Dust in Our Shoes

27 April 2024 · Bloomfield

The sun shone cheerfully on a world falling apart, and the air was sweet with a sea breeze that knew nothing.

At Bloomfield, the stadium where dreams were born and hopes died, thousands of fans in red shouted in despair. Beitar Jerusalem, the eternal enemy, beat Hapoel 5–1, in Hapoel's own home, in a round of the relegation play-off. It wasn't the official end yet. But everyone knew: death was already on its way. The red dreams melted on the grass and mixed with the cold sweat of a defeat that meant more than football.

Alex watched the match in a small restaurant near the base that smelled of old oil and hot spices. When the fifth went in, he put his glass down on the table slowly, the way you put down something that might explode.

11 May 2024 · Bloomfield

Two weeks passed like an eternity of torment. Two weeks of hanging between heaven and earth, of stubborn hope that maybe the inevitable could still be stopped.

Then came the match against Ashdod. Ashdod won. Hapoel Tel Aviv, the club that had taught whole generations what unconditional love is, went down officially to the second division.

Alex sat in the same restaurant, on the same chair, in front of the same small, blurry screen. Thousands stood in the stands, and red smoke rose above them as at a king's funeral. He understood he was watching the grandest funeral in the history of Israeli sport.

His eyes were wet, but he knew, deep inside, that he wasn't crying only for the club. He was crying for the boy he had once been, the one who believed that red and white could beat all the evil in the world. For a faith that had evaporated. Peace with the neighbours now seemed further away than the planets, and a Hapoel championship sounded like drilling for oil under the ruins of Gaza.

"Everything I shouted about," he whispered into the empty glass. "Everything I marched for. Where did it get me?"

The values he had grown up on crumbled. He felt like a tourist in his own country.

That evening · Gaza City

Mehran had watched the humiliation against Beitar on a pirate stream, over the internet from an Egyptian SIM card, on a screen that froze every minute. His heart had torn even then.

Now, two weeks later, he watched Ashdod the same way. The picture flickering, the sound stuck, but the pain clear and sharp. Tears ran down cheeks covered in dust.

He knew this might be the last match he would see. The generator's fuel was running out, and the last few litres had been bought at the price of gold. The internet lines were cut and reopened by decisions of people he would never see.

"Beitar Jerusalem," he whispered bitterly. "The State of Israel in football."

He remembered the videos from Teddy, the stand chanting "Death to the Arabs". Hapoel hadn't just lost to a team. It had been humiliated by hatred wearing a football shirt.

But Reem, twelve years old, sat next to him and held his hand. "Next year they'll go up," she said, with the certainty of someone who hasn't yet learned to be afraid. "And you'll see it."

He didn't answer. He just hugged her, and her hair smelled of smoke.

May 2024 · Tel Aviv

Natalie had heard about the humiliation against Beitar on a taxi radio. Now she heard about the relegation. The news hit her twice, like cold waves.

She remembered how Alex had taught her to love the club. How his eyes lit up when he explained every song, every flag, every small win. "They're not just a team," he told her once, on the way to Bloomfield, hand in hand. "They're our belief that good can win."

Now, in a flat that smelled of loss, she wanted to call him. To comfort him. To tell him it was only football.

But she knew, with shocking certainty, that the moment he answered he would start talking about peace. About reconciliation. About all the things that lit a fury burning in her stomach. How didn't he understand? How didn't he see that they wanted to destroy us? How did he still believe in human goodness, after the world had proved him wrong again and again?

That night · The phone

The call, when it finally happened, began gently and ended in pieces.

"Natalie," Alex said, and her name sounded like a prayer in his mouth. "We have to find a way to stop this. Every day I see the children there. They're no different from our children. The same eyes."

Her heart froze. Everything that had built up in her rolled out like lava.

"How can you say that?" Her voice was cold and sharp as a blade. "After what they did to me? To Roni? To all of us? It's us or them, Alex."

And in the middle of the sentence she heard it: Noa's voice from the base, three years back, "There's no peace with them", coming out of her own mouth now. She used to argue with Noa about that line. Now she didn't stop.

"You don't mean that," he pleaded. "You're hurt. I understand."

"I mean every word." The words came out of her like gunshots. "They want us dead. All of us. You too, with all your good thoughts."

The line went dead with a sharp buzz that cut the silence.

Alex was left with the phone in his hand, in front of a black screen that reflected a face he no longer recognised. He had lost Natalie. She was alive, she was breathing, and he had lost her to hatred, grown in the place where there used to be love.

8 June 2024 · Three places

On Saturday, in the middle of the day, special forces rescued four hostages alive from the Nuseirat refugee camp: Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv. All four had been taken from Nova.

Natalie saw the picture of Noa Argamani hugging her father and cried as she hadn't cried since October. There was a little air in that crying.

Alex heard the name Kozlov on the radio and stopped. Kozlov. The name his father had erased from the identity card so that no one would ask him questions at the airport. A young man from Russia who had come to work security at the festival, taken hostage, and here he was coming home. Alex laughed, a small strange laugh, and someone in the room looked at him.

And in Nuseirat, about ten kilometres south of Mehran, beyond the Netzarim corridor that cut the Strip in two, the streets were full of smoke. The health ministry in Gaza reported 274 dead that day. Israel said the number was lower, and that the force had gone into a neighbourhood where Hamas held the hostages in family homes.

Mehran looked at the pictures from both sides on the same phone, one after another. Joy and ruin, on the same day, in the same small strip of land.

"There's no happy ending here," he told Ahmed. "There's only an ending."