First Trip: Get Up and Walk the Land 2

“I told you that you were nervous for no good reason, didn’t I?” Dor said once the last sign of civilization disappeared behind a massive pile of rocks that pretended to be a knoll. 

“We got lucky. You can’t count on getting lucky. Assumption is the mother of all screw ups.” Eran muttered. The way Eran saw it, Dor already had too much ego. If it swelled any more, he’d go full DC villain.

Dor’s ego, alas, wasn’t quashed in the slightest. “Oy nu, no one cares about who walks through the gate. They only care about who tries to climb over the fence. If the terrorists weren’t such idiots, they’d just walk right through the gate and butcher everyone.”

“Not everyone, just a family or two.” Yaniv rarely took sides in arguments, but he did like to correct people. Eran often taunted Yaniv by saying he was literally allergic to hyperbole.

“Bullshit!” Eran spat. “It’s not that easy. You always think you’re smarter than everyone, but you’re not. You’re just arrogant.”

“Damn right I’m arrogant!” Dor retorted as if arrogance was a supreme virtue. “And the Name preserve us, Yaniv, you know what I mean!”

Yaniv sniffed derisively. Dor gave him the evil eye. A crow circled above, hoping for murder.

Seeking to defuse the situation, Eran opted for a story. “Hey, did you hear about this terrorist who climbed over a fence but lost his nuts?”

Yaniv blenched. “I don’t think I want to know.”

“Well,” Eran spoke with the air of an experienced raconteur. “I don’t think you have a choice. So, a bunch of terrorists tried to sneak into a town one night, I think it was Rosh Allon but I’m not sure. They knew the town had a low fence, but they didn’t know the fence had recently been topped with barbed wire. So one of them jumped over the fence and landed on the other side minus one testicle. When the border patrol came, it was still there, hanging from a barb like a little sack of blood.”

“Ew,” Yaniv said.

“Gevalt,” Dor said.

After a brief silence that was interrupted only by the sound of footsteps on asphalt and the hum of the occasional passing car, Dor offered a tale of his own. 

“Wallah, this reminds me of another story. My dad heard it from some Arab guy who works for him. So there was this terrorist who wanted to blow up an army blockpost in Indonesia or Pakistan or some other shithole country. A sniper spotted him from far away and shot him right in the bomb. I mean his actual bomb, not his, eh, you know… Anyway, so the terrorist explodes and his dick flies like 100 meters and lands right in some lady’s coffee mug.”

Eran snickered and sang “Missile dick!” like it was a jingle for a cool new toy.

Dor snorted. “Totally. Could be an awesome superpower.” 

Yaniv sighed. “One hundred meters sounds way too round to be true.”

Dor shrugged. “I don’t think someone was there with a ruler measuring the exact distance. They were probably too busy scraping this asshole off the walls.”

“Huh!” Eran guffawed. “Yaniv is quiet because they were probably literally scrubbing an asshole from a wall!”

Dor snorted. 

No one had anything to add, so the conversation died out. The heat did not encourage talking. It barely encouraged breathing. 

Even though it was so quiet Eran could hear the blood pounding in his ears, there was a sense of danger — the normal state of affairs for any Jew traveling east of the Green Line, the Israeli Wild West. His eyes darted from boulder to bush, from bush to tree, searching for rock throwers or savage animals. He saw a cat. It didn’t look very savage.

A military jeep sped by. The driver looked at the party warily, but didn’t slow down. Next came a truck that carried goats. It was followed by a potent and lingering goat smell. Yaniv pulled his shirt over his face. 

A couple of vultures circled over the boys and flew away. Eran thought he saw little dots of light following the birds, but maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him. Too much blue sky could do that.

Then came the flies.

At first only a few, but soon the whole mishpacha. Dor fought valiantly, slapping himself without mercy and cursing in at least three languages. He destroyed several flies, but made no impression on the rest. Eran and Yaniv limited their defensive maneuvers to occasional listless swats.

“We should walk on the road margins,” Yaniv said after a speeding car honked at them. 

“Yeah, don’t want to make it easy for the towelheads to run us over.” Dor puffed to shoo a fly that was trying its darndest to get into his mouth. The insect pirouetted in the air and resumed its assault on Dor’s nostrils. Dor exhaled through his nose like a ticked off bull. The fly relocated to his ear. 

“No one wants to run over your racist ass,” Eran muttered.

Dor shrugged. “So… what do you think happened to Doron? Hit and run? Think we’ll find his carcass?”

“It’s not nice to talk about a missing person like that…” Eran said with little conviction. He didn’t care if the obnoxious bully was dead or alive. If he had to choose, he’d probably choose dead. Still, there was no harm in being nice. 

“It’s not nice to be a dick.” Dor punched Yaniv in the shoulder. There was no malice there, just excess violence spilling over. 

“This is what you’re going to say at his funeral?” Eran asked.

Dor snorted. “Nah, I’ll be too busy laughing.”

“You can do both,” Yaniv suggested helpfully, massaging his bruised shoulder. “Speaking of funerals…” He pointed at a bright red sign ahead. It read in Hebrew, English and Arabic:

This Road Leads to Area “A”
Palestinian Authority Territory
No entry for Israelis
Dangerous to Your Lives
And Is Against The Israeli Law

Dor squinted at the sign. “I’m sorry. I only read Klingon.”

Yaniv shrugged. “Meh. We had a good run.”

Eran felt a pang of apprehension but kept it to himself.

After ouching for a few hundred meters on pointy rocks and rusty debris, the boys wordlessly agreed to return to the road, the danger of antisemitic vehicular homicide notwithstanding. 

It was almost noon. Eran started feeling his toes chafing. It would be prudent to take a short break (before other parts began to chafe as well), but he’d be damned if he was the first to suggest it. Yaniv, despite his stickman physique, had an endless reserve of stamina. The overweight Dor, on the other hand, was already starting to show signs of wear and tear. Let him be the first to break. It would be good for his ego. 

Dor, however, stoically soldiered on. The road radiated intense heat. Conversation came to a standstill as the boys had to divert more and more energy to simply placing one foot in front of the other. Short stops to adjust backpack straps that were set firmly in place were becoming increasingly frequent. Still, no one was ready to admit they were tired. 

Starting to feel that he was about to chafe more than the contents of his shoes, Eran decided to be the voice of reason. “I’m getting kinda hungry,” he lied. “How about we take a break?”

“Yallah. Why not?” Dor agreed with barely concealed relief. He looked as if he was about to slump.

Yaniv shook his head. “It’s too early. We agreed to stop every four hours. We haven’t even walked three.” He spoke without looking back at his struggling companions, his gait as light and precise as if he’d just left home. 

“Well, I’m also kinda hungry,” Dor said, adjusting his trousers with a pained expression.

Yaniv was unmoved. “Where do you want to stop? In the middle of the road? There aren’t even margins in this section. We planned to stop by the ruins we saw from Dor’s balcony last week, remember? There will be shade and a nice view from there. It’s only three more kilometers.”

“There is a cave near the top of that hill.” Eran pointed at a triangular hole about two hundred meters away. “I notice it each time mom takes me to Aikido practice. I think it would be cool to eat breakfast there.”

“You want us to climb that hill?” Yaniv asked skeptically.

“Sure, it will take ten minutes. Tops. Plus,” Eran added in a moment of creativity, “we could go straight through the hills and make up for lost time.”

“I don’t know…” Yaniv scratched his throat thoughtfully. “Dor could fall down and start an earthquake.” Dor’s silence in the face of this slight was the ultimate testimony to his state of fatigue. “Or we could encounter cannibal Bedouin up there.” Yaniv looked up, using his hand to shield his eyes from the midday sun.

“Well, I’m going up. You do what you want,” Eran said.

“Nah, I’m good.” Yaniv started hopping up the slope with the grace of a young ibex. Dor and Eran scrambled after him with the elegance of arthritic hippos. 

After about twenty minutes of breathless climbing, the trio stood at the entrance to the cave, waiting for their eyes to adjust to the darkness inside. The cave was only slightly larger than the average Tel Aviv underpass and in a far worse sanitary condition. It smelled like a latrine in a construction site and had enough used toilet paper and discarded condoms to satisfy the needs of even the most pedantic future ethnographer. This attracted not only armadas of flies, but also troops of mosquitos and other creatures whose natural food was inquisitive boys. 

There was some Arabic graffiti on the walls, but the only letters Eran recognized were alif and laam. It was likely that at least one of the words was “Allah” but it could just as well have been “no”, the name of someone’s pet tortoise, a recipe for obstinate boys, or the answer to the most meaningful question in the universe. 

There was also a diagram that looked like Aramaic trigonometry carefully painted on the floor in thick white paint. It felt vaguely familiar, like something from a dream. Eran took a few photos for later study.

As he examined the cave, he felt examined in return. The air became opaque and twirly. Either it was smoke or Eran was having a heatstroke. He felt sort of a tingle—

“I’m not entering this stinkhole!” Yaniv said with an expression of utter disgust. He did a few quick stretches before folding into a sitting position in the shade of a gum tree right outside the cave. He removed his hat and began blotting sweat from his brow and neck with a large blue towel while muttering, “It’s the best way to get West Nile Fever or Tetanus.”

“Yeah, no cannibal Bedouin would sneak up on you if you sit under a tree...” Dor grumbled as he spilled on the ground like a deflating hot air balloon.

Eran sat down, enjoying the rustling and stretching his aching limbs. Later, he’d return and see if the smoke effect persisted. Maybe Yaniv could figure this out. He had a head for sciency stuff.  

Yaniv’s and Eran’s meals consisted of sliced carrots and cucumbers, and a couple of boiled eggs, respectively. Dor, on the other hand, produced a majestic baguette with the flare of a knight unsheathing a magic sword. Fifty flies came to offer their compliments. 

“I always wondered,” Eran said after nibbling halfway through his egg. “Why didn’t the Romulans and the Cardassians ever join forces to bring down the Federation?”

“The Cardassians are nothing. They are pests. One rogue Federation ship put their entire empire on edge.” Bits of lettuce and salami sprayed from Dor’s mouth as he spoke.

“Wallah.” Eran ground the eggshell to fine dust and let it slip through his fingers. It was good for the trees. “So why doesn’t the Federation crush them?” 

“Because they believe in coexistence and compromise,” Yaniv said. “For example, Picard knew the Cardassians were hiding illegal weapons on that fake science station, but he let them go anyway. A bad peace is better than a good war. And then in DS9—” 

“Hey!” Eran barked. “I just started watching it. No spoilers!”

Dor nodded. While he didn’t mind spoilers himself, he avoided spoiling shows for others with religious zeal. To emphasize how strongly he felt about spoilers, he slightly lifted his bottom and let out a megasonic fart.

Eran grimaced. “It sounded like the devil Shub-Niggurath calling in the faithful for a second blood war.”

Dor accepted the compliment with grace. “Anyway, this is really pathetic because compromise isn’t how you achieve peace. You achieve peace by crushing your enemy and then making him beg for peace! For example, Saruman—”

“Shh!” Yaniv perked up like a spooked hare. “Someone is coming.”

“What?” Eran said, looking around. “I can’t—”

“Ahlan!” A masculine voice cried from the bushes behind Eran.

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