Time Machine

It’s not easy, living in a time machine. It’s very crowded. Somewhat confusing. Sentimental. Memories set their own place and time and strike at completely unexpected hours of the day. A perfect image suddenly emerges from another world, shrouded with clear visions and familiar scents, so real I can almost touch it with my hand. It takes over the conscious and sends me, in complete surprise, into a bright and warm past, a hundred years ago. One moment I ride with Assi and Eldad and Shuka toward the Jordanian border in a happy heap of Uzis, clips and steel helmets in some old military Jeep, and a second later I am stuck again in a posh restaurant in Beverly Hills. In the midst of a tiresome discussion about interest rates, I slip silently into a dark field, drop beside a stone terrace and look, with a pounding heart, at a double column of armed paratroopers, slowly walking into the darkness of the winding dirt road. “Six from ten,” hiss all the radios, “six from ten.”