CrocAttack!. Assaf Gavron
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luxury – we had to cause as much damage in as little time as possible. Three minutes.
Bilahl checked his watch. When he saw a bus climbing up the road he said, ‘The bus is mine. You take the cars around it. Aim only at the white lights. Now fire.’
Oh, Svetlana, what’s this now? Another wash already? You only did one five minutes ag…
‘You know, sweetie, you don’t look half as bad as those people make you out to be. Every time I go in or out of the hospital they’re there with their signs…here, let me just, slowly, let me soap, OK…But they can’t get in here, lyubimyi, don’t worry about that…’
I’m floating at sea. I can see the shore but I can’t get to it.
The bus immediately skewed round on its axis and skidded to a halt: it seemed that the driver had been hit and wrenched the wheel over. An eruption of horns and then quiet, except for our gunfire. Windscreens shattered in several cars behind the bus. To the left, in front of the bus, rear windscreens shattered. The rifles fired continuously without jamming. We changed magazines. The smoke and the gunpowder scent were choking me. Bilahl’s hand was on my shooting hand. ‘That’s it, let’s go.’ I started as if he had woken me from a deep dream. The road below us was illuminated by the mess of cars. The bus had blocked both lanes. Shattered glass and smoke. A few cars were stopped in front of the bus, more behind it. Mayhem.
We climbed down to the roadside and crouched in the ditch. I noticed how I was sweating and panting and how strange it was that the time had passed: something you’d been anticipating so much, suddenly behind you. Squad cars and screams on the far side of the road. Some cars on the near side had also pulled up. People were jumping out of them and vaulting the central reservation to the other side, to help. Others stood and watched but most kept driving. One squad car even came over and kept the traffic on our side flowing. Funny, a squad car whose job was to help get us out of there. It had been Abu-Zeid’s idea to escape by car but, counter-intuitively, into the west. He knew it would be the last thing they would think of. There would be no police barriers in that direction, he’d said. And he was right.
The car arrived. This was the most dangerous moment of all: getting into the car with the rifles in the middle of the road, among the cars that had pulled over and the crowd looking on at the chaos. But darkness helped. Clouds concealed the moon and stars, and the hysteria on the ground had no focus or direction. We climbed into the back seat and the car accelerated away.
Nobody said a word. The car had yellow number plates, of course, and the driver had the blue ID card of a Jerusalem resident and an Israeli driving licence. I tried to look at her. I saw long black hair and, from time to time, her eyes in the mirror, examining me. You could see the eastbound traffic backed up for miles on the other side. We saw the last cars braking and joining the end of the tailback. She turned right off the highway and we drove for a few minutes in the dark with hardly any other traffic on the road. Blue lights flashed ahead of us, but it was only an old Civil Guard jeep. Those old boys just pottered around Latrun Park looking for cars with couples fucking in them to leer at. Or that’s what Murad, the guy we stayed with in Beit Likya, told me later.
This was Grandmother Samira’s area. Murad said that the ruins of her village, Dir Ayub, still existed, and promised to take me there. We ate at his place, and only then did I realise how hungry I’d been. The pitas with zaatar, cheese and olive oil were wonderful, and so were the apples and coffee: after intense physical effort the taste buds grow sharper – you’ve become a predator and the body wants its due. We showered and put on the clean clothes Murad supplied us with. The female driver left with a nervous smile and we switched on Channel 2.
There they were. The bus. The cars. Shattered windows. Ambulances. Police cars. Danny Ronen was talking over a map of the region. A military source had informed him that the sniper probably came out of the Bethlehem area. Or Hebron. ‘We can speculate,’ said Danny Ronen, ‘that probably the sniper made his way by foot from Bethlehem or from the area around Husan village, crossed the green line near the Israeli villages of Zur Hadasa and Mavo Betar, descending the steep and rocky paths from there to the slopes below the village of Beit Meir, above the Jerusalem– Tel Aviv road.’
‘Beit Meir? Oh, you fucking cunt. Beit Meir?’ said Bilahl.
According to information Danny Ronen had received, the sniper was still at large and the hunt for him was concentrating on the area between the attack and Bethlehem. ‘It is mountainous terrain and very difficult to search,’ Ronen said. ‘Helicopters are floodlighting the area and search teams with tracker dogs are already on the ground, but the hunt could well continue for days.’
‘Clowns,’ said Bilahl.
Witnesses described how the gunfire had come from the right-hand side of the road; somebody said he’d seen flashes from the sniper’s rifle, and then watched him getting up and running up the hill. Danny Ronen sketched escape routes on his map and explained where the military forces thought the sniper was right now. Murad brought a couple of mattresses into his living room and went to sleep. Bilahl and I were full of energy. My heart was still pounding. We drank more coffee. And the shots kept ringing in my ears, and the streams of white continued to flow across the ceiling of the strange room like the lighted windows of an infinite train.
It was only the following morning that the official statements admitted that it was uncertain where the gunfire had come from, and that the origin of the sniper, or snipers, was unknown.
People always wonder what the last thing going through a person’s mind before he died was. Who did they think about – their kids, their parents, their partner, their first love? Did they ever think about love in general? Did their whole life replay itself like a movie? In the case of the soldier who rode with me that night from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, I’m pretty sure I know the answer. The last thought running through his mind before dying, which he expressed with great conviction, was: ‘My finger! Fucking cunt, I can’t feel it!’
The Polo was one of the three or four cars in front of the bus which were hit. There were several cars behind it that also got shot up and others damaged in the subsequent crashes, but the bus, the No. 480, was the main target and took most of the bullets. The next day I saw the diagram in the papers. They got the colour of the Polo wrong, of course. And the direction it was facing when it stopped. And the location of the gunmen. But never mind. This is what happened: since we were ahead of the snipers, they were shooting at us from behind. The first bullet shattered the rear windscreen and hit my mobile phone, which was resting in its holder. The second bullet came through the empty frame and hit the middle finger of the left hand of the soldier, Menachem something, nicknamed Humi by his family and friends. That was when I stamped on the brake and Humi screamed. Apparently a smashed finger is immensely painful. I couldn’t see much. He was holding his left hand with his right and there was a lot of blood. He screamed with a powerful voice, a huge voice I’d never have guessed he possessed during the previous half an hour: ‘Aaaiii!! Fucking CUNT! AAAIII!! MY FINGER!!’ In great pain, he said, ‘I’ve got a field dressing in the small pocket of my combat trousers. Get it out.’ Field dressing – the kind of hateful phrase you forget exists until you give a soldier a lift. I fished the bandage out but I was too late: he had got out of the car. In retrospect it was a mistake, but he couldn’t have been thinking clearly. The snipers kept firing. I don’t think they were aiming. Humi was standing on the road beside the Polo. I didn’t get out. Call it instinct. I stayed in the car and kept my head down. Humi kept screaming, ‘HELP ME! HELP ME! MY FINGER!! FUCKING CUNT, I CAN’T FEEL IT!’ and then he was whimpering and then there was a little ‘ai’ and no more. I didn’t hear the shot or hear him fall: what I did hear was a sudden silence. That was the surprising thing. I crawled out of my side of the car and round the front until I got to him. He didn’t look too good. His left hand held a palmful of blood and as far as I could see the middle finger – the finger that gestures ‘fuck you’ – wasn’t there. No wonder he couldn’t feel it. His throat was a bloody pool.