Peace-It's a BOR
Bearfield, Lev
PEACE-IT'S A BOR "3* LEV BEARFIELD Shimon wants that saddle. He kne^s ??· hasn'l any earthly use for it, but still. Just the idea of loping buck into camp with that saddle slung over his shoulder....
...Although he has not been asked, the Israeli lieutenant explains that he and his companion have been making a routine sweep ol 10 or 12 kilometers through the nearby wadis...
...End) tourist passport, mainly West German and Scandinavian, receives close inspection and a smudged stamp with a steel engraved stamping device...
...You'd need a camel-bag for a seat...
...He doesn't know why he says this, especially since it is untrue: perhaps it's an attempt to even things out...
...But will the Israelis come by for lea in ihe afternoon...
...They grin grimly as they pass, neither willing to interrupt his rhythm, neither wishing to intrude on the other's concentration...
...The medic hauls himself off his bunk and prepares chlorine tablets for the water...
...A non-smoker, he declines to take the matchbox as a gift, ??^^ A third Egyptian officer now enters the tent and is introduced as Captain Alt...
...Every-on« thinks it's hotter than it is...
...At least it would give the men something to talk about...
...Stamping and blowing like horses, they hug themselves, jiggle their ankles...
...but like the saddle in the tree, the matter nags at him...
...though without fruit or leaf: ossified in twisted agony, calcium white, a veritable ghost of a tn The sight depresses Shimon and makes him vaguely nervous But Nadav, kibbut/nik and nature-lover, takes several pictures of it...
...Back home he could use it as a footstool...
...The Egyptian says he's seen some ravens on the hills...
...Nobody can...
...The moonlight laves over the granite rubble like thick cream...
...Shimon says ha-ha, yeah, lieutenant, everyone knows that...
...Huts and tents are kept shipshape and precisely rigged: pathways are clearly marked uith whitewashed stones...
...Nadav simply can't gel used to it...
...The lieutenant shakes his head...
...Nadav casts about for something else...
...The Israeli says he's seen them too...
...The deserted Bedouin encampment offers few other souvenirs...
...This one's a fig...
...The Israelis—and surely their Egyptian counterparts too— are in danger of falling victim to that malaise known as Bedaub,m, a disease known lo every army ia Sinai since the legions of Vespasian...
...Moshe is reading a translation into his native Georgian of The Red and the Black He reads slowly, welting his thumb as he turns each page...
...120-mm mortar...
...the water lorry arrives...
...Then he invites Nur and his comrades for morning tea...
...The other men clean their spotless and u?IIred rifles, wash clothing, do/e on their bunks...
...The two soldiers rest a while under the palms, eat the tangerines they've brought along in their grenade pouches, then push on down the canyon...
...The question surprises and amuses ihe Israelis, but each is asked in turn and quite solumnly if he is considered a European or an Oriental Jew...
...The sentry is tired but restless after so many hours bundled and belted into his anorak, and despite the frost on the ground he decides to go for a run...
...v *»' i -Se h .Affusual the conversation has begun—according to the rules—in English...
...Another caller asks if marriage between observant and non-observants Jew s can work...
...Anything a Bedouin places in a tree is stashed for safekeeping...
...The cook is going over the next day's menu...
...Everyone slides away from the .subject with the platitudes about no more war, the virtues of peace, and so on...
...This last of course is what the reservists will talk about most when they return home to their families...
...She could turn anything into a planter...
...Shimon in fact considers all of Sinai stupifyingly dull...
...and one must purchase a pass if he wants to get there today...
...Ashkenazi or Sephardi, Nur wants to know...
...There they transfer to Egyptian huses tor the visit to the .nonastery...
...Each of the three inscribed rocks is accompanied by a curious symbol, a circle with a "iggly line growing up from its apex...
...This saddle has not been abandoned...
...The Israelis raihcr uncon-vincingly minimize the difference...
...Trouble is, it's all been done alreads...
...Now- there's nothing on the radio but Arab music from Egypt and Saudi Arabia...
...Luis and Moshe are engaged in an intricate match game, and everyone watches, listlessly...
...The Egyptians are processing a busload of polyestered pilgrims from the Israeli sector...
...Shimon thoughtlessly suggests that the victim was Captain Ali's brother...
...Since the wind has risen, they are invited to take tea inside the officer's tent...
...Shimon, small-time capitalist and city-dweller, thinks things must be pretty dull if you take pictures— expensive color slides no less—of a dead tree...
...Ihe Rails...
...Haim and Moshe tag along...
...Alt is new to the Israelis and possibly new to the region: he certainly seems new to the rules as he launches into an unprecedented amount of candid autobiography 1 Ic was an orphan from Alexandria, he says, but thanks to the Egyptian government he and his brother received a proper upbringing and education...
...Ali himself is a primary school teacher...
...Mubarak begins the conversation by thanking the Israelis once again for the backgammon set which they'd lent them the other day...
...And it's noveen...
...They move on down the wadi...
...But the sentry thinks this is a buhbe meise...
...Around 3 p.m...
...I.eft behind in haste, after this tribe «as evacuated from the new Ras Muhammad-El Arish interim border'' Possibly...
...Well, the Egyptians hold Santa katarina now...
...A half-hour later, coming down the creekbed...
...J^* The real reason for putting off the visit to the Egyptians is to have the comfort of knowing there will be something to do later in the day...
...Of course, fine, thank you very much, you're welcome, thank you...
...Another hour and they're just . beginning to sweat faster than the air can dry it on the skin and they come to more trees, this lime a pair of scrubby palms and a sure sign of water...
...If this is peace...
...you Israelis like the Russians...
...Even as a planter...
...This is a first for the Israelis...
...Cigarettes are exchanged and each side lights the other with elaborate courtesy...
...There is virtually nothing to do...
...Someone says there is no rush about any thing in Sinai and everyone laughs...
...Radio reception in Sinai is best at night...
...Who wrote these rules, anyway...
...Diplomats...
...But the main intent behind this compul...
...This is all demonstrative of course because that foreign army is watching...
...he asks Nur what Egypt's hopes for the Olympic (iames are—or were...
...a Over lunch Nadav reports on his morning reconatssance patrol...
...They are surprised to find that a military tent which can sleep eight or more is given over to Iwo beds...
...They're neither Hebrew nor Greek: possibly Nabatcan or some proto-Arabic script...
...The sign could refer to the r watering hole...
...Two kilometers farther on they sight another tree...
...In between meetings the troops must kill lime, and Sinai with its staggering expanse of emptiness is a place where time is impervious to the pinpricks of man...
...Or did military college figure in there somewhere...
...Reading seems to demand too much concentration...
...He returns his equipment to his tent, changes his boots for tennis shoes, and takes off down the road...
...According to Nadav's map there is a water hole in this narrow section of the canyon and indeed they find it, about a half-meter across and 30 centimeters deep...
...John Wayne on a camel...
...He doesn't dare ask...
...Nur is pleased if somewhat pu/zled by this intelligence: Nur means light in Arabic...
...Because they send you so many Jews, yes...
...He says it has not yet been put into service, bul does nol explain why...
...O his wife would place it out on the balcony and use it as a planter...
...they want lo get hack lo their base and shower, and the Egyptians have these tourists to finish with...
...It's good to hear you boots crunching through the shingle good to get the exercise, even on a pointless patrol...
...Standing opposite ihe beds is a full-sized refrigerator, in which the 1 traelis express great interest, the courtly Egyptian lieutenant, whose name is Mubarak, proudly shows off the refrigerator, grandly opening the doors and pointing out its features as in a television commercial...
...Toy chest for a desert child...
...if anyone took that saddle, ha-ha...
...Hands arc pumped and the now familiar elaborate greetings are exchanged...
...BOR in fact is the designation of - | this Israeli outpost...
...Bui does that mean the Bedouin won't be coming back for that saddle'.' It's crazy, but Shimon can't stop thinking about that saddle...
...He tells of the legendary Yosepha, girl parachutist who once landed atop a telephone pole...
...His brother was studying law...
...a grandmother's tale calculated to keep him alert through the night...
...Nur says the Egyptians have been training a very strong swimming team, and have some good runners...
...fuel barrels arc freshly painted and labeled, sandbagged and fenced...
...That's the code...
...Officially Israel no longer has a southern front...
...In the morning the sun breaks over the High Range and turns Mount Sinai lavander and rose...
...Still, he can't take his eyes from il, that bone-white saddle, surreal in the fork of an acacia...
...Everyone busies himself, with an embarrassed smile, by toying with his empty lea glass...
...And then what...
...But as the two dusty Israelis approach, the Egyptians drup everything and rise...
...Lev Heurfivltl is the pen name tor an Israeli journalist...
...After a supper of fried eggs and * * potatoes, the men are reluctant to leave the kitchen: at the close of such a long and lazy day no one much feels like returning to his ,bunk...
...As they return to their side of the invisible interim border...
...but unfortunately was killed in battle...
...Some more Egyptians arrrive outside in a Jeep—a brand-new American Willys, the Israelis are quick to note...
...In practical terms this means processing the occassional tourists to Santa Katarina...
...That debate goes on until the station shuts down...
...Nadav is excited, for he's never ¦ roles s seen anything like these writings...
...Ali says, proudly, 20 years...
...Now they've broken another rule by talking politics—the Order of the Day in Hebrew says nopolitika...
...the whole peace process might crumble...
...avoid prowcatzia—and so they delicately draw hack...
...Within 20 minutes it comes into view...
...Haim announces that he is an eighth-generation native of Safad...
...One of the most common of the numerous unfinished sentences muttered around the camp is...
...According to Nadav's regional commander, the Egyptians are to be considered no different from Australians, say, or Norwegians...
...Luis, born in Buenos Aires, is dozing with a copy of Cuentos...
...The Israelis beg off...
...but this is under the folded battle jacket he's using as a pillow...
...sive activity has been to pass the long hours and days in the silent cavity of time in the desert...
...tiesrShimon is burning to know where the brother was killed...
...Nadav talks about a certain fellow in his paratroop unit whose fingers had to be pried loose from the doorway on his first jump...
...Under the Camp David accords, this is Israel's major interim withdrawal until the final pullback in April 1982...
...Shimon says nothing about the saddle in the tree...
...It's a fine, day...
...In civilian life the sentry is no jogger, but now he's fired by pent-up energy and by the sharp morning air...
...The trail narrows, then eventually widens as the canyon walls fall back, and the hikers find themselves coming out on the main road This road is actually a stony pathway which the Israelis have bulldozed from Dahab on the Red Sea coast into the interior orthc Peninsula...
...Nadav, in a garrulous mood, is reminiscing to no one particular about his early days in Nahal, the fighting pioneer youth...
...Like most sabras, Haim prefers to read the sporting papers—when he can get them—or nothing at all...
...You must take your-M-16 along, but it's forbidden to carry it loaded...
...Two officers—one an athletic young |^ *mait in Italian running shoes, the other older, mustachioed, dignified in bearing—are performing their clerical duties at a folding kitchen table set up outside a bright orange hto tent...
...Get Thee Back to Goshen,' " Nadav ignores him, changing filters and snapping away...
...Each has crisp sheets and embroidered woolen rugs folded at the fool...
...The lieutenant and the athletic young sergeant who is called Nur seat (he Israelis around the table on plastic kilchen chairs...
...Nadav can approximate what is going on in the young private's mind, and so he lecture* him (ightlv...
...very wise man...
...It isn't really a saddle, more a saddle-frame: bone-white carved wood with a tin covering hammered over the high pommel...
...open on his chesi...
...The Israelis have known boredom in uniform before, but never anything like this...
...The stars glitter in their cold pastels...
...He has fought in Sinai no I than four times...
...The Israelis, whose army stilt shows characteristics of its guerrilla foundation, have made this BOR outpost uncommonly neat...
...A figure is coming toward him...
...But even this is hard to remain excited about: the meetings are artificially warm, oddly formal...
...But had his ancestors come from elsewhere...
...years later he was named Israel's chief of staff...
...Like John Wayne...
...Possibly...
...The guard rouses himself and helps with the filling of the camp's water tanks...
...by the Chilean novelist Jose Donoso...
...He admits their football players are nol up to European level of play...
...Il would be a wonderful conversation piece...
...as one wag called it, the world's largest ashtray, but the Israelis assiduously harvest their cigarette ends every day...
...It's Nur, in running shoes and full sweatsuit...
...A warning comes over the phone to be on the look-out for a local Bedouin suspected of having stolen an M-16...
...Nadav reveals that he sometimes teaches on his kibbutz and asks Ali how much education he's had...
...The men express polite interest in the ancient inscriptions by the water hole, but Nadav knows that tomorrow it will again be difficult to recruit more than one or two to hike the wadis with him...
...What is wrong with her, the sentry wonders...
...Again the Israelis arc su prised...
...The Egyptians greet them with hand-pumping and warm welcomes in Knglish...
...This is peace...
...But he doesn't speak these questions aloud...
...A recruit in an off-white uniform brings in a tray of sweet mint tea, mango juice, and tinned biscuits...
...It reminds him of a spermatozoon...
...on pain of death...
...How he wishes he could have lugged it hack into camp on his shoulder...
...You may remove a magazine from your pouch only if you are fired upon "in a hostile manner," and even then you are to return fire only in the direction of the enemy's legs...
...Various things now happen lo Nadav's face, resolving finally into a kind of blushed cheeriness...
...After completion of three years' regular army service beginning at age 18...
...The," Tire extinguisher and sand and water pails stand at the ready just as shown in the field manual...
...The guard, sitting in the kitchen and staring at the blue gas ring, is listening to a midnight telephone talk show on the army radio station...
...the unarmed recon patrols which are little more than nature hikes, and chitchat between troops of the opposing sides...
...Inside are some rusted keys and a plastic baby bottle...
...Today tourist vehicles use it to reach the lin> airport near the Santa Katarina range...
...No, we're glad President Sadat sent the Russians out of the Middle East...
...Ashkenazi or Sephardi...
...This time by some secret signal they halt, shake hands...
...Perfect...
...the early morning air crisp and piquant, the heartless heat of high summer still months away...
...Each then trots off on his separate way...
...The lack of intimacy is reinforced by the prohibition against discussing anything military—the most immediate common experience— and the rule that all contact must be conducted in English...
...The Israelis cheerfully admit the same Now one of those loud lulls falls on the conversation...
...Or since this canyon joins up with Wadi Katarina, it could have been a marker for travelers to the monastery...
...Still, il would be nice to haul it back into camp...
...And so the official Israeli view is thai the troops facing them across this interim line today are a foreign, but not enemy, army...
...And he talks about the lighting he's seen, from the Sinai Campaign of 1956 up through the Yom Kippur War where in one trench hattle he participated in the dispatch of an Egyptian who was killed four times over: once with a burst from Nadav's Uzi, once from a grenade thrown by the man behind Nadav, then with a blast from that man's assault rifle, and yet again by a bayonet thrust from the last man in Kladav's squad...
...hands are cupped intimately around flames to protect against nonexistent gusts of wind...
...What is wrong with me, she asks...
...Shimon wonders why everyone laughs at these ¦promises...
...Seventeen years younger than his lieutenant, Shimon has not fought in any wars...
...Shimon laughs...
...Nadav * and Shimon turn up this roadway now and head back toward their camp.Before they reach it, however, they must pass through the Egyptian checkpoint...
...It's driven by the Bedouin who has the eoncesion for both armies...
...Maybe it was in the fighting in Yemen: everyone knows the Egyptians took heavy losses there...
...One man sits at the puard post, his web belt dangling open, in the eventuality of visitors: at hest one tourist vehicle may pass by...
...The men spend a lot of time on the cots, staring at the ceiling...
...Walking is easy enough over trie shale-studded sand, shrapnel from the primal bang...
...The sentry takes a turn outside...
...The Bedouin drives away, grinding down the rocky road in a cloud of gray talc The silence returns-^^ Lale in the afternoon Nadav and Shimon leave 10 keep their date with the Egyptians...
...H Yet it's something of a bore...
...Instead, he exchanges a few thoughts on pedagogy, and they agree that schoolchildren everywhere must be As Nadav and Ali trade geniali...
...But now they're slipping into Arabic, which almost all the Israelis know...
...Nadav falls silent...
...Mubarak wants to know...
...At night, as in daylight, nothing here moves, or grows, or makes a sound...
...It's all very bizarre But he's happy enough to be hiking down this canyon...
...Why on earth did God create all this granite, anyway...
...Nur says they'll be pleased to come...
...Some strips of filthy cloth, some ration cans—Israeli goulash and Egyptian mango juice—scraps of rope, a goat's leg...
...Nadav thinks...
...Israeli men generally serve 35 days of annual reserve duty until age 50...
...Nadav is startled: I 2 years of public schooling, eight of university...
...The emply appliance is a Consul brand, not made in Egypt, Mubarak admits, but in Brazil It is powered by a kerosene motor...
...According to Camp David, each side along the temporary frontier is to maintain Border Observation and Reconnaissance...
...Moshe points out that Ali never specified in which war his brother had died...
...Even the smallest tasks, like shaving or washing pots, become chores of intimidating proportions...
...He assures them it will be returned soon: one of his men has been instructed to bring back a sheshhesh set on return from his current leave in Cairo, The Israelis assure the Egyptians there is no rush...
...J These patrols are crazy too...
...Any unauthorized personnel are to be halted or apprehended "without the use of weapons...
...that would have made everyone The mid-day meal, Mediterranean-style, is the main meal of the day Afterwards it's siesta-time, though it's hard to distinguish the official rest period from any other part of the day...
...Nur observes that Shimon's Arabic sounds very Cairene, and Shimon allows thai his mother was born there...
...As of January 25 this year, Sinai was divided up the middle from Ras Muhammad al its southern tip to El Arish...
...This is partly for the tourists, partly genuine, partly by the book...
...Haim has a Defence Ministry Knapsack Library paperback of Oscar Wilde's tales in llehrew...
...near Gaza...
...The Egyptians agree...
...the Israeli sees the Egyptian approaching again...
...It would be easy enough...
...To his own surprise Shimon hears Ihimself say that his brother too was killed in the war...
...The Egyptians beam—yes, aren't our wadis wonderful?—and invite the Israelis to stay for tea...
...The language of compromise...
...A bit farther on they find an Israeli ammunition crate...
...Well, from Russia...
...It's an ancient Hehrew word for light, he explains...
...Ten o'clock...
...One caller insists that she is a "truly modern girl," but finds herself resenting advances if she invites a chap in after a date for coffee...
...Nadav mentions that Israel's match manufacturer is called Nur, and points lo the word in English on his matchbox...
...Civilians...
...I very one sleeps »great deal...
...The Sinai desert may be...
...It's hard to be a sentry in Sinai w hen it's been declared officially that Israel no longer has a southern front...
...About a half-kilometer away is a narrow creekbed of hard-packed sand which is fine for running...
...Moses Was Here,' " Shimon wisecracks...
...But whether they were patrolling the beaches, guarding border kibbutzim, or manning the "open bridges" over the Jordan River between the West Bank and the Hashemite kingdom, reservists always had the proximity of danger to undercut the numbing routine...
...On the southern front this is no longer true...
...The visit comes to an end with the usual gay promises to visit Tel Aviv and Cairo...
...But more interesting arc the inscriptions on the canyon wall...
...Not getting entirely free of politics, no more than the stones of Sinai can...
...No other nomad would dare take it...
Vol. 5 • May 1980 • No. 5
