Gasmask (standard:other, 1511 words)
Author: mr shaw	Added: Mar 12 2002	Views/Reads: 3453/2195	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Israel, 1990. A simple piece about how we are all affected.

I was working in the kitchens of a Kibbutz, Reshafim, in southern
Galilee, about three miles from the border with Jordan, preparing food 
in a kosher way. One day I was detailed to provide carrot juice for a 
couple of hundred kibbutzniks and volunteers, most of them sweaty and 
tired from working in the fields and date palms all day. All I needed 
to do was juice the carrots and transfer it into huge bains-marie 
filled with iced water. 

It was quiet in the dining halls as I poured from one of the vast jugs I
had used to catch the juice as it was crushed by the pressing machine, 
so I could hear the slap of naked feet on the floor behind me as 
someone approached. Partly curious, I turned around. 

There was a golden brown man, a couple of years younger than me, about
eighteen or so, standing by a serving table laden with fruit. His hair 
was shaven almost to the skin, and he was almost naked, save for a pair 
of khaki green boxers and a silver chain with a dog tag. In one hand 
was a two-litre carton of milk, freshly stolen from the kitchens, some 
of the milk left on his precocious moustache. At his waist, slung 
nonchalantly over one shoulder with a leather strap, was a machine gun, 
pointed vaguely in my direction. 

He nodded at me slightly, and I returned it. 

- Bocha-tov, I said. 

- Okay? he asked, motioning to the pile of fruit. 

- Sure. 

After pondering, he took a slice of watermelon. He nodded again to me,
and bit, the sides of melon coming almost to his ears. He grinned again 
to me, and I could see the red juice of the melon mixing with the milk 
on his face to turn almost pink. He took another huge bite from the 
melon, and leant against the steel table, looking at me. 

- You are from England? 

- Yeah, near Manchester. 

- Ah, rains a lot. I was in Bristol for a year, at University. I stayed
with a family who had friends from Manchester. They always complained 
about the, er, the word Moshe, the word. Little rain? 

- Drizzle - he nodded - Oh, yeah, it rains a lot, not like here. I
haven't seen the rain since I left England. 

- You want some fruit? He asked. No I replied, and gestured towards the
juice. He screwed his face up. 

- How long are you on leave for? I asked. 

- Ah, only two days. I just finished the first part of my national
service training and go back to the army then. In Kyriat Shmona, in 
Golan, you know? I nodded. 

A trip to sleep under the stars in the Golan Heights was laid on each
summer for the Kibbutz volunteers. It mainly involved visiting a museum 
of Biblical archaeology, getting drunk in the town and sleeping in a 
sleeping bag in a park near Lebanon. I told him about it. 

- Good. Nice place for visit, but not if you are in the army. 

- Why? Because you don't want to be in the army, or because of what
might happen? 

- No. Because I am just Moshe. I lived all my life here in Reshafim.
Then I went to University in England. I was studying Veterinary 
Science, so that I could come back and look after the animals here. 
Usually there is a dispensation, but they have forgotten all about it. 
They said, you are nineteen years old, here is your gun. Go. Fight.  I 
could have stayed in England, to finish my studies, then go in the 
Army, But, you know, I must defend my country and brothers. What can I 
do? So I get it out of the way and go. I go, they give my gun - he 
raised the gun towards me and looked at me with the melancholy of an 


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