. There’s nothing wrong with being a hedgehog.”
“Of course not. Apart from the fact that you have a lovely character, Marina. A
hedgehog? Well, maybe everybody sees himself in a way that others don’t.”
“Yes, maybe that’s true.”
“We also get obsessed with our faults and they seem unforgivable to us, and yet
so many times the others don’t even see them.”
A plane flew past at a very low altitude and its roar made them tremble within,
and perhaps that was the plane that in a few hours’ time would take Marina back
home.
“It’s true, you know, Yaron? My mom always tells me that, when I have a pimple
and no foundation makeup can cover it.”
“A pimple? So you also give in sometimes to Nutella, eh?”
“Do you also have it in Palestine?”
“Palestine? Here we go again, eh?”
“Ok. Do you have Nutella, here, in the imperialist power that occupies Palestine?”
“Of course, Mrs Arafat! Don’t tell me that you didn’t notice, and that you’ve gone
without it for the whole time you’ve spent in our charming occupying power!”
“As a matter of fact, my dear occupation soldier, I’m in withdrawal and I’d love to
taste some as soon as possible.”
“I will definitely serve you some at the airport, my queen.”
“Hmmm, as soon as we arrive I’m going to gobble down a whole jar!”
“You’ll get more than a pimple, then.”
“You’re right, I have to resist! Just a teaspoon then!”
“I wonder why you girls eat Nutella with a teaspoon and not on bread.”
“That’s true. It’s a strict rule that nobody breaks, neither boys nor girls!”
“We have to carry out a scientific research.”
“We’ll be famous, Yaron!”
“Well then, if we see a shooting star we’ll know what wish to make: that our
research on Nutella wins the Nobel Prize for medicine.”

27
“Oh, but there aren’t any shooting stars, you were right, Yaron!”
“Well, we can pretend that that plane that just passed was a shooting star. What
do you say, Marina?”
“Cheating superstition?”
“Yes, just a bit.”
“Oh yes! What do we care, Yaron? If a star can make our wish come true, why
can’t a plane?”
“Certainly! Just two little nonsenses.”
“Come on, then. Dear plane that has just gone past, even if you know that we’re
cheating, I Marina ...”
“And I Yaron ...”
“We ask you to make our wish come true!”
“Perfect!”
“It’s done!”
In the meanwhile, the sky had become lighter and the plateau filled up with rays
of sunlight among the hills, as between small black silhouettes of cardboard on a
transparent background. The bells and bleating gave way to chirping, and among
these sounds Marina recognized the notes of a birdsong that she usually heard at
home in the early morning, in summer.
“So will you take home a beautiful memory of Israel?”
“Oh yes. You, Eyal, of course, but the nation ... don’t take it personally, but until
yesterday I couldn’t even pronounce that name.”
“Come on, I want to hear you say it.”
“I-sra-el.”
“Very good.”
“Anyway, it’s not that I don’t believe you. I can see that you are a sincere person, I
told you that ... and the things that you told me, even the worst ones, I’ll never
ever forget them, I promise you. Yet I cannot overturn everything that I’ve always
thought, give me some time. It’s not that I don’t trust you, don’t take it
personally.”
“Ok, I understand, nothing personal. But if you look back on these things we can
speak about it, is that ok? I’ll give you my e-mail address and we can speak to
each other on messenger, ok?”
“That’s wonderful, yes, certainly.”
“Well, here you are ... Ok, nothing personal, then.”
“I mean, it’s obvious that it’s a bit personal. You’re Israeli.”
“Indeed.”
“But it’s not personal like many other things.”
“Such as?”
“Things that are only yours and not of the nation!”
“That is?”
“Hey, are we playing a game of two syllables?”
“What?”

28
“Ugh, Yaron! I’m racking my brains to find thousands of words for a complex
question, also in English, and you answer me using two syllables at the most?”
“Ok.”
“Ah, so ... personally speaking, what team do you root for?”
“Beitar.”
“Two syllables. How is it, is there the name of the city after Beitar?”
“Yes.”
“And what is it?”
“Mine!”
“Great, you didn’t fall for it, one syllable! I hoped you’d say Jerusalem, four
syllables. Doesn’t matter, now let’s see ... what’s your favourite ice cream
flavour?”
“Coffee.”
“Two syllables. And ... are you engaged?”
“No.”
“One syllable! Hmmm ... me too!”
“What about you?”
“Ha-ha, you fell for it, four syllables! You’re curious, hey ... what would I answer
like you?”
“Do you root for Beitar?”
“Absolutely not! And those are six syllables. Ouch, Yaron, another mistake! Come
on, what will I answer the same as you?”
“Coffee?”
“Chocolate.”
“Marina, I’m sorry, three syllables.”
“You’re right, three! How did I let myself get fooled?”
“Alright then.”
“What’s alright?”
“The answer to the question.”
“What question?”
“The one we answered no to.”
“Hey, soldier! Don’t tell me you don’t have the courage to ex-pli-ci-tly ask me that
question!”
“Ok, then, my general. I’ll ask you the question. Are you engaged?”
“No.”
“Great.”
“Good.”
“Perfect.”
“Yaron, do we want to carry on indefinitely looking for words with a maximum of
two syllables?”
“Willingly.”
“Ha-ha, you made a mistake, three syllables!”
Yaron put his hand on her head to ruffle her hair, but his fingers got caught in
the knots.

29
“Ouch!”
“Sorry, Marina! But these things are terrible ... what are they? Medusa’s snakes?
Do you also have your protection fence? It’s an anti-endearment barrier, though!”
“Exactly, I’d never thought of that! That’s the exact definition of my hair, an anti-
endearment barrier.”
Yaron put his face close to hers and Marina saw how his eyes lit up and became
defenceless while he asked her why without speaking. So she pronounced,
pretending to joke, “Endearment is the first step towards the illusion of love, I
stay far from it and I’ll never get disappointed.”
“You’re right, sacred words.”
Marina saw him becoming serious and moving his face away. Now it was her turn
to mutely ask him an explanation, tilting her head to the side.
“My girlfriend has just left me. Almost two months ago, actually.”
“I’m sorry. Really, you don’t seem like someone who deserves that.”
“Well, I’ll make those things grow on me as well!”
“Go for it! It’s so easy, maybe you’ll find it difficult at the beginning because your
hair is very straight, but once it starts getting knotting, it’s done!”
“Is your hair wavy?”
“A bit ... incredibly curly, we can say! But at least it got all knotty almost
immediately and in about a month I had my wall ... oops barrier, not fence, how
must I call it?”
“Fence.”
“One syllable! ... No, it doesn’t make you laugh anymore! Please, I want to see
your dimples ... There you go, bravo! Come on, say other three syllables ...”
“You say them.”
“No, I asked first!”
“You say them.”
“No, Yaron! It was my idea, you say them first.”
“You say them.”
“Ugh, what are you, a parr ... ha ha ha! You-say-them! I didn’t get it at first,
you’re great! Now it’s my turn, uh, let’s see ... Cir-cum-spect.”
“Circumspect? What word is that?”
“Circumspect, careful, what you’ve seemed to be the whole time. Now I’ve
understood, you’ve got a broken heart, you poor thing, wham right in half.”
“So I’m circumspect. And where did you find that word? Did you make a mistake
with the translation or do you use words from the 1800s?”
“But it exists and people use it a lot!”
“Circumspect! Just look at the words I have to listen to.”
“But Yaron, you are amazingly ignorant!”
“In any case, don’t say I’m circumspect, dear Marina, you can say that to your
brother.”
“And you are also impolite!”
“Impolite! Straight from the Middle Ages, only for you ... Marina!”
“Im-po-lite! Impolite and circumspect!”

30
“The word circumspect is fantastic, I have to mark it down.”
“Yes, when someone pisses you really off ...”
“Circumspect shit-head!”
“Use it when someone really makes you mad ... your ex, circumspect bitch!”
“But how did this word come to your mind?”
“Nothing, I told you. You’ve given me this impression the whole time. With
whatever word you want to say it, it seemed to me as if you were afraid of getting
hurt once again.”
“That’s very true. Those are the exact words I would use to say it.”
“Well then, do like I do, with or without knots in your hair, be very careful to
avoid falling in love.”
“I can’t believe that you manage.”
“I assure you.”
“Obviously you’ve never met anyone with whom you get on really well.”
“Or maybe that someone will soon be so far that he won’t be dangerous any
longer.”
“It’s four hours away by plane, isn’t it? I’m not that far away ...”
“Then you are dangerous. I don’t want to have a broken heart as well.”
“I would never break it.”
They remained silent, sitting on the ground next to each other and Marina’s eyes
filled with tears. She pushed them back with the fists and she stayed like that,
with her elbows on her knees and her fists on her eyes. Yaron put his hand on
her head and caressed her slowly so as not to hurt her with her knots. “As soon
as I can I’ll come to Italy. I don’t know when I can go overseas being in the army.
I’ll find out and I’ll come and visit you as soon as I can.”
She turned her head to look at him, leaning her chin and cheek on her fists, “Well
... in a week’s time you won’t even remember me.”
“Won’t I? Try me.” He caressed her other cheek, the one which wasn’t leaning on
her fist, which was still a bit wet from her tears, and yet it was burning, “You’ll
see that I’ll always remember you.”
Marina removed her hand from under her chin and caressed his cheek as well,
“And me? I could break your heart.”
“We’ll put you to the test as well then.”
Marina smiled at him and nodded, and her face lit up as she repeated, “Ok. Let’s
put ourselves to the test. Ok.”
“Yes? Really? Truly?”
In the meantime, on the other side, Paola had been complaining for the past half
hour with Eyal. “Listen, it’s very late, we’re leaving from Megiddo at 7, we haven’t
slept a wink for two days and we’ve got so many things to do in Bergamo. If we
don’t get some sleep, we’ll pass out. Let’s go and call them, come on, also Marina
will be in need of some sleep.”
“Sleep? Did you see how they were looking at each other?”

31
“Ugh, Marina looks at everyone like that. I hope your friend doesn’t get any
illusions. Come on, let’s go and look for them and go to the airport to sleep for
two hours,” Paola insisted.
“Well, she didn’t look at me like that.”
“Are you jealous, Eyal?”
“A bit.”
“Oh thanks!” Lucia shot up and continued, “And what about us? You’ve had two
of us hanging around you all night.”
“Exactly, two of us!” Paola exclaimed and went on, “How come we didn’t think
about it, Lucia? We should’ve got another soldier! We could’ve got one at Itamar!
There was really a stunning one!”
“What is this? A supermarket? Plus those don’t move, they’re really on the front
line,” Eyal explained.
“Anyway, Eyal, if you’d had the occasion, you obviously would’ve chosen me,
wouldn’t you?”
“Come on, Paola! With me there’s affinity ...”
“Stop! Let’s change subject, girls. Let’s explore the Marina-Yaron story. Which one
of you knows Marina better?”
“Me, we’re in the same class!” said Paola.
“And why isn’t there hope, according to you?” Eyal asked her, and the
conversation continued between him and Paola.
“Because she never falls in love!”
“Never say never.”
“No no, Eyal, it’s a strict rule.”
“But maybe ...”
“Impossible! I know her really well and it’s never happened. And it will never
happen.”
“Amen. Then I’ll go and call them. It’s a pity though.”
When Eyal’s voice reached them, “Yaron! Marina! We have to go!”, the two of them
had been there embracing strongly only for five minutes. But when they got up,
they looked at each other and smiled and they felt really well, in peace, safe,
complete. “Wait, here,” Marina unlatched a thin bracelet and tied it onto his
wrist, “The string is made of leather, I found the little key on the floor near the
cycling path. I don’t know what it is, it must be the lock key of a bike. I’m sorry, it
doesn’t mean anything, but I don’t have anything else to leave you.”
“Wait, I’ll give you my dog tag,” Yaron took a small black string from his neck
with a little green bag with Velcro attached to it, from which he pulled a chain
with the military tag, and put it around her neck carefully moving away her hair
and keffiyeh. “There’s my name in our alphabet, and my serial number.”
“But can you give it to me without any problems?”
“I’ll tell them I’ve lost it.”
“You’ll be in trouble.”
“Doesn’t matter. The important thing is that you keep it.”

32
They reached Eyal hugging and they followed him to the jeep without detaching
themselves. They sat in the same places as the first time and her two friends
looked at them. Paola out the corner of her eye next to Marina, and Lucia turned
slightly on the front seat. Marina was wrapped in Yaron’s arms and was resting
her face on his heart, Yaron hid his face in Marina’s hair and was caressing her
back.
Eyal glanced at the two girls, at Lucia from the side and at Paola from the rear
view mirror, and the girls locked gazes, shrugging. He winked, and a giggle ran
through the jeep as it turned towards the checkpoint, where the soldiers on guard
recognized Eyal and allowed them to pass. Thus they started coasting the thirty
kilometers of fence that Eyal was speaking about when they had just met.
“Here is the famous fence, girls. Now’s the time to make your documentary.”
“And with what, Eyal? Our cell phones are all wrecked,” Lucia told him.
“I’ll give you mine, it takes beautiful pictures and the videos are quite long. Then
I’ll send you everything by e-mail.”
“Ok, thanks Eyal. Paola, will you do it?”
“No, Lucia, it’s right on your side. You film it!”
“But I’m a disaster with small keys, maybe nothing will come out.”
“Yes, but between me and the wa ... fence! Well, whatever it is ... I have, let’s say
an obstacle in the middle, Lucia.”
“Oh, yes. Romeo and Juliet, you may be beautiful but you’re not invisible,” said
Lucia turning toward Marina and Yaron, who burst out laughing and pressed
themselves back against the seats, so Paola could move past them and start her
report on the fence. But first with a professional voice she introduced a half-
minute clip on the Promessi Sposi, the Betrothed, who greeted the camera and
spoke to each other in Hebrew and Italian, yet even an Eskimo would have
understood them from how telling their looks and gestures were.
Paola started filming the fence and Lucia commented, “As a matter of fact this is
a wire mesh, you were right, guys.”
Yet after five kilometers they went past Qalqiliya, where the fence became a
cement structure, and Paola shouted into the cell phone, “Here is the wall!” and
started underlining all the hardships that it caused to the Palestinians.
However, very soon, after a kilometer, the wall ended and the mesh started again.
So Paola, always documenting everything with the cell phone, asked, “Eyal, what
you told us doesn’t make sense. Do the kamikazes try to get out only from that
kilometer of wall? It’s so short. Don’t they try to get around it and out of the
mesh, from this one and the one we saw before?”
“No, Paola, the problem here are the snipers. In that kilometer, the Palestinians’
homes are very close to the road, and bullets rain down from the balconies, only
onto the cars with yellow Israeli license plates, of course, not the ones with the
green Palestinian license plates. We had to build the wall in front of their houses
so that even you, my dears, didn’t get a bullet in the head.”
“Oh ...”

33
Paola continued filming the fence, and began excitedly recounting in Italian how
they had spent the past few hours, “Guys, brace yourselves! We were saved by
two Israeli soldiers!”
“Paola, I don’t know how much that could interest them.”
“Of course, Lucia, that won’t interest them. But you, girls from Montelungo,
prepare yourselves spiritually, take a deep breath, sit down, because I’m about to
film exclusively for you the two coolest guys on the planet! Eyal, sorry, if you can
just turn around for a moment ... and Yaron, if you can break away from your
sweetheart for just a second ...”
“Look, if you tell them in Italian, it’s going to be hard.”
“Ooh, we’re a little a sour, Lucia!” and the two friends continued their
conversation in Italian, without changing language.
“Hey, dear Paola, having this guy next to me all this time and seeing that he takes
absolutely no notice of me is not very gratifying.”
“Well, it’s not that it went much better with me, Lucia.”
“We’re becoming two sour spinsters.”
“Calm down hey, Lucia. I’m just under pH7, but you are already at pH2 my dear!”
“Miss delightful just spoke.”
“Oops, maybe it’s not nice to continue speaking in Italian, Lucia, it looks like
we’re laughing at them, if they don’t understand.”
“Come on, Paola, wake up. How can you say that he didn’t understand from the
beginning that we were dying for him? It’s just that he’s not interested at all.
Doesn’t matter.”
“It went well for Marina.”
“Well, I don’t know.”
“But how, Lucia? Lucky her!”
“Come on, Paola, can you imagine her tomorrow? Anyway let’s change subject,
she can hear us.”
“It seems as if she’s listening to something else ... a good looking guy and wham,
your best friends disappear, as if we had never existed.”
“Come on, stop it, Paola, imagine in the plane, poor thing.”
“That way she’ll learn not to fall in love. How many times did she piss us off with
this story that it could never happen to her!”
“Well, who knows, maybe she’ll forget him immediately.”
“I don’t think so, Lucia.”
“Neither do I ... Another wall! Eyal, what’s going on here? The wall again?”
“You must ask him in English, Lucia ...” Lucia asked him in English why there
was another wall and he repeated that it was a protection against the snipers,
because also here in Tulkarem the Palestinians’ homes were very near the road.
“Oh, but do they shoot every time they are near the road?” Lucia asked.
“It seems so,” replied Eyal, impassive as always. They continued to travel for
another half an hour coasting only a mesh and it was about 5.30 a.m. when they
arrived at the airport.

34
The girls were surprised because the airport, that only until a short time ago was
a military one, was very similar to the airport of Orio al Serio, in Bergamo.
As a matter of fact Paola exclaimed, “It’s just like Orio, with such a flat entrance,
like a big glass box!”
Lucia tried to involve Marina, “Let’s hope there’s a nice shopping mall next to it
like ours, hey Marina? The Megiddocenter!”
Yet Marina, embracing Yaron, shuddered because entering into the airport was
really a step toward leaving. “Well, I don’t think so, I don’t know, it’s just that I
remember Orio being so small, so little.”
“A little fraaaaagiiile!” Paola and Lucia sang in a chorus the romantic song by
Delta Goodrem.
“You two are so stupid,” said Marina to her friends as she hugged Yaron.
“Aren’t you going to consume this poor boy by hugging him so tightly?”
“Come on, Lucia, in any case, in an hour,” Marina told her lowering her head.
“Oh God Marina, don’t cry! I’m sorry ... come on, you’ll see him again.”
“And when, Lucia?”
“But soon, you’ll see. It’s so obvious how much he likes you.”
The two soldiers hadn’t understood a single word of Italian, but it didn’t take
much to guess why Marina was crying. Yaron stood in front of her, he took her
cheeks in his hands, he lifted her face and smiled at her. “Marina, we’ll see each
other soon, I promise you! Today I’ll find out immediately about coming to Italy,
ok?”
“Yes.”
“Come, there’s a nice little bar in here. Let’s all sit down and eat something, so
you can leave with a full stomach because maybe there isn’t even breakfast on
the charter flight.” They entered into the airport, and from the glass window in
front they could see the planes waiting to leave. Marina and Yaron stopped to
look at them and Marina said, “I wonder if one of these is the one we tried to pass
off as a shooting star.”
“Maybe it is, let’s hope it brings us luck.”
“What was the wish that you made to the shooting star, the real one, Yaron? The
slow one that you had followed with the binoculars and that you saw was a
meteorite.”
“The wish that has just come true,” he answered her while continuing to look at
the planes, because he was sure he would cry if he looked at her in the eyes, now
that he was already about to lose her.
Next to the glass window there was a little bar, and Paola and Lucia asked Eyal if
they could all sit together at a table, but Eyal would have liked to sit somewhere
else with the two girls and leave the two sweethearts alone. He said this to Yaron
and Marina, who were still standing in silence in front of the glass window, but
Yaron preferred them all to stay together because he had to leave Marina alone
for a minute while he went to the airport shop. “No, Yaron, I always want to
come!” Marina begged him, so as not to lose even a moment of the little time that

35
was left for them to be together. “Just a second, Marina, I’ll be right back. Order
also for me in the meantime, ok? Pita and falafel.”
“For breakfast?” asked the three girls.
“We didn’t have dinner last night,” Eyal answered also for Yaron, who was
entering the shop.
Paola and Lucia got all excited and started speaking to each other in Italian,
“They didn’t eat? They did it for us? How nice!”
“Do you realize how incredibly nice these two boys are? Too wonderful!”
“How sweet!”
“Not only did they save us and escort us all the way here, but they didn’t even
have dinner just to be our drivers!”
After ordering, Marina, who had not opened her mouth since Yaron had gone,
translated for Eyal the discussion on their kindness, the kindness that the girls
were still commenting about with their How wonderful! How sweet! How nice! and
Marina added, “What romantic girls, aren’t they, Eyal?”
He replied, “Whoever would have thought that, with that hair?” and he winked at
her. Marina burst out laughing and played with her dreadlocks while the two
girls, who weren’t listening to them, carried on chirping.
At that moment Yaron returned, and Eyal said to him in Hebrew, “Italian squeals,
you’re going to have to get used to them.”
“Cretin.”
“Hey? What did you say? Was it in Hebrew?” asked Marina.
“Nothing, my dear friend Yaron always has kind words for me.”
Pita and falafel arrived for the boys, cappuccino and croissants for the girls. Lucia
and Paola spoke in Italian, trying to involve Marina as well because they could
see that she was becoming sad, but she was staring at her croissant to keep back
the tears and didn’t take part in the speech.
“Marina and Paola, I’m informing you that in Italy I never want to see a fried
croquette!”
“Lucia, Marina ... if I see even one single, miserable chickpea, I’m going to die.”
“Choked on a chickpea!” Lucia exclaimed, always in Italian.
“Let’s speak in English, come on, Lucia,” Paola told her.
“Yes, you’re right. Sorry, we were making not very flattering comments on your
food,” Lucia told the boys in English, but Yaron didn’t get involved in the
conversation either, and he stayed silent like Marina staring at his plate.
So the conversation continued in English among Lucia, Paola and Eyal,
“Obviously, in Italy you are too well accustomed.”
“Well, we eat better, Eyal, that’s true. But maybe also healthier food. I think that
I’ll digest the food I ate here in a week’s time. What do you think, Lucia?”
“Five days of chickpea croquettes and cream of chickpeas. Heavens above, Paola,
how did we survive?”
“And how can we forget the cream of eggplant, Lucia?”
“Which is exactly the same as the one of chickpeas, Paola!”

36
“I absolutely agree with you, girls. I’ve been eating them for almost twenty years
and I still haven’t managed to distinguish them,” Eyal said.
“Anyway, in five days I threw out of the window three months of extreme Dukan,”
Lucia said.
“Extreme Dukan?” Eyal asked her and the discussion continued between the two
of them.
“The Dukan diet, Eyal, haven’t you ever heard of it? You practically eat only
proteins, which don’t get transformed into fats as sugars do.”
“And the extreme one?”
“Only bresaola, a dried beef.”
“And nails.”
“Oops, Eyal , you noticed?”
“How couldn’t I, Lucia? You look like a squirrel, always with those little hands.”
“Well, I tried putting on those revolting nail polishes, but at the end I ate those as
well.”
“Try putting on the chickpea cream.”
“Oh, yes, then I’ll really stop! Come on, let’s take some photos, otherwise we’ll
just have the video with the wa ... fence, barrier, whatever it is! My cell phone
takes terrible photos, can we use yours again, Eyal?”
“And let’s ask those soldiers to take some of us altogether,” Paola said.
A complete photo shoot took place in which each one of the five was
photographed alone, in a group, and together with one of the others.
Eyal started speaking to Lucia again, “Two by two, ten photos.”
“Eyal, has your mathematic mind started?” she asked him.
“If you want, I can calculate how many we’ll get if we all have a photo taken in
different groups and not always with the same number of people, my dear Lucia.”
“How sweet of you, Eyal! And above all very useful!” and she added in Italian, “If
you want, I can calculate how much time we should have spent clinging to each
other in the car so that you could have taken notice of me, hey, my dear
intelligent one!”
“What, Lucia?”
“Come on, Eyal, you understood perfectly well!”
“Uh, I’ll go and get the cards.”
“What? What’s that got to do with it?”
“With what you are saying, I don’t know, seeing that it was in an unknown
language to me.”
“In an unknown language to you ... wow, I really like you!”
“I like you too.”
“You wouldn’t say, you don’t show all this great enthusiasm.”
“You’re wrong, it’s sky high.”
“You should’ve been a comedian, did you know that? You’re too impassive! You
really make me angry but you make me laugh so much! Come on, go and get the
cards and we’ll have a match of briscola!”
“Briscola?”

37
“You don’t have it here in Palest ... Israel, whatever it is?”
“Briscola? Yaron, ever heard of briscola?”
“Briscola? No.”
“Well guys, let’s play poker then, no?” Paola asked.
“Yes, that’s great,” said Eyal, and Marina asked, “I’ll play with you, Yaron, ok? I’m
totally unable. And maybe, Eyal, if your cell phone still has some space we can
film ourselves a bit more, so we can have something else to remember.”
“Perfect, Marina. Of course it’s still got some space, here, do you know how to use
it or shall I explain it to you?”
“Oh, well then it depends on the girl sitting next to you!” Lucia teased him, and
she and Eyal continued speaking to each other, “What, Lucia?”
“Your degree of grumpiness ... grumpity, whatever it is! With beautiful Marina all
very considerate, with poor Lucia a grumpy asshole!”
“You’re not bad.”
“What?”
“I like you.”
“Hey? And you say that now? With our plane taking off in less than an hour?”
“Yes, if you come back to Israel give me a call.”
“Lucia, your cheeks are burning!” Paola interrupted.
“I realized, dear Paola, without you having to underline it!”
“But I said it in Italian, Lucia.”
“Yes yes, in Italian ... this one here understands everything, I tell you, Paola!”
Eyal went to get the cards and they played some games and made some short
videos, and at the end Lucia exclaimed, “Eyal, thank heavens we weren’t betting
any money, otherwise you’d have ruined us all! Wow, he won all of them, guys,
can you believe it? Eyal, you should go and play those professional games, the
world championships, where they win millions. You’d definitely win!”
“Don’t get offended Lucia, but you aren’t exactly dangerous opponents,” Eyal said
to her.
“No, of course not, but I’m not joking, you really are a statue, it’s impossible to
understand what you have in your hands! Try and sign up for the Palesti ...
Israeli championships ...”
“Whatever it is,” Eyal said before she did.
“Isn’t he nice, Marina? Nice and impassive,” Lucia asked Marina in Italian, and
the two continued their discussion in that language.
“And he’s also handsome and impossible, Lucia.”
“What, Marina? Like the song of Gianna Nannini, of course! How come we didn’t
think of it?”
“I thought about it immediately ... for Yaron, ah! I would never dare to think
about your Eyal.”
“Don’t tell me that you’ve been aiming at him since last night! Just look at that
little angel face, how mischievous ...”

38
“Translate,” Eyal came back into the discussion with his usual calmness, and
Lucia answered him in English, “Oh, Eyal, you may be nice but it seems as if you
order me about, like a dog! Sit! Stay! Bravo! Foot! Paw!”
“I repeat, if you come back to Israel, give me a call.”
“Maybe a please would be nice, yet you drive me crazy! Hey Marina, Paola, what
do you think? Are we made for one another?”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Ah, Paola, you jealous thing! And then I’m the pH2 spinster, eh?”
The bar radio was playing a beautiful, cheerful, choral song and Marina, who had
put aside the idea of leaving thanks to Lucia’s conversation, was so enthusiastic
and spoke about it to Yaron, “What a beautiful song, I’ve never heard it before!
Yaron, do you know it?”
“Yes, it’s Ma Rabu by Maccabeats.”
“Maccabees?”
“Almost, Macca-beats.”
“It’s lovely with the chorus, it fills you with happiness, and they make their voices
sound like instruments! Would it be on iTunes?”
“Yes, there’s the whole album, Voices from the Heights. Get all the songs, Marina,
because they’re all so beautiful.”
“This one is really incredible, do you like it, girls?” Marina asked her two friends.
“Yes, it’s really nice, so cheerful ... is it in your language?” Lucia asked Eyal.
“Yes, it’s in Hebrew.”
“And what does it talk about?” Marina asked. “It brings to my mind a reindeer
running in the Grand Canyon with Kilimanjaro in the background!”
“You are unique, Marina ... how can it make you think of a reindeer?” Yaron
asked her, and the discussion continued between them.
“It’s a kind of marabou, isn’t it Yaron?”
“No, that’s an ostrich, the reindeer looks like a caribou.”
“Oh, yes, then I should imagine an ostrich running.”
“Well, more than an ostrich or a reindeer, it’s Kilimanjaro in the background of
the Grand Canyon that I have difficulty in imagining.”
“Oh yes, when it says like Kenyon ever, it sounds like Canyon and Kenya ...
You’re pulling my leg, aren’t you? You’re terrible, Yaron! You know very well the
meaning of these words, and the reindeer, the ostrich and the canyon have
absolutely nothing to do with them, eh?”
“As a matter of fact ...”
“And what does it say?”
“They are two separate words, ma-rabu. They are a prayer, a psalm, that speaks
about how great the marvellous things that the Lord does are.”
“A prayer, how beautiful, but I’m sorry to abandon my running reindeer.”
“No, why? Maybe it’s running and praying at the same time, with its ostrich
friend, in the Grand Canyon with Kilimanjaro in the background.”

39
“Sure! They definitely sing about the Lord’s marvels, with all that beautiful nature
around, happy, together ... my God, Yaron, I can’t believe that I’m already about
to lose you.”
“No, that’s not true, Marina, we’ll see each other soon, I promise you.”
“Very soon?”
“Very soon!”
“At least, we’ll be on skype all day, won’t we?”
“Uh, no, unfortunately the only way we can speak to each other, at the military
base, is by writing. We’ll use messenger, ok?”
“But we’ll whisper!”
“But there are many of us in the dormitory, we really can’t.”
“Then, we’ll always keep in contact on messenger?”
“At night, ok? I can’t during the day. I’m sorry, I’m already disappointing you ...
We’ll sort out the time differences and then we’ll speak to each other every night,
ok?”
“Ok. And you’re not disappointing me, I waste my time at home all day, but
you’ve got more important things to do, I see that. Help, Yaron, how am I going to
manage without you, now?”
“Marina, we’ll see each other soon, believe me.”
“Yes.”
“So, Marina, I got you a little present. There isn’t much of a choice there, but I
found just what I was looking for.”
“A bracelet! Thank you, it’s stunning! The pendant is just how I like it: flat on the
wrist, attached to the chain in two points! And how beautiful, it’s a sprig. I love
looking at the panorama through the sprigs, how did you know?”
“The little pendant is in the shape of a sprig, but it’s really a sentence written in
Hebrew letters.”
“What’s written?”
“Ani ledodi vedodi li, it’s a phrase from the Song of Songs.”
“Is this also a prayer?”
“Yes, it means I’m my beloved’s and my beloved is mine.”
Marina started crying again and Yaron went for a stroll with her alone, he
embraced her and didn’t know how else to console her, “Listen, my little star, I
also got you these two things, a t-shirt and a sweater. Because I need to take
back my military jacket, seeing that I lost my dog tag.”
“Oh, sure, sorry ... How lovely, they are really wonderful.”
“There was no choice for the sweater, but in any case anything looks lovely on
you, even this poor grey sweater. I hope I got the size right. The others were really
terrible, shocking yellow and green, they were ok if you need to change a wheel on
the highway.”
Marina dried her eyes and cheeks with the tissue that Yaron had given her in
Itamar, and concentrated on the new t-shirt so as not to cry. “Thank you, it’s
beautiful, and this is my favourite colour, halfway between light pink and orange,
how did you know?”

Love Beyond The Fence

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