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- No. 73 ...
BIRTHDAY BOY
Imshin
(Published by Cafe Diverso in Voices of the World)
He reversed into his usual spot, pulled up on the handbrake, and turned the key to switch off the ignition. Then he leant back in his seat. He didn’t want to go up just yet.
He knew they’d be waiting for him, Mira and the kids, with balloons and a cake and funny little cards and presents that the kids would have made themselves. The little one would be jumping up and down right now in excited anticipation, and even his eldest would have torn himself away from his precious computer to be in on the big event.
Much as he loved them and appreciated the little ‘surprise’ party he knew they would have prepared in his honor, he was tired from a long day and couldn’t face the happy festivities right now.
There was something that had been bothering him all day, a thought, some sort of insight that was eluding him. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it.
He closed his eyes and was swept away by an image in his mind. He was a child again, alone at home, kneeling in front of that big frame with the black and white photograph that dominated the living room. The man in the photograph had curly black hair and deep black eyes, just like his.
It was the day of his thirteenth birthday, his Bar Mitzva. Saturday, Shabbat, was his Aliya la’Torah in the synagogue, symbolizing his coming of age. He would sing the piece he had been practicing for weeks in front of everyone, all of his family, all of his friends. Only the man in the photograph wouldn’t be there.
He had been staring at the man in the photograph for as long as he could remember. He knew everything there was to know about him. He had heard all the stories, he had read about him in all the books.
He had spent hours on end leafing through the old family albums, looking at the few photographs of them together. Here was the man in the photograph holding the baby, smiling. Here was his mother with an old-fashioned hairstyle, holding the baby as the man in the photograph looked on. Here were the three children, younger versions of his brother and sister, and the baby – and the man in the photograph with his arms around them all, protectively.
But for all that he looked and listened and read, over and over, the man in the photograph remained a stranger.
Again and again in his mind he confronted the man, shouted at him, demanding answers. Whichever way he looked at it, he couldn’t escape the terrible thought that haunted him. “If he had loved me, he couldn’t have done it.”
He knew that on that fateful day all those years ago, the man in the photograph had forgotten his family. He hadn’t thought about the baby son he would never know. He had been oblivious to the consequences for those that loved him, and for the one who would never have the chance of loving him.
No, the man in the photograph had thought of nothing but the task at hand, when he had made the split-second decision to climb out of his disabled tank and face the roaring cannon of the enemy tanks advancing towards him, armed only with his Uzi sub-machine gun.
He opened his eyes, and straightened himself. It was getting dark outside the car. He thought he had better go in, before they started thinking that something had happened. It was okay, he knew what it was that had been eluding him.
He was thirty-nine years old today, thirty-nine and the father of three, just like his father had been. He climbed out of the jeep, tucked his khaki shirt back into his pants, and reached back into the vehicle to grab hold of his M-16, before heading for the entrance of the apartment building.
posted by Imshin 10:24 PM
