Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(149)
VI
THE DESTRUCTION OF ISRAEL
COME HOME
In the end, they didn’t need to rush the bar mitzvah—it took Tamir and Jacob eight days to find a way to Israel—but apparently there wasn’t enough time to put Argus down. Jacob spoke with a few compassionate vets, but also watched a few horrible YouTube videos. Even when euthanasia was clearly a “good” thing—a genuinely suffering animal being given a genuinely peaceful end—it was horrible. He couldn’t do it. He wasn’t ready. Argus wasn’t ready. They weren’t ready.
The embassy continued to be unhelpful, and commercial flights to Israel continued to be halted. So they looked into getting press certification, volunteering for Doctors Without Borders, flying to another country and reaching Israel by boat—all nonstarters.
What changed their situation, and changed everything, was an internationally televised speech by Israel’s prime minister—a speech that he must have known, when writing it, would either be memorized by future Jewish schoolchildren or be etched into memorial walls.
Looking directly into the camera, and directly into the Jewish souls of all Jews watching, he conveyed the unprecedented threat to Israel’s existence, and asked that Jews between the ages of sixteen and fifty-five “come home.”
Airspace would be opened to incoming flights, and commercial jumbo jets, emptied of seats to hold more bodies, would be flown continuously from airfields near New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, Moscow, and other major Jewish population centers.
The planes weren’t fueled until just before takeoff, as no one knew, even approximately, how heavy they would be.
TODAY I AM NOT A MAN
“We need to have a family conversation,” Sam said. It was the night before his makeshift bar mitzvah. In twelve hours, catered food would begin to arrive. And not long after, the handful of cousins and friends who could make it on such short notice. Then manhood.
Max and Benjy sat on Sam’s bed, their feet growing toward the floor, and Sam gave his ninety-two pounds to his beloved swivel chair—beloved because the range of motion made him feel capable, and beloved because it had been his dad’s. His desktop flickered with footage of an army moving across the Sinai.
With parental gentleness, Sam recounted an age-appropriate version of what had happened with their father’s phone, and what he knew—from the snippets Max had overheard in the car, what Billie had witnessed and inferred at Model UN, and his own piecing together—of their mother’s relationship with Mark. (“I don’t get what’s the big deal,” Benjy said. “People kiss people all the time and it’s nice?”) Sam shared what Billie had overheard of their parents’ separation-conversation rehearsal (mortared with the results of Max’s snooping), as well as what Barak had been told of their fathers’ decision to go to Israel. Everyone knew that Jacob was lying when he said Julia had spent the night at a site visit, but they also sensed that he didn’t know where she’d actually been, so no one mentioned it.
Sam often had fantasies of killing his brothers, but he also had fantasies of saving them. He’d felt the opposing pulls for as long as they’d been his brothers—with the same arms that cradled baby Benjy, he wanted to crush his rib cage—and the intensity of those coexisting impulses defined his brotherly love.
But not now. Now he only wanted to cradle them. Now he felt no possessiveness, no diminishment at their gain, no scorching, referentless annoyance.
When Sam reached the climax—“Everything is about to change”—Max started to cry. Reflexively, Sam wanted to say, “It’s funny, it’s funny,” but a yet stronger reflex prevailed, and he said, “I know, I know.” When Max started to cry, Benjy started to cry—like a reservoir that floods into an overflow reservoir, overflowing it. “It sucks,” Sam said. “But it’s all going to be OK. We just can’t let it happen.”
Through his tears, Benjy said, “I don’t get it. Kissing is nice.”
“What are we going to do?” Max asked.
“They keep putting everything off until after my bar mitzvah. They’re going to tell us about their divorce after my bar mitzvah. Dad is going to move out after my bar mitzvah. And now he’s going to go to Israel after my bar mitzvah. So I’m not going to have a bar mitzvah.”
“That’s a good plan,” Benjy said. “You’re smart.”
“But they’ll just force you to,” Max said.
“What are they gonna do? Pinch my nose until I expel my haftorah?”
“Ground you.”
“Who cares?”
“Take away your screen time.”
“Who cares?”
“You do.”
“I won’t.”
“You could run away?” Benjy suggested.
“Run away?” his brothers asked at the same time, and Max couldn’t resist calling, “Jinx!”
“Sam, Sam, Sam,” Benjy said, relieving his brother of his imposed silence.
“I can’t run away,” Sam said.
“Just until the war ends,” Max said.
“I wouldn’t leave you guys.”
“And I would miss you,” Benjy said.