A few words of housekeeping. I’ll be changing the name of my Substack soon from “Truth And Battle” to something less martial. I risk losing a good number of subscribers (in fact, that trend has already begun) but I have written all I could about the panic-demic we have endured. There are others, more qualified to write about the more technical issues. I think I have made my moral and philosophical stance clear: LIBERTY above all. I have also written a bit about politics and economic matters but in that area too, I find myself fatigued and prefer to leave it to others to discuss the terrible state we’re in.
I will keep publishing personal essays about music and travel, and will use this space for y literary output. A while back I published a story called “Kafka’s Ghost”, you will find it here if you scroll back a few months.
Here is a semi-fictional short story about love and war. The basic facts (the geography and the outbreak of the 1973 Middle East war) are correct but while the characters are based on people I have known and situations I have experience, about half of the story is fictional. I hope you will like it and comment below.
Thank you all!
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BROKEN HEARTS REDUX
FIRST VERSE
Dee climbed up onto the stage, and sat, cross-legged in the hippie manner of the day, right in front of the band. Her jeans had the standard issue peace-sign patches, her blouse was a potpourri of psychedelic colors. She had long blond hair and she chain smoked. She swayed to the band’s music, eyes closed, red lips pursed between drags. She blew me a kiss at the end of our set. Then she slid off the stage and sashayed out into the mild Mediterranean night, trailing a cloud of smoke.
I got home at midnight and made myself a cup of tea. Father was still up, working, the old Corona keys clacking away. I sipped my tea slowly, two cubes of sugars and a slice of lemon. Then I put the teacup away, snubbed out my last cigarette and went to bed. I put my head on the pillow and smiled. I thought of Dee, trailing smoke, waist-long blond hair, leaving the dance hall. My ears buzzed like crazy as I fell asleep
The ringing was gone in the morning. I sat in the kitchen naked, sipping Turkish coffee, leafing through the phonebook, locating Dee’s number. When I felt sufficiently emboldened by “the Turk”, I picked up the phone and dialed. A man’s voice answered:
“Yes?”
“Is Dee there?”
“No”
“Ah…when do you expect her back?”
“No idea” He was in no mood to converse.
“Can you give her a message?”
“Yeah”
“Tell her to call G as soon as she gets back”
I gave him my number and he hung up before I could thank him. Dee called late that afternoon. We chatted a bit and she told me she was dating a guy called Sammy. I knew him. A short, skinny geek, monied parents. Not impressive.
“Can I see you tonight?”
“Not a good night. I have plans!”
“Yeah? With Sammy?”
“None of your business…but yes, actually”
“OK, I’ll scoot by his house and pick you up!” She laughed.
“You’re pretty forward, no? You’re going to pick me up from my boyfriend’s house? Flattering! But seriously, don’t come to Sammy’s house. Call me tomorrow, we’ll set something up. See you later, guitar man!”
I waited until just before 11 that night, then walked over to Sammy’s house, a ten-minute walk. I knocked on the massive front door. Not politely, either. Sammy opened the door. He was in his underwear
“Is Dee here?”
“Man, it’s 11 o’clock!”
“Yeah.”
“How about you call her tomorrow?”
Fuck that, I thought. A white-hot afterburner of animus and jealousy mobilized my confidence.
“Nah! I need to see her tonight!”
Sammy hesitated but realized he was in the presence of an immovable object.
“She’s upstairs, wait here”
I waited in the doorway. A few minutes later, Dee ambled down the stairs in her bra and panties.
“Hey, guitar man! I’m flattered but I must admit, I didn’t suspect you’d ambush me. Why not just call?”
“I needed to see you.”
Dee stood at the bottom of the staircase in the living room, ten feet away. I stood in the doorway. We stared at each other for a good while. Then she gave me an uncertain smile and ran back up the stairs. Instantly, loud, angry voices were heard. Sammy reappeared, red-faced.
“Hey man, this is very uncool! just go home. She’s staying the night”
“No, I don’t think she is”, I said.
Sammy made a weak attempt to push me out, but his heart wasn’t in it.
“Man, I didn’t know you were such an asshole!” He left me standing in the door and, as I had suspected, there was Dee’s silhouette sliding down the banister, now dressed in her customary jeans and hippie shirt. We ran out. The door behind us slammed angrily. Dee was laughing.
“How did you get here? You walked from your house? I can give you a ride back.”
She drove an ugly old Ford of uncertain vintage. With her long blond hair, the chain smoking and being the owner of a set of wheels, she was the hippest femme in town. And here I was, walking alongside her.
“Let’s just sit on that bench over there and talk for a bit.”
We sat down and I said:
“You’ve been on my mind all day.”
Our thighs were touching. I was inhaling the aroma of her hair. Dee said:
“You’ve been on my mind since I first saw you a few weeks ago at a party. I didn’t stay long. Maybe you didn’t notice me.”
INTERMEZZO
When I was 14, I once secretly held a neighbor’s hand while we watched TV. We were the same age. I never kissed her, never touched her breasts, just two sweaty teenage hands that clasped for a brief moment. The electric spark that ran right down to my feet was exhilarating and scary. I sensed I had been given the key to a previously sealed-off chamber. I had peeked behind a door where delicious delights awaited. Tiny monochrome images flickered on a TV screen in front of us and there I was, a nervous 14-year-old, whose hand was briefly singed by the flame of the holy
***
Dee lit a smoke, blew rings into the chill night air and tapped her foot in rhythm. There were patches of ground fog. The night was cool and clear. The sky was dotted with millions of stars and our teenage hearts were filled with millions of dreams. It felt like a rebirth to me: we stood at the threshold of exciting new worlds. Mist at our feet, cigarettes on our lips and a thick syrup of confusion in our minds.
SECOND VERSE
“It’s stuffy and hot in here,” Dee said, “let’s go for a picnic”
I wasn’t much of a picnic person. I have never found anything to do outdoors that was more alluring than what I could do between four walls. Maybe an occasional trip to the beach, a walk on a cool night, a city stroll – no more. Dee, a true gypsy spirit, loved the outdoors. Pack some comestibles and hit the road – don’t forget the cigarettes!
“Sure,” I agreed, “but nothing elaborate. A sandwich, a beer, a cuddle in the woods and back”
Dee laughed.
“God forbid that I should drag you out of your cave for more than a couple of hours. The meaning of life is strumming your guitar and discussing Paul McCartney’s vocal performance on “Abbey Road.”
“Well, it sure isn’t in picking pine needles out of my ass!”
We made a couple of quick cheese sandwiches and started up Dee’s ancient brown Ford. That car would not have been out of place in a movie about the gangs of Brooklyn.
We headed out, around the old town of Lydda and up the winding road to Jerusalem. But for the burnt-out hulks of armored vehicles on both sides, the road could have been in the alpine foothills of Austria. Lush pine forests hugged the highway.
“You know,” I said, “I don’t know that this picnic is such a good idea after all!”
Dee threw me a sideways look:
“What? We’ve been driving for all of twenty minutes. Is that an attack of agoraphobia speaking?” She knew me well.
“Ah, no. It is an attack, though”
She kept her eyes on the road, making all the sharp turns.
“Fine, I give up. What attack? You hungry? There’s a hard-boiled egg in the bag somewhere”
“Ignoring the fact the egg is probably from last month, no, it's not hunger. Actually, it is. But not for food!”
She kept focusing on the road.
“Oh my god! Is it what I think it is?”
“Yes, my love. I do want to lie with you but not on a blanket on the fragrant forest floor. I need to enter your tent and to know you. Like Abraham and Sarah”
Dee chuckled.
“So, translated into modern Hebrew, you’re saying you’re so horny you can’t drive another twenty minutes, spread a blanket, much on a sandwich, strum your guitar, have a beer and THEN drive back?”
My left hand slid up her thigh.
“That is precisely what I’m saying!”
She sighed. She sighed the kind of sigh that signaled she was happy to indulge me. We made it about a mile further up the mountain where we dodged downhill traffic and managed a U-turn. Dee stepped on the gas – a move she was well-versed in – and we headed back. Once in my place, we drew the blinds, threw our clothes on the floor and had breathless sex. I lasted less than three minutes. “Great,” Dee said, “so much for a picnic with G”
We continued making love into the evening. Not a lovely nature outing but still a great day. And all the sandwiches got eaten too.
***
That spring and summer turned out to be the two loveliest seasons of my youth. Everything Dee and I did was sweetness. We frequented various Tel Aviv tea houses, which were all the rage at the time. We sat cross-legged on shaggy Afghan rugs and sipped exotic teas served by long-haired girls in flowing skirts and long-haired boys in bell bottom jeans. The aroma of hashish hung in the air: little crumbs of it mixed with tobacco and rolled into cigarettes. Aside from a few “pretend puffs”, I stuck with cigarettes and beer – or a few cups of jasmine tea. Dee by my side was all I needed.
We listened to The Voice of Peace all the time – a radio station aboard a ship anchored off-shore, in the style of Radio Luxembourg. All the DJ’s were Brits and Americans. They spun the latest hits and talked the hippest jive. Having rock music available 24 hours a day was a stunning novelty in a country where the Beatles had been adjudged too decadent a few years before. The powers-that-be had decreed the Fab Four would be a corrupting element. Young Israelis were brought up in true socialist spirit: back-to-the-land, rifle-in-hand. Ours was the first long-hair, hash-puffing, rock’n’roll-consuming generation. The draft awaited (“like a rat in a drain” *) But that summer we could pretend it was 1967 on Carnaby Street or in San Francisco. Height Ashbury six years later, melting in the humid temps on the shores of the Mediterranean.
I even overcame my distaste for the outdoors: we traveled south and splashed in the pools of Ein Gedi, high above the Dead Sea. We journeyed north and cavorted under the Nahal Hermon waterfall. Faded, scratchy photos I found in my drawer show us in the water, horsing around like little kids. The pictures are low quality and a bit out of focus – we probably asked a fellow tourist to snap them - but our joie de vivre is palpable.
We were actualizing some of that mystical joy that I had glimpsed in Prague, as I held my neighbor’s hand. Yes! This was the real-life expression of the mystery: the delight, the wonder, the union, the anticipation of an exciting life to come.
CHORUS
The fear sits in the stomach like a pit in a cherry. It radiates to the chest, clamping it tight. Daydreams turn to brooding, dreams to nightmares. One such nightmare is recurrent: I find my car gone from the parking lot. “The third car this year!” I yell to the attendant. He pretends to call the cops. Suddenly wet and heavy snow begins to fall, and I run for shelter. The faster I run, the faster the shelter recedes in the distance. And now I’m suddenly driving...how is that possible...hadn’t my car been stolen? The car skids and spins around. My legs are too short, my foot cannot reach the brake.
The fear sits in the stomach like seeds in a pomegranate. It’s there when I wake and when I sleep; when I work and when I read. My fear is zealous. It demands full attention and throws tantrums when I attempt to ignore it. I don’t know where it comes from – it’s just there. Inquiring about its origins is akin to asking, “what happened before the Big Bang”. Nothing can be divided by zero, we cannot divide time beyond the beginning of it. It’s useless to ask “what was before time. It's useless to ask, “where was I before I was born”. Before the fear, there was no time. Before time there was no “I”
The fear sits in the stomach like a ball of wet sand. The fear is an insatiable passenger. It commands me to feed it my attention all the time.
THIRD VERSE
In Tel Aviv, the beginning of autumn can be the hottest time of year, fierce desert winds and baking temperatures. Dee and I continued to see each other daily, play our favorite LP’s, make out and make plans. I was writing and reading a lot, catching up on Hebrew literature to which Dee was my conduit. After our exile, I would have chosen London or San Francisco since Prague could no longer be my home. But the desert wind blew us to Tel Aviv, and now, after a year with Dee, I felt I could make a go of it.
And then, one early day of October, when the weather cooled a bit, the holiday of Yom Kippur was upon us. And this Yom Kippur was going to be like no others: kids kicked a ball on the deserted streets, adults were fasting and prying in synagogues when suddenly an icy wind of fear blew through the boulevards, the kids scuttled home, to be replaced by frantic young men struggling to put on their uniforms and load their weapons as they ran to and from on the streets. Sirens blew. Jets roared low overhead, people rushed home from shul and turned on their radios and TV sets, gathering in small groups, as the stench of fear filled the air. War was upon us, friends. A war we should have been warned about and anticipated but didn’t, lulled into complacence by the might of the IDF and the hubris that followed the total Arab humiliation of 1967. While we played Carnaby Street, listened to Elton John, smoked hashish cigarettes and lost ourselves in love, peace and rock’n’roll, the drums of war were beating and we didn’t hear them as we swayed to the rhythm our tea house bongos. War blew in, the last, the hottest and the most destructive “chamsin” * of the season. War caught us by surprise and demolished everything. Our world collapsed. When we emerged from the ruins, everything had changed. The Voice of Peace, once the musical anchor of our day, seemed stupid now. All sense of meaning was lost. Blood is the currency of war and nihilism, indifference and anarchy is what it buys. Days and nights came and went, a nightmarish merry-go-round.
I spent the first evening of the war without Dee. I was crammed into a bomb shelter with my parents and all the residents of our building. Sonic booms of passing jets shook the building every few minutes. There was chaos on the streets. When darkness came, the all-clear sounded and we returned to our apartment. Shades were drawn, a full blackout dimmed and silenced the city. We huddled around the radio, but in those first hours there was nothing to be learned. In our helplessness and confusion the only thing we did was drink endless cups of tea and smoke one cigarette after another. I finally got Dee on the phone around 11 at night:
“My brother Daniel has joined his unit in the Sinai. The fighting is fierce.”
Her voice was small and frightened.
“Do you want me to come over?” I asked.
“Don’t be silly. You can’t leave the house. You can’t go anywhere!”
I felt a distance a distance in her voice. This had never happened. Of course, war had never happened and Dee’s brother in the thick of battle had never happened. But I still resented the distance. I kept my mouth shut.
“Fine. Will you call me in the morning?”
“Yes, I will.”
She hung up abruptly. I locked myself up in my room and started bawling. I didn’t give a shit about war or peace, or my house being bombed because I knew with a dead certainty that my world, our little world, was ending. I just wanted to sit in a tea house, cross-legged on a shaggy Afghan and sip jasmine tea, Dee’s thigh rubbing against mine, singing a Beatle tune.
I did drive over to Dee’s house once, a day or two later. I drove with the lights off. Her big red Irish setter Charlie came to greet me at the door and licked my face. What do dogs know about wars? Charlie was happy to see me. He had been whining at night, missing Daniel. No word yet but we knew that the fighting was brutal and relentless. Dee and I spent an hour in her room hugging, with Charlie licking our hands. I wanted to make love to her but did not dare suggest it. I drove home with the headlights off, in silent darkness on deserted roads, listening to the radio and the grim news from the front.
And then...the dreaded news: Daniel had been killed in the Sinai. His family’s life had broken into a million shards that pierced the heart in all directions. I went to pay my respects and had no idea what to say, how to act. Dee’s mother was sobbing, her father stood in the middle of the living room, surrounded by army officers, comrades from his own time in combat. Dee sat on the sofa, motionless. Charlie ran around looking for a hand to pet him and he found mine. It was nice to cuddle with Charlie, his tail wagging, a creature that only knew joy. I avoided looking into anyone’s eyes and barely managed to stutter a stupid and meaningless phrase to the parents. What can “I’m so sorry” possibly mean at a time like this?
Dee and I stepped out for a smoke.
“What now?” I said.
There was a new “now” but I clung to a faint hope that Dee would eventually heal and that we would pick up where we had left off. Yet I sensed this was not going to be possible. And so I said, “What now?” which was a really dumb thing to say.
We puffed on our cigarettes for a while, then Dee turned to rejoin the family. She kissed me, and her kiss was just a light breath of wind. Her lips barely brushed mine and the door closed behind her.
THE FADE OUT
There is no manual on how to deal with the death of your 23-year-old brother. Three thousand mothers and sisters had no manual on how to deal with the deaths of their sons and brothers on the field of battle. The war lasted three weeks. While the victory was decisive, the cost was unfathomable. Three thousand young lives.
Our relationship began a protracted fade-out from the moment we knew Daniel wasn’t coming home. We tried to make the new pieces fit the old puzzle board. We tried to find our former routines but there were no routines to be found. The tea houses re-opened but people only talked about the war and strumming a guitar would have seemed frivolous and unbecoming. Our lovemaking resumed and was still delicious but Dee’s mind was elsewhere and with time, so was her heart. We were two drowning people holding on to a disintegrating raft.
We would meet, drink endless cups of tea, and smoke endless cigarettes. We said “I love you” the way people do on the phone after twenty years of marriage. My anxiety became unbearable and I contemplated suicide daily.
In the early spring of 1975, Dee and I undertook a trip to Europe. The timing was most ill-advised, the mood was sour, but we had been saving up from before the war and felt a willful determination to see the plan through.
***
It was a lousy, cold Bavarian day in March. The temperature reached 30 degrees and stayed there all day. A steady freezing drizzle was falling from the grey, low clouds. A perfect day to visit the Dachau concentration camp. We started up the relic VW bus we had bought a few days before. It had no heat, stuttering wipers and almost no brakes; by far the most dangerous vehicle I had ever driven. We parked steps away from the “Arbeit Macht Frei” entrance and couldn’t help but notice a few hot dog vendors who braved the horrible weather and set up shop. Hot dogs in the entrance to a concentration camp. Then again, why not? The vendors’ fathers may have been guards at the camp. Selling bratwursts in a death camp is still better than peppering icy sidewalks with human ashes!
We walked silently through the dismal exhibits. The visceral horror of the place seeps under your skin like the icy rain of Bavaria outside the gates. Barracks, execution yards, crematoria, barbed wire – it was all there, plus remembrance halls and pious candles flickering in dark corners. It only took us a few minutes to complete our tour. Neither one of us could take more. I hugged Dee as we walked out:
“Can you believe the hot dog stands? I guess this many decades after the war, Dachau is just a tourist destination, like the castle of some Bavarian prince. At least there’s no gift shop!”
We managed a half smile. Our minds were elsewhere.
We climbed into our clattering, unheated jalopy, its windows misted by the late March frost, a feeling of panic in my chest as unrelenting as the pain of an abscessed tooth. It’s been 18 months since her brother was killed, 18 months of an ever-widening gap between us, a gap neither one was able to bridge with words or intentions. Now, after Dachau, the icy drops pattering on the roof, Dee took a deep drag on her cigarette, turned to me and said:
“I don’t love you anymore”
***
The rest is unimportant.
The trip sputtered on. We completed the full three months as planned, most of it in separate cities, at separate times. We only reunited in Rome, sold the beat-up van and boarded a flight home. Dee’s parents were there to pick us up at the airport but after a three-hour flight, sitting in moody silence, I wanted no part of it.
Dee threw her backpack in the trunk and turned around to look at me as she was getting into the car.
“I guess that’s it, then,” I said. “The trip is over. We are over.”
I hailed a cab and spent the next 48 hours alone, cooped up in my apartment, panic and desolation mixed in equal measure. I lay on the couch, chain smoking, waiting for the phone to ring. It never did.
***
Two years later, I did see Dee one last time. It was on one of my quickie trips to Tel Aviv from London, where I was studying classical guitar. She lived at the end of a suburban street, in a small house with a large back yard. Charlie greeted me at the door with his usual enthusiasm. “Good boy, Charlie, you are such a good boy,” I hugged the dog but did not dare hug the owner. I feared I might give free rein to my anger, distress, my dark sense of defeat. We sat across from each other: she now had a couple of large shaggy Afghans of her own. She was slimmer and looked tired and a little lost. Lost in thought, lost for words. We sipped tea and I stroked Charlie’s belly. Most of my short visit was spent in silence. Nothing remained to be said. I sat there, wishing I could hug her tight and whisper: “Let’s climb into a time machine, go back in time and undo that fucking war that wrecked us”
As I was leaving, Charlie pawed my leg and Dee smiled a dreamy little smile and waved the way you do on train platforms to departing soldiers. I got into my car and gunned it. Down the deserted street, away from her house, away from the hot Middle Eastern dust, away from war, away from memories, away from everything.
***
Winter Haven, FL
June 2022
"I was flying I swear / I swear I was flying / My heart opened its arms / I was no longer barbaric / And the war came / And here we are tonight." (Jacques Brel, "Mon enfance")