The Sodomites

Revenge

Perhaps it was Yaniv’s beard, snarling in all directions like rusty barbed wire, or the unknown objects protruding from his shabby old backpack. He tried to keep on walking but was stopped, and was asked for an ID, and when he responded that he didn’t have one, he heard, Well, you can have it the long way or the short way—you can either give me your details here and let me search you, or come to the station. And he said, You mean you wanna touch me? and he heard, Yes, and he said, Nah, and started to walk away, and the next thing he knew his arm was twisted behind his back, he was pushed against the wall, and when he resisted he saw a flash of pleased excited lurking eyes of a predator, and taken by the arm he was led to the station and he heard the radio, Two-two twenty-nine, and, Ten-four ten-four, and he heard the laughter of the crew, Look at this hippie, and he was pushed in a room and told to strip and he said, f**k off, Wrong answer, and he was pushed down into a chair and another cop came in and pushed the chair with his foot checking Yaniv’s weight, and he leaned next to his ear and said menacingly, This is not a f*****g summer camp, and another cop elbow-grabbed him around the neck from behind and he felt his lungs emptying, and the first cop stood up, and as Yaniv’s vision went all blurry he was punched straight clean in the diaphragm. Darkness. Next thing he knew he was on the floor, pants and underwear on his ankles.

This memory—so tactile, so real—fades out of focus to reveal the rat-ridden streets of the south of the city, rising up and down with his ragged breath as if viewed through the scope of a sniper rifle. He’s back in the present leaning on a wall. And he feels that sting at the base of his chest, a mosquito bite unscratched: revenge.

He heads towards the station by the park and sits on the grass, placing his big backpack on the ground and pulling out some dumpstered Chinese food to snack on. He’s invisible there, dirty and shabby next to his fellow scumbags—Russian h****n addicts, African immigrants, homeless vagabonds with shopping carts overloaded with plastic bottles. And he knows his cop, he knows he won’t recognize him, there are probably dozens of cases like his every month, and it’s been a while, but Yaniv remembers the name—Yehiel Rotem—and those languid eyes looking for prey. But now, Yaniv is the hunter and as he eats garbage-gathered food with the calm of a Zen monk, his wolf eyes wait for theirs as the police cars cruise in and out. Lurking on the grass, he waits. He remembers waiting in Gaza. A ball of white-hot fire cooking the dusty streets, abandoned sheep bleating in despair as their life-allowing liquids evaporate, the persistent thirst that could not be quenched by water, and that twitch in his fingers, fumbling for the cartridge. But no no no, he crosses murder off the list. The punishment must fit the crime.

And as he contemplates his next move he sees a police car with a lone handsome man inside, and the car parks arrogantly on a red and white striped sidewalk at the top of the road next to the shawarma place, and Yaniv sees the face and the eyes, as the man exits the vehicle and enters the shop. Yaniv holds his breath, then releases. Three or four minutes later the man exits, shawarma sandwich in hand, signals a friendly wave into the shop, enters the car, starts the engine, shifts out, and speeds down the road past the barrier and into the station parking lot.

Revenge is best served cold. Yaniv scratches his head. A good beating might be appropriate. His blood races as he thinks of that face—scarred from a youth full of zits but still handsome. Perhaps some bleach down the engine. Perhaps a used condom on his door handle and a nasty graffiti saying, “Yehiel’s dead.”

He stakes the station as day turns to night and his prey leaves and drives away. Then he goes gathering, passing through the alleyways where junkies fall asleep while standing up, hanging on their knees like unemployed marionettes. He goes diving in dumpsters and returns with enough bread for himself and all of the African refugees around the shelter in the park. At midnight a border police jeep passes and spits out bullies with clubs and rubber gloves to shut down all of the African businesses, so refugees from the clandestine bars slither quietly into the park. He chats with some of them about Sinai, slurs the Bedouins and praises the beaches, and they show him a safe spot where he unrolls his mat for the night. He takes out his big cotton sheet, cuddles with his backpack, and covers himself all the way up over the head. He thinks about strong hairy thighs and quickly falls asleep. He dreams about that scarred handsome face, those broad shoulders, and the cuffs, and those eyes, bloodshot with narrowed pupils. He wakes up with hatred pounding powerfully in his heart.

He cooks coffee for his new friends on a small portable stove. He’s heartened by the carnivalesque atmosphere as folks wake up and shout all around the park. Street vendors rise to work, marketing to each other and to the early passers-by old dysfunctional watches, plastic sunglasses, lighters. Three s*x workers mill around the street corner and catcall an art school hipster speeding by on a bicycle. And then that cop car comes back, and Yaniv feels it rising in his intestines again, like dark wasps buzzing up through his veins and concentrating in his diaphragm. Anger laced with shame. Like that time his high school swimming coach reached for Yaniv’s crotch and grinned, feeling up the sock in his speedo. That was the first time Yaniv took on a bigger opponent. He knocked his coach down with an elbow to the nose.

Yaniv feeds on his pending vengeance. Yehiel goes out for his rounds and comes back to get his usual shawarma. When he gets around the corner Yaniv grabs the backpack and heads up the street. Yehiel parks and enters. Yaniv tries the handle of the car, it’s open, he sits in, fumbles for the key—it’s in—looks quickly into the shop, he wasn’t noticed, Yehiel is putting tehini on top of his shawarma, Yaniv ignites the engine, shifts to first, up with the clutch, down with the gas, and he speeds up the street. He looks back in the rearview mirror and sees Yehiel, confused with his sandwich, looking at his car disappearing, and after a moment of shock, running down towards the station, with his M16 rocking from side to side, reaching for his radio, and then Yaniv hears that satisfying panting, “One-four thirty-six, one-four thirty-six,” says Yehiel on the radio. “Thirty-six one-four, speak up,” a voice responds from the radio, and as Yaniv takes a left he hears Yehiel’s panicked voice again, “Thirty-six all units, there was a forty-one on vehicle five. Repeat, forty-one on five on Levinsky, now turning south.”

Several voices cacophonically crowd the radio. Yaniv laughs as he shifts to fifth, turns on the siren, crosses two red lights, and heads towards the highway. He remembers the standard procedure from his time as a soldier in Gaza. First comes the phone call, then the roar of the fighter plane, the warning missile, and finally the white phosphorus and heavy artillery drowning the whole goddamn block. Then Yaniv’s unit would go in to clear out anything still standing, or staggering. Or crawling. An image creeps up on him. A man gracefully sweeps the porch of his own demolished house and re-enters through a door that still stands between walls that are gone, and sweeps on, like a runner whose head is blasted off, and whose body, stubbornly, runs on. Yaniv almost goes off road. Shakes his head to regain control. He shoves the old skeleton back where it came from. Time to give them a taste of their own.

The first voice rises on top of the rest, “One-four thirty-six.” “Thirty-six,” Yehiel gasps. “Thirty-six give me a nun tzadik.” “What nun tzadik?”

Pause.

“Where the hell are you, Yehiel?” “I’m here outside of the station.”

“So who’s in the vehicle?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence. Yaniv speeds on to the highway, presses the radio button with his thumb and growls into the transmitter, “I am, you blue menayek motherfuckers. I’m just taking one of your cars for a little joy ride.”

Yaniv’s cackling laughter dissipates as he waits for the response, then realizes he’s been keeping his finger pressed on the button, shutting down all transmissions. As he speeds ahead he recalls that bridge that they’re building to shorten the distance from one garbage city to another and destroy a valley or two on the way. He races over there. One day, he thinks, he might have the strange satisfaction of hearing his own voice played back to him, perhaps in the Shalom Court in Jerusalem. He’s getting close to the building site. He takes a right off the highway, past a barrier into the construction site on a dirt road, past a bunch of dusty almond trees, waves to some Palestinian workers on lunch break, and up on an overpass that leads to the half-constructed bridge. He stops on the edge, throws his backpack out of the car, exits, and pushes the car forward until the two front wheels are out, hanging in thin air, and the undercarriage hits concrete with the crying of scratched tin. He walks to the back of the car and pushes forward, vengeance almost complete, he musters his rage, gives one last push and the car tumbles off the edge. He lies down on his stomach to watch as it falls down a hundred meters, crashes and explodes, sending pieces of metal flying all over the beaten valley.

He grabs his bag and hurries down off the bridge and into the dusty grove of oak, pine and almond trees. He walks, fueled by his happiness, until the fountain of Lifta. He spreads his mat under a big old olive tree. He will sleep well tonight. It was an itch well scratched.