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By the time they reached the town of Makom, a few friendly clouds dared to show their faces and offered some respite from the constant hammering of the sun. The location Tamar messaged Yaniv was a playground with needlessly artistic equipment that looked like it was meant to ward off demons rather than to amuse babies. It was occupied by women rolling strollers and arguing about politics, a dozen toddlers skittering about like bumper cars while shouting random bad words, and a couple of German shepherds who were trying to herd the small assembly.
Tamar, tall and athletic, stood at the edge of the playground, taking selfies in front of a pomegranate shrub heavy with red fruit almost the size of her head. Two long braids dangled from a crumpled tembel hat she had lifted from her dad, who had lifted it from the IDF, that had lifted it from the Palmach, that had lifted it from the British. She was dressed in a pink camisole and short jeans sprinkled with shiny stars. A long selfie stick poked from her small backpack like an adventurer’s ten-foot pole.
Eran couldn’t smell any sunscreen on the girl. However, her Bukharan blood made her a shade darker than the boys. Perhaps she was more resistant to the sun.
Tamar lived with the absolute certainty that she was going to become a celebrity one day. She didn’t know if she would be an actress, a performing artist, a fashion blogger, a model, a prime minister, or the star of a reality show. All she knew was that she was going to be famous and that’s that. Don’t even try to argue.
Her array of extracurricular activities was as impressive as her grades. She danced in some troupe called “the Abandoned Garden”. She played softball on the regional team. She sang in the school choir. She had quite a following on Instagram, where she posted inspirational quotes mixed with pictures of her daily life. She was, in short, a future pillar of the community.
Dor considered Tamar to be the most perfect creature ever to walk the earth. He never said a word about it to anyone, least of all to Tamar, but his feelings were evident from the way he occasionally looked at her and sighed.
Eran didn’t blame him. Even Tamar’s worst enemies (which really weren't that bad) couldn’t deny her good looks. Unlike most girls her age, she actually knew how to apply makeup with style and grace. When she painted her face, she looked like a model on a runway, not a mandrill about to attack. Her fashion sense was colorful, but not garish, alluring but not slu*tty. It was no wonder then, that she’d once adorned the cover of a local teen magazine, the greatest achievement in her seventeen years on earth so far.
Yaniv was quite fond of her as well, but for a totally different reason. His attention to girls was normally limited to the bare minimum required to avoid colliding with them in the corridor. However, he and Tamar constantly cooperated on pointless projects meant to impress teachers and parents, such as an exhibition about pogroms against Jews in Mandatory Palestine or presentations about renewable energy in Bangladesh. They weren’t friends. They never met just for fun. They were co-conspirators.
Unlike his friends, Eran never had any interest in Tamar: she was too good at being normal and dragged his friends to normality with her. Nevertheless, he often found himself studying her when she wasn’t looking. This usually happened at Yaniv’s place, while Tamar packed art supplies and Eran unpacked board games. Tamar referred to this as “the changing of the guard.”
Dor often tried to convince her to stay for the games. On rare occasions she agreed and, guess what, she was great at that too. She never joined their D&D campaign though. “Too much commitment.”
“Shalom.” Yaniv stopped abruptly like a soldier on parade.
Tamar looked up from her phone and grinned. “You’re late!”
“Look who's talking,” Eran said. “You didn’t come at all last time.”
“My alarm didn’t go off,” Tamar said with a sly smile. “You know how unreliable alarms can be in the summer...”
“Yeah, right…” Eran muttered.
Dor mumbled something.
“Let’s not waste time!” Yaniv turned on his heel and started for the town gate. The others followed.
Once again, their departure went unchallenged by the town guard, a Jew with a black kippah, a black beard, and a black cat that kept him company.
As soon as the gate was out of sight, Yaniv and Tamar started exchanging gossip about teachers. Eran found the conversation mind-numbingly dull. It wasn’t even juicy gossip, just banal life events that meant nothing except that teachers were human beings.
Why would anyone care if Mrs. Bennet had a pita with chocolate during the school trip to Makhtesh Ramon, or that Mrs. Hanin had a rabbit named Usul? Then again, both Yaniv and Tamer were teacher’s pets and such information was pertinent to maintaining this unnatural lifestyle.
Yaniv’s strategy was academic excellence coupled with manners more suitable for a grandfather in a suit than a boy who could name all natural elements in a single recitation. Tamar’s strategy was being aggressively helpful. For instance, no teacher has ever managed to hand out papers in a class attended by her. As soon as a stack of papers appeared, she’d lunge like a leopard. Her helpfulness usually created more troubles than it solved, but arguing with her would have created even more troubles, so people just went along. Eran wondered if she could use the same tactic to force her way into show business, or even politics.
The world was just stupid enough for this to work.
Dor was busy staring at Tamar’s back and occasionally parting his lips as if to say something. Trying to speak to him when he was in this condition was no good. Bored, Eran started taking photos of wildlife, landscapes, his red, sweaty face with his friends in the background—
Tamar’s smiling face and hand raised in a V sign appeared on Eran’s screen. He noticed she was taller than him. He’d never noticed this before.
“Yaniv told me you saw a woman,” the girl said after he’d replaced his phone.
Eran frowned. “Um… Yes?”
A pair of soldiers canned in a watchtower eyed them listlessly. Eran nodded in their direction. They ignored him.
“He said she was threatened by some men.”
Eran exhaled slowly. “Is there a point to this Gestapo interrogation?” He looked ahead. Dor and Yaniv were checking something on the phone together. It looked important. Eran wanted to do important things too.
“Why didn’t you call the police?”
“What?” Eran paid her little attention as he tried to overhear what his friends were talking about. Something about routes and destinations…
“You saw a woman being assaulted,” Tamar repeated patiently. “Why didn’t you call the police? Am I missing something?”
“Probably.” Yaniv said without looking back. A dozen feral dogs passed the party, nodding politely as they ambled by. One of the dogs looked like it would be fun to pet but it was probably not a good idea.
Tamar rolled her eyes. “I think you were being macho at the expense of this poor woman.”
“Maybe I was macho when I said we should go look for her—”
“He wasn’t being macho,” Yaniv said, “just an idiot—”
“But,” Eran spoke over the interruption, “We just met some stoned guy asking creepy questions about a girl. Not like he was chasing her with a knife…”
“Oh,” Tamar said. “That’s not what Yaniv told me had happened.” She frowned for a moment, like a GPS calculating a new route. “Well, if I see anything dangerous or we find this poor woman, I’m calling the police right away. There’s no shame in that. You’re not Spiderman.”
No one said anything. Good luck calling anyone in the Israeli Wild West where it’s easier to find the ark of the covenant than decent reception.
Tamar chewed her lip for a while. “If we actually save that woman, this trip would make us famous!”
Yaniv sighed. “If they manage to identify our bodies…”
Tamar grinned and struck a pose. “Oh, I think everyone can identify my body!”
Dor snorted. “Yaniv, don’t be such a drama queen. The girl was probably jumped by a porcupine or something…”
“Porcupines are dangerous,” Yaniv said. “Also, you have rabid jackals, wild pigs, venomous snakes, ticks with super tetanus, satanist drug dealers—”
“I know it’s dangerous in the hills,” Tamar said, “that’s why I brought…” She shrugged off her backpack and started rummaging through it like a kangaroo performing an auto-appendectomy. Finally, she pulled out a sleek handgun which she held between forefinger and thumb like it was a spoiled banana. “This!” She smiled proudly. “Oh, I need to take a selfie with it. It will be so gangsta!”
“Are you screwed in the head!” Eran cried. “Is this real?!”
“You’re going to shoot yourself,” Yaniv ruled with a tone of bitter inevitability.
“Awesome, huh?” The girl preened. “I didn’t want to talk about it on the street. You never know who might be listening… My parents are away so I figured my dad wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it for a few days. We totally need to take some photos with it. Maya and I already had a photo session in her backyard. It was sick!”
Tamar made sure to keep her trigger finger parallel to the weapon and the barrel at sixty degrees to the ground; a proper officer’s daughter.
“Do you know how to use it?” Eran wasn’t happy about this upgrade to the party’s lethality. If a border patrol stopped them, it wouldn’t be fun at all.
“No, I am not aggressive… But you know how to use a pistol, no?”
Eran frowned. “No. Where from? I’ve only fired an M-16 at the Youth Battalion, just like you…”
Dor raised a hand like a student asking for permission to speak. “I do. Dad took me to the range in Herzliya a few times. The instructor said I was good. If someone even thinks of pulling a knife or throwing rocks at us… BAM!”
“As far as I know,” Yaniv gave Dor a skeptical look, “holding a gun doesn’t bestow mind reading capabilities.”
Tamar offered the gun to Dor. “Want to carry it? I also brought magazines. They’re pretty heavy…”
“Sure!” Dor examined the small engine of death with admiration before sliding it into one of the many pockets of his khaki pants. The weight of the weapon pulled his pants down, exposing a sliver of his pale ass.
“Are you sure it won’t go off and shoot your butt off?” Eran asked.
Dor puffed. “I’m not some dumb towelhead. I know how to handle a gun.”
“If you’re going to be blatantly racist,” Tamar said, rhythmically rocking her head as she spoke, “please do it when I’m not around… Oh,” She jabbed Dor in the chest, “and maybe consider a different insult? You and Eran literally wear towels on your heads half the time!”
If Eran had said all these things to Dor, he’d be missing a finger. All Tamar got was a blush and a muttered apology. Eran thanked God that he didn’t have a crush on anybody.
Thanks for reading Seed of Amalek! Next chapter comes out on Tuesday! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
