Benji Has a Dream

Benji stands in the doorway of his bedroom. The walls of the room are a blue-gray. There is a window overlooking the garden and through it Benji can see clear across, over the roofs of his neighbors, to the taller buildings of Jerusalem, because there are no fruit trees in the garden anymore. A condition, his bodyguards said, of staying on Azza St. The room has a bed and a dresser and a night table: all in appropriately dark wood. The queen bed is made, although he didn’t make it. Across from him, against the wall, the full-length mirror reflects a man who is decidedly sick of your shit. It’s just about 10:30 PM and the reflection of his dwarfish face is gray. There are lines under his eyes and his infamous smirk is on the verge of finally, fatally, drooping. Your tweets are going to kill him, this time, he’s sure of it.

For years, he has had the same feeling: this almost-solved puzzle is not a question of what can happen but of what has happened. He has hugged sweaty American men and said gracious things from time to time about the enemy. He waited, like a good man should, for the women to be hurt, before he started. He appears to be indifferent, tolerant even, of your bullshit, and he certainly loves his country. Still, his almost-sad face reminds him of his father’s, and he suspects his sons will inherit this face, too. In his memory is the seder where his oldest son, who was eight at the time, asked why God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and his wife Sara answered that it was because you do not know who you are until you have faced someone who does not want you to be that person. This memory comes to him at strange times and unsettles him. He has never talked about it and despite your incessant harassment, he can’t quite bring himself to see a therapist.

Benji’s pajamas are navy blue sweats, because he doesn’t want to change twice in the morning. One, exercise. Two, shower. Three, suit. Four, coffee, an orange, state news, and of course, the state of your twitter account. Five, the call with his generals and the new list of the dead.

Every night before bed he recites the Shema. It is the only time he prays. Benji does not toss and turn. He simply closes his eyes and falls asleep. However, on this night he wakes up suddenly in the dark. His wife is standing over him. “I have sent her away,” she says, “I have sent her and the baby away.” Her face is unwavering but something in her eyes seems to him to be dying.

Benji is suddenly filled with dread. He is frantic. He launches himself from his bed and he is in the desert. In the desert, it is quiet, it is dark, and the stars are seemingly infinite. The heavens, he thinks, the heavens are quivering. He is scanning the horizon, he sees nothing but he knows he must move forward. Before he goes, he reaches down to lift a handful of sand and watch it fall through his fingers. He is happy with it, and the way it sparkles in the moonlight. Then he begins to run, but it is not the sort of running that leaves you breathless and in pain; it is the exhilarating kind. Onward, onward!

The night smells like spice and banked fires. Around him are tent flaps closed tight; inside them are his kin, whose bellies are full of good bread and red pottage. They whisper prayers over their hands, over their food, over their children.

Soon it is behind him and now he pauses, he falls to his knees. A slight breeze and he looks up. There before him is an angel. The angel has no more than two dark eyes, brown skin, a sharp nose and a dark beard. He appears in every way to be an ordinary man. But when Benji looks at him, he is overcome with fear, he finds he cannot look away, time seems to stretch, and when the angel finally speaks, he feels somehow as though the voice is coming from his own chest. “Binyamin,” says the angel, “Binyamin, are you Jacob that you must wrestle avinu malkeinu?” Benji looks up at the angel and says, “why do you chastise me?” The angel steps to the side and Benji sees a body. He stumbles forward, although he does not want to look.

On the ground there is a dead woman. Her face is still lined with tear streaks. Her hair is a light brown and falls in gentle waves around her shoulders. The stars are reflected in her dark brown eyes, though they stare at nothing. Her mouth is open and Benji knows it was a prayer on her lips. Her skin is deeply tanned but smooth, and she wears a handmaid’s dress – a plain brown scoop neck, with a knee length skirt and elbow length sleeves. A stone’s throw away, there is a newborn. The baby is lifeless, too, but his eyes are closed. It is obvious from the woman’s position that she has looked away from her child, that she could not bear to see him die.

Benji falls to the ground, his eyes filling with tears. He gathers the dead woman into his arms. “Why did you not save her,” he demands of the angel, “is anything too hard for the Lord?”

The angel says nothing, and when Benji looks up, he realizes he has been foolish; there is no angel. The great pain in Benji’s chest fades into a mist and then into nothing at all. He lays the woman down again and he sees that she is a stranger. He looks up into the night sky and sees no stars, only the moon shining in its usual place. He bows his head and says a prayer to Su'en, the great Moon God. He turns from the woman and walks towards his home. There is an emptiness in his chest that he does not question. As he walks through the desert, he gradually becomes aware of the smell of smoke. Something is burning.

The alarm sounds and his eyes pop open. He sits up and blinks once, twice. The night recedes. In the hours he’s been asleep, the dead have piled higher, presidents and prime ministers have given statements, the U.N. has become outraged again, and you have been tweeting furiously. He looks towards the Pilates machine and sighs; he has always felt that Pilates were a fundamentally female pursuit, but his doctor is a nag. He slides out of bed, dressed for exercise already. The sun is up, and Bibi Netanyahu is an atheist again.