Tamir dedicated himself to Russian-Arabic terminology and the baroque, elaborate world of combat doctrines, strategies and tactics, weapons systems, and arsenals of ammunition and equipment. He discovered that plunging into this strange world, divorced from his tangible surroundings— kitchen duty with Kahane, guard duty, cleaning duty, scrubbing down toilets with Lysol, whitewashing tree stumps— imbued him with a sense of calmness, like an exercise in Zen Buddhism. He wasn’t the only one who felt that way, apparently; at night, right before they closed their eyes, he and his friends would recite the order of battle of the Syrian air divisions and armored divisions, and the deployment of bases and communications systems, one last time, like novices in their novitiate, repeating sacred mantras before resting in their humble abodes from which they will be rudely awakened in just a few hours’ time for another day of hard toiling and holy work.
They learned dialects, as well. Tamir’s class mostly studied the Syrian dialect. Their Syrian-Arabic teacher was a prisoner interrogator named Baruch Alfandary, who spoke the dialect with native fluency. He showed them videotapes of Syrian movies, and taught them songs like Fatoum Fatoum Fatoumeh in vernacular Syrian with Turkish influences. He laced his lessons with secret anecdotes from the dark interrogation rooms where he plied his trade. Tamir knew that these stories were embellished and exaggerated, but he didn’t mind. They offered a much-needed respite from artillery corps orders of battle and classroom roll-calls.
Over time, Tamir acquired a substantial command of the structure of the Syrian army, its weapons systems and communications protocols, as well as a decent command of the structure of other Arab armies, and the histories of Arab nations and their economies. But he wasn’t great at the technical parts— the intricate rules of data reception and processing, antennas, relays, frequencies, modulations and multiplexing. He got the basics of it, but far from mastered its intricacies. He did his best to focus in technical lessons, but could never wrap his mind around the electronic chain of events, the heart of the matter. You are going to be the spearheads of Unit 8200,2 their course commander told them with as much pomp as he could muster, the headquarters SIGINT division. You are going to be intelligence analysts.3 You will be sitting in the cockpit of this elaborate and illustrious system, and to understand SIGINT, you must know its technical details, just like that in order to fly a plane, a pilot must know how the engine works, how the wings are designed, what is lift, and what is atmospheric circulation. Otherwise, the plane will crash. And we don’t want that to happen, right? So, in order to be intelligence analysts, you will need to understand what an antenna is, down to the level of an individual screw. You will need to know what a coaxial cable is, or what an optic fiber is. Those are the tools that will help you do your job, and you will need to know how to extract their maximum potential. Every radio check by an armored regiment near Dar‘a that will reach you will have made its way through that equipment. That’s why you need to know the technical aspects of these system like you know your own service number!
But Tamir never came to grips with the system at that level, and it was evident in his examinations. He never fully understood how the human voice was transmitted through cables, sent out to outer space, and received at a completely different point back on earth; how the dispatches are coded, and then reverted back to an intelligible human voice. All of that seemed like an incredible marvel to him, infinitely more complex than concepts employed by theologians to explain God. God is a pretty comprehensible concept, and not a very impressive one at that, Tamir thought to himself during one of the lessons. Technical encryption, on the other hand, that was much more impressive and much more perplexing. He thought that he was better suited to serve in positions that didn’t require technical know-how, like translation or open-source intelligence. Yet, there he was, stuck with antennas and coaxial cables.
Binder! The technical instructor’s shrill voice sliced through Tamir’s daydream, his red pimples flaring up with rage. You’d better not drift off, with grades like yours!
d. Hostile Terrorist Activity
Two weeks before the end of the course, the big day arrived: the cadets were called in one by one to the course commander’s office, to be assigned their placement— a decision which would more or less shape the rest of their military service. The cadets that went in before Tamir mostly left the office happy and thrilled, revealing their assigned posts to anything within earshot. Tamir went in heavy-hearted. He didn’t know what his fate held in store, but he hoped it would be translation or open-source intelligence. Either one of those two options would allow him to pass the rest of
