paratroop recruiting officer.
“Hello, grandpa,” he said. “I’m surprised to see you’re still with us. But I warn you, you won’t stop running for the next six months.”
“That’s okay, sir,” Jason replied.
“And another thing, don’t call me ‘sir.’ My name is Zvi.”
All Jason remembered of the next six months was that he even ran in his dreams.
On his first twenty-four-hour leave, he hitched a ride to Vered Ha-Gaul. He was happy to see Eva, who understood that what he needed most was sleep.
When he finally awoke she had some news for him.
“Your father’s been phoning. I told him where you were, and he sounded distraught. He made me promise to have you call the moment I saw you.”
Jason got up, went to the kibbutz phone, and called his father collect.
“Look, son,” the elder Gilbert remonstrated, “I’ve been pretty patient with you, but this army business is going a bit too far. I want you to get back where you belong. That’s an order.”
“Father, I only take orders from my commanding officer. As far as being where I belong, that’s a personal matter.”
“What about your career? What about everything you trained for at Harvard?”
“Father, if Harvard taught me one thing, it was to find my own set of values. I feel needed here. I feel useful. I feel good. What the hell else is there in life?”
“Jason, I want you to promise me to see a psychiatrist.”
“I’ll tell you what, Dad. I’ll visit a shrink if you’ll visit Israel. Then we’ll all sit down and decide which of us is crazy.”
“All right, Jason, I don’t want to argue anymore. Just promise you’ll call whenever you can.”
“Sure, Dad. I promise. Love to Mom.”
“We miss you, son. We really miss you.”
“Me too, Dad,” he answered softly.
Jason was among the fifty percent who survived the ordeal and received their wings and red berets.
He immediately entered the advanced course, mastering techniques of helicopter assaults and learning every inch of the country’s topography. Not from a map. During the next six months, he covered every inch of the Holy Land on foot. He began to enjoy sleeping in the open air.
After that he spent a week at the kibbutz, taking long walks with Eva, and writing a lengthy letter to his parents. Then he entered the Officers’ Candidate School near Petach Tikva. There, the only thing he learned that he did not already know was the Israeli principle of leadership, which could be summed up in two words: “Follow me.” Officers lead all missions from the front.
Eva and Yossi came to the graduation ceremony and saw Jason parade by the chief of staff and salute. Standing right next to the commander was Zvi, his original recruiting officer. As Jason passed, he was whispering something into the general’s ear.
“I guess the nickname’s going to stick,” Jason said when he joined them later. “Now everybody calls me
As they were driving back to the kibbutz, Yossi asked Jason how he intended to spend his ten days of freedom before active duty.
“I want to go back and look at every inch of ground I marched over,” he replied. “Only this time I want to do it with a car … and a guide.”
“The Bible is the best thing for that,” Yossi offered.
“I know,” said Jason. And then added shyly, “but I was hoping Eva would be my tour leader.”
In the days that followed, they covered four thousand years of history. From King Solomon’s mines deep in the Negev, up through the stark desert to Beersheba, home of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
As they drove out of Sodom — where the infamous profligacies described in Genesis were now replaced by massive fertilizer works, Jason quipped, “Don’t look back, Eva. Remember Lot’s wife.”
“I never look back,” she answered with a tiny smile.
From there it was north to Em Gedi, the lowest point on earth, where they swam — or rather floated — in the buoyant salty Dead Sea.
And finally, Jerusalem, the city conquered by King David ten centuries before Christ, and still the spiritual capital of the world.
Its very stones exuded a kind of holiness that even Jason could somehow feel. They were not able to visit the remains of the holy Temple of Solomon as it was on the Jordanian side of the divided city.
“We’ll get to see it some day,” Eva said, “when there’s peace.”
“Will we live that long?” asked Jason.
“
During the entire journey, Jason and Eva had slept within a few feet of each other. First outdoors in the Negev, now in a cheap hostel. Yet, their only physical contact was when he helped her climb a rock or a monument.
Spending days and nights in such spiritual proximity had created a bond between them. And yet their friendship remained platonic.
Toward the end of their first day in Jerusalem, Jason told Eva he was going to the YMCA on King George Street to try to pick up a game of tennis. She said she would take a walk and meet him later for dinner.
It did not occur to her that he had not brought a racket along. She herself was too preoccupied with wanting to make a personal visit.
The afternoon shadows were lengthening as she entered the cemetery on Emek Refaim and walked slowly toward the area where her childhood friend was buried, A hundred yards from the grave she stopped short.
Jason was already there, standing motionless, his head bowed. Even from a distance she could see he was crying.
She turned and walked silently off, deferring her grief to his.
From the “Class Notes” section of the
1958
Born: to Theodore Lambros and Sara Harrison Lambros (Radcliffe ’58), a son, Theodore Junior, on September 6, 1965. Lambros has recently been promoted to Assistant Professor of Classics at Harvard.
ANDREW ELIOT’S DIARY
October 12, 1965
