Nablus Patrol

February, 1988
  Ilan woke up bright and early in the morning.  He didn't really want
to, but breakfast was at 5:30 and he had to be there.  Today, he would
have to go on patrol.  He repressed the fear.  After all, he had been
on patrol before, and there was no reason this time would be different.
He would survive.
  He dressed just in time and made it to breakfast before inspection.
Rani, the company clown, was throwing food in the air and catching it
in his open mouth, while others laughed.  That was probably how he
dealt with the tension - Rani had been on patrol for six days in a
row.
  On his other side, Yosi was discussing the relative merits of pulling
out completely, or staying here.  Yosi was a ma`arachnik, and favored a
pullout, although not from the heights or from the old city.  Ilan
voiced his support for the Allon plan which had been dismissed from the
Knesset several years before.  The conversation did not last long;
breakfast was over and it was time to go.  None of it really mattered
anyway; whatever they said, next week would be no different from last
week, or this one.  It was time to go out.
  Ilan was to go to Nablus with Gur and Oded; Gur was the driver.  As
they left the relative safety of the camp, Ilan's thoughts turned to
the last time he had been on patrol, a full week before.  He and Udi
were on one of the narrower streets, and they could not keep away
from the sides.  They were trying to look authoritative, trying to hide
their fear.  Walking down a narrow street was running the gauntlet;
they could be attacked from both sides and there was really nowhere to
go.  Their only consolation came from the guns they wielded, but that
was not very much.  "Guns are no longer useful as deterrents around
here," Ilan had thought, "they have no effect unless you actually use
them."
  It didn't happen suddenly, the way he had expected something like
this to occur.  A stone, more like a rock, dropped from above.  Ilan
looked up to see a man quickly running off a balcony and into the
building.  He looked down and saw Udi lying on the ground.  He saw
the mark where the rock had hit his helmet.  Ilan called the medics.
He shot the balcony in frustration, and a series of bullet marks
stared back at him coldly.
  That had been a week ago.  They had let him visit Udi in the
hospital, but now he was back on active duty.  His thoughts were
broken by Gur's voice.  "We're here, so look sharp," he said, both
sarcastic and serious.  They were driving down a narrow street.
  A baby could be heard crying from an upstairs window, along with some
muffled yelling.  Ilan and Oded went into the building to check things
out.  It was Ilan who reached the door first; a baby was crying in the
apartment.  Ilan knocked on the door, prepared for whatever might come
out.  It was an Arab, and she did not come out.  The look in her eyes
showed fear, and most of all uncertainty.  "We have no milk," she said,
her voice pleading.  She was a mother.
  He went downstairs and got some milk from the jeep.  Evaporated milk,
but better than nothing.  He went back upstairs and knocked on her
door.  She opened it, looking even more nervous now that he had
returned.  He wondered whether she was afraid of him or of something else.
The day before a local shopkeeper had been beaten by neighbors for
"cooperating" with the soldiers.  The week before, Ilan had been
spraying bullets at a building not much different from this one.
  He handed her the milk.  She cautiously accepted it, then quickly
closed the door.  He wondered whether the baby she was feeding would
grow up to throw rocks at him, whether it would grow up at all.  He
never forgot that look in her eyes just before she vanished behind the
closing door.