CARTHAGE

1 5 9 R C A R T H A G E S A G Y Z W I R N We were all sitting down in the dining room after lunch. We were the only ones there, and nothing remained on the table but breadcrumbs and an empty dish in which boiled hotdogs were served. ‘‘They’re all killers,’’ Sergei said. Sergei was a heavyset man with impassioned eyes, with one gold tooth he got when he was a child in Russia, with an ideology. He was a military prosecutor like the rest of us, he wore a uniform like the rest of us. It seemed like everybody in the world was wearing one these days. ‘‘They’re all killers,’’ he said again. People said things like that all the time here. It wasn’t an easy place to be in, to serve in. Every day you went back home to Tel Aviv or Ramat Gan or wherever and that made it even worse. Sergei smiled, and Yaniv leaned forward gravely. He was new, and I didn’t know him that well, but it seemed like a gesture he used a lot to show he was speaking of something important. ‘‘Some of the people of Judea are blameless. Some are always blameless. But when they bring them here, it’s because they’re guilty.’’ ‘‘So everyone here is guilty?’’ Aviv asked. She was beautiful and smart as a whip. I’d been in love with her since the day I came to 1 6 0 Z W I R N Y the territories. Now she looked at Yaniv, but he did not reply. ‘‘If everyone here is guilty,’’ she said when no answer came, ‘‘then what do they need us for? They can throw them all in jail for good and be done with it.’’ ‘‘That’s fine with me,’’ Sergei said. I smiled. There was something comforting about seeing things in such black-and-white terms, in being so sure about something. I wasn’t sure about anything that way. Not that way. ‘‘They’re not all guilty,’’ I said. ‘‘But a lot of them are. A lot of them are killers.’’ Aviv seemed annoyed, and I looked down, embarrassed . ‘‘Only those that come here. The rest are like us.’’ She laughed. She knew I was in love with her and that I wasn’t sure about anything, and it made her smile. Most girls like her, who had ideologies, couldn’t tolerate people like me. They liked their adversaries better than someone like me because at least they spoke the same language and belonged to the same species. But she was di√erent, she enjoyed my being from another species, and that was why I loved her. ‘‘You know that they’re killers,’’ Sergei said to Aviv when she laughed. ‘‘How can you not know that, working here?’’ Her smile wavered. ‘‘Some of those that come here are killers,’’ she said. ‘‘And they want you to think that all of them are like that, that all Palestinians are killers. But that’s like learning about Jews from the population of Israeli jails.’’ She grimaced, as though the thought of this made her bitter. ‘‘They want peace, like us. Do you think it feels good to live under martial law?’’ She shook her head. ‘‘And the point is, we shouldn’t be here in the first place. We’re conquerors.’’ ‘‘But what if the conquered wants to kill you?’’ Sergei said. ‘‘Some want that because we’re here when we shouldn’t be.’’ She looked at me. ‘‘Isn’t that right, Immanuel?’’ she asked. I looked down again. ‘‘Maybe,’’ I said, and she laughed. We asked these questions often and answered them often. Everybody knew what one would ask and how the others would answer, and there was nothing new under the sun and we did it anyway. Maybe for sport and maybe out of boredom – because sometimes it was good sport and pleasurable to repeat what you and everybody else knew so well. You repeated the old questions C A R T H A G E 1 6 1 R and the old answers, and it was...