I closed my eyes and remembered. How I sat there on a rock. How I smoked the cigarette the deputy company sergeant major had brought me. He knew I didn’t smoke, but said that at times like these, it didn’t really count. I remembered looking at the civilians standing outside the assembly area. At Dad, who stood there with his fanny pack like some sad weirdo, right behind the guy fanning the grill. It looked like he was trying to help him, but he knocked over a plateful of kebabs, doing more harm than good. I remember seeing his face, blurring in the white smoke.

I knew it wasn’t a real memory. But at that moment, it made do.

Exit

NEXT TO A RED HILL in the desert, our only daughter wandered and disappeared into the thicket of her dreams, leaving us blind—as we heard the thud of her fall without knowing in which direction to turn.

1.

NELLY WAS THE first to pick up on it. One night, after Shira had fallen asleep, she whispered to me in the kitchen that something was going on with our little girl. Something bad. Not just your everyday blues. Something in her eyes had changed since we moved south. “I’m not speaking metaphorically,” she stressed. “There’s something in their grayness that doesn’t look right. I don’t know.”

Nelly believed in the body, believed it spoke louder than words. She claimed that’s how she could almost always tell when something was about to happen to Shira. I thought there was a simpler explanation. That she always suspected something was going on with our daughter, so sometimes she also happened to be right. I’m not saying this as criticism. Quite the opposite. Nelly was the better parent. Neither of us doubted that. When Shira was five, even she noted in a passing remark made on Tel Baruch beach that “Mommy loves me more.” Nelly quickly denied it, signaled to me to go get the girl an ice cream, and like an idiot I ran a kilometer and a half for a cracked Cornetto, only to run back and discover that a week earlier, Shira had sworn off dairy because her kindergarten teacher said milk was stolen from cows. I don’t know whether Nelly forgot to warn me, or if she just wanted to remind me of the power dynamic. I, for my part, tried to come out ahead at least in the more banal areas—parent-teacher conferences, school plays, and sports competitions—where I enjoyed a slight lead. This included the fourth-grade soccer league’s final match of the season, when ASA Ramat Aviv beat Beitar Kfar Shalem two to one thanks to Shira blocking a last-minute penalty kick.

A brief hug at the end of the game. That’s all I managed to get from her.