While living in Israel some years ago, I’d often encounter male soldiers on the street or traveling by bus or sherut. Their olive green military uniforms, combat boots, berets tucked under left epaulets, and assault rifles straddled over their shoulders was always a jarring image to behold during my initial weeks in Haifa. Yet as time went on, they, like the ubiquitous Cyprus trees, began to fade into the landscape with one exception: female recruits.
Israel is the only country in the world with a mandatory military service requirement for women. The times I’d cross their path, I’d often wonder what their lives and training were like, what they thought of the draft, and what their hopes and dreams were post-IDF? Did they see themselves as children weighed down in adult clothing? Were they fearful of death, or worse, fearful of becoming indifferent to the killing of others?
My life at 18 could not have been more different. While they were serving their 24 months, I was applying to Canadian universities, packing and moving to a new city, saying goodbye to the family home for mischievous, fun and frolic. I didn’t have a care in the world, and the few responsibilities I had (like turning in papers on time) were barely met. No one trained me on an M-16, let alone expect me to use one.
Shani Boianjiu’s The People of Forever Are Not Afraid
Avishag is desperate to talk, but can’t seem to get the words out. Overburdened with family trauma, her service is spent as a watch soldier on the Egyptian border. To tolerate her 12 hour shifts staring at a security fence through a green monitor, she resumes a childhood game of inventing people who don’t exist. Yet people do exist in the form of Sudanese refugees attempting to cross over into the Egyptian-Israeli border. Her superior explains that they “can’t shoot the Sudanese because that would look bad, but we also don’t want them here because then we would have to give them jobs, and they bring diseases, and they lower the Jewish rates. So we let the Egyptians shoot them instead because the Egyptians don’t care if they look bad because the world already thinks they are bad but forgives them because they are Arabs.” In response, she comments on how “I couldn’t quite follow his whole explanation, so I looked into the white of his eyes and imagined a room full of made-up people.”
Lea dons the much-feared blue beret of the military police. Even though she is stationed with the transitions unit, traveling soldiers mistake her with the ability to issue reports for wearing their uniforms wrong in public. She spends her days at a Hebron checkpoint, verifying IDs and randomly searching Palestinian contractors hired for Israeli construction projects. Inundated with regulatory rules, Lea comments on how “I had to make sure they weren’t carrying weapons or about to explore their bodies. We were there to notice what the government wanted us to, dangers, but I would still only notice what I happened to notice. This was because I couldn’t realize I was a soldier. I thought I was still a person.”
Stationed on a training base near Hidna, Yael frequently sees the absurdity of living amongst a generation trained for the worst. Her evening shifts guarding the base are often interrupted with the giggles of Palestinian boys who crawl over the barricade to steal random items. One night as she reaches the top of a hill overlooking the ammunition bunker “all I can do is think: The fence. The fence. They took. The fence. Every few minutes, without planning, I find myself saying it out loud, and then, my laughter echoes, across mountains I cannot see in the dark.” When not securing the base, she trains male soldiers and reservists in ammunition before they are set out to be killed during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon War.
The novel, which often wanders between the past and present offers a grim psychological realism of the three main protagonists. Violent, bleak, and at times, remarkable funny, we witness their transformation as childhood friends, soldiers and post-IDF young women who frequently meet at Tel Aviv’s Azrieli mall. While civilian life may offer them additional choices, Boianjiu’s remarkable debut reminds us that their lives are still enclosed by hostile borders, daunting relationships and complex allegiances.
(Image c/o 1)
