Read The UnAmericans: Stories for Free Online

a commander I couldn’t stand, even though his voice softened when I told him what happened.
    “Take two weeks of emergency leave,” he said. “Two and a half if you need it.” I knew just where he was: outside the dining hall, hocking watermelon seeds into a bucket while his soldiers filed out from dish duty. “Yigal or Stas will cover for you, no problem.”
    “I appreciate it,” I said, though really I’d have been happier if he told me I’d never spend another day in the army sedan, carting Lieutenant HaLevi to his meetings. We always went to the same places, down to headquarters in Tel Aviv or up to the air force base in Haifa. Sometimes he’d even have the gall to order me to pull over and get him a Fanta at one of the stands along the highway, and I’d wait in line at some roadside hummus place, picturing my brother doing real work in the territories.
    Before he was discharged, Asaaf had commanded a unit guarding a settlement in Hebron, and was away a month at a time—so different from how I had it: home every evening, weekends working in the crops or feeding the chickens. Sometimes I’d be cleaning the coop and think about Asaaf setting up roadblocks with an M16 across his shoulder, his uniform matted with dirt and sweat—then feel like an idiot for glamorizing work I knew he hated. There was nothing worse than guarding land he just wanted to give back, Asaaf was always saying, nothing worse than having one of those Americans stop by his station to tell him, in English, that he was doing holy work. But he didn’t want to be jailed for refusing to serve and also didn’t have it in him to lie to the army, pleading insanity, the way many others got out of duty—and even signed on for an extra year at his commander’s urging. Asaaf was like that: he’d spend the whole weekend back home cursing the war, but right when he had to return to it, he’d snap back into soldier mode, standing up a little straighter as he buttoned the uniform my mother had just ironed, pulling his gun from underneath his bed without a word. I think there was a part of him that liked to hate what he did, to have something to bump up against.
    Asaaf was forever telling me I should be grateful I hadn’t been placed in combat, and that what he really wanted was to get out of the country and be someplace quiet. Lately all he’d been talking about was his post-army trip to the U.S. with Yael: spending four months on an organic yoga farm in California and then another two driving down the coast and into Mexico with Dedy; they were supposed to leave in a week. When I asked why he’d take a sixteen-hour flight to spend more of his life picking fruit and mucking cow shit, where he’d be forced to do yoga , for God’s sake, my brother smiled—not the wide white grin he walked through the world with but a smaller one, more with his eyes, and said, “Yael’s been obsessed with this farm for months,” and that’s when I knew he really loved her.
    And then, last week, Asaaf sauntered through our front door in his civilian clothes for the first time in four years. The entire time he was in the army, my mother and I ate dinner in silence while the radio played, waiting for news of clashes or casualties. When it came on she’d put down her fork and wait, taking off her glasses and working a finger into the corner of her eye, letting out a long slow breath when the broadcast was over. But that night with Asaaf back home, she flicked the dial to the classical station instead. She prepared his favorite meal, schnitzel and fries, salad and rice, and they quickly fell into their private discussion about the prime minister and the upcoming U.N. negotiations, the sort of things she probably spoke about with our father before he died, back when I was still an infant, long before Asaaf assumed his place at the table—and by the time I came up with something to contribute, they were two or three conversations beyond me.
    Asaaf slept late and