Back From the War

One hundred days after the war began, Roni returned to the office for the first time. Much had changed since the beginning of October—there was a new office manager, the coffee machine had been replaced, and a fancy contraption dispensed freshly squeezed orange juice in the kitchen—but overall, things were just the same. The projects waiting for him were those he had dropped when unexpectedly he was called up for emergency reserve duty, and although his inbox was now bloated with unread emails, it was as if he had never left.

“Roni, welcome back!” Gideon exclaimed, slapping him on his shoulder—a shoulder that ached from having carried a weapon nearly twenty-four hours a day. Gideon sat at the desk across from Roni in the developers’ open space. “How are you doing, my brother?”

“I’m okay,” Roni said, swiveling his chair into position. He pushed aside the welcome-back gift basket, with its “Thank you for your service!” note, expensive bottle of wine, and imported chocolate, and adjusted his computer screen.

“No, really, how are you doing?”

How was he doing? How was anyone doing? He was lying when he said he was okay, but he didn’t want to say anything more. Not to Gideon, whom he rarely saw outside work hours. Not to his boss, Moishe, either, or any of his colleagues. He hadn’t spoken with his parents about what he went through, when he’d visited them the previous Shabbat, so why should he open up now?

“Well, I’m glad to see you back,” Gideon said. “We all are.”

His colleagues came over to greet him as they arrived for work. One by one they hugged him, slapped him on his pained shoulder. Even the new office manager, who he’d never met before, welcomed him like an old friend.

“Hey, man, good to see you!” Moishe dropped his backpack on Roni’s desk as if claiming it for his own and punched him in the arm. It hurt.

“Same here,” Roni said to his boss.

“We’ve got plenty of work set out for you and there’s no time like the present to dive back into it. Are you ready, Roni?”

“I’m ready,” he replied. But was he?

Everything was the same, but nothing was the same. As the hours passed on his first day back, Roni couldn’t manage the simplest tasks, and the complicated tasks were impossible to understand. The most important e-mails were gibberish to him, and he couldn’t tell urgent directives from spam. He found it difficult to concentrate at the team meeting, something that his boss picked up on.

“I get a sense you’re not yourself,” Moishe said, when he called Roni into his office after the meeting. “You seem distracted. Maybe you came back to work too soon?”

“Give me a day or two,” Roni said. “You’ll see. I understand the project. I was working on it in September.”

“It’s the same one, but now we have a deadline.”

“I’ll get it done on time.”

At the end of the day, Gideon suggested they get together that evening.

“You look like you need to get drunk, and I know just the place.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Roni said. “I have someone waiting for me at home.”

“Someone? So you landed yourself a girlfriend while you were in the army?”

“No, not a girlfriend.”

“A guy? Wait, did I misread you all these years?

“Gideon, come on!”

“So who, then? Don’t keep me in the dark.”

“Sure.” Roni nodded at Gideon and left the office.

*

A short bus ride later, Roni climbed three flights of stairs and unlocked his front door. A ball of energy bounded forward to greet him, leaping on its hind legs to lick his face wetly, over and over, its long, pink tongue lathering Roni’s chin and cheeks. Roni tried to calm the dog down, but the animal’s tail wagged like a drunken windshield wiper and its whole body waggled, the back half in a different direction than the front, as if Roni was being confronted by two separate animals. Thick brown fur, a bushy tail, all-knowing eyes, a black snout—his dog. His pleasing whimpering brought a wide grin to Roni’s face.

“Get down, Karma,” he said, although he would readily have allowed this warm, wet greeting to go on forever. “Sit!” he commanded the animal, but Karma continued his happy dance, wiggling and shimmying, his tail wagging even faster than before. “Good dog, Karma. You deserve a treat!”

Roni opened the kitchen drawer and pulled out a package of duck bits. He held out a tidbit to a toothy mouth. “Sit, Karma!” When the dog obeyed, he gave him the treat. He petted Karma’s warm back before the panting animal headed across the room and plopped down on the pillow that served as his bed. “Staying home all day alone! Who’s a good dog?”

Roni unpacked his bag and set his laptop on his kitchen table, determined not to log into his work account. Why should he worry about the project at home, in his free time? Moishe would understand. He had just come back from the army, after all. He would dive back into the project tomorrow in the office. It was time to take Karma for a walk.

He locked the door behind him and led Karma down the stairs. A door opened on the second-floor landing. It was Mrs. Gordetsky, his talkative but well-intentioned neighbor.

“Roni, are you back?” she asked, opening her door wider to reveal the cluttered apartment behind her. “Back from the war?”

“Yes, Mrs. Gordetsky. I was just released.”

“I haven’t seen you in… Wait, did you have a dog before?”

“This is Karma,” he said, but she moved back when the dog approached to sniff her legs. “I just got him.”

“Karma? What a strange name. I don’t mind dogs, but I don’t know about big dogs like that. What kind is he?”

“Just a mutt, a mixed breed. Nothing special,” Roni said, pulling Karma’s leash as Mrs. Gordetsky backed into her apartment.

“I hope he doesn’t bark! I don’t like barking dogs!”

“Karma only barks at other males. He’s a good dog.” Roni nodded at his neighbor and led the dog out to the street.

This was all new to Roni. Leading the dog, stopping as he raised his leg to pee, pausing as Karma sniffed at the bushes, pulling Karma strongly when he followed another dog’s scent into a private garden. The dog lifted his leg again, peed again, and they continued up the street.

At the corner, a young toddler grasped his mother’s hand and moved away nervously from the dog at Roni’s side. Near the hardware store, Karma sniffed at a small square of cardboard on the sidewalk and then drenched it with his pee. Karma turned to approach the door of the flower shop, but Roni held his leash tight. A female dog approached, and Karma struggled to break free to greet her, but both Roni and the female’s owner pulled back.

“Hey, Roni!”

It was Jenny. The French immigrant he had fallen in love with the previous summer, shortly after her arrival in Israel. Jenny, so beautiful with her long, blonde hair and tanned skin. He had invited her for coffee, and tried to engage her in WhatsApp chats, but nothing worked. She had barely responded to his texts.

“Wow, what a beautiful dog,” Jenny said. The dog’s wet tongue spilled from his mouth to lick her and his tail began its rapid flapping. “I don’t remember you having a dog.”

“I just got him.”

“Wow! What’s his name?”

“Karma.”

“Karma? It’s your destiny to have him, I guess. Where did you get this lovely dog? Aren’t you just lovely?” she added, addressing the animal at her side.

Roni didn’t reply. All he could think about at the moment were his failed attempts to get Jenny interested in him in the past. Then Jenny stood straight, very close to him, and Karma turned to pee on the bark of a tree.

“I didn’t figure you as being a dog person,” Jenny said. “You look good as a dog person!”

He laughed at that. “How have you been doing?”

“Oh, you know. Dodging the rocket attacks like everyone else. Hey, wait. Didn’t I hear you were called up for duty? Were you in Gaza?”

“Yes, I only got back last week.”

“How was it?”

At that moment, Karma impatiently pulled him up the street. Roni assumed this would be the end of his conversation with Jenny, but to his surprise, she walked with them, bending to pet Karma from time to time.

“You probably don’t want to talk about it,” she said, when Roni continued to delay his response to her question.

“It’s just…” He didn’t know how to finish his sentence, how to put any of it into words.

“Any time you want to talk, I’m here to listen. Really, Roni. We should sit down for coffee or something.”

Her offer surprised him. Last year, she had barely smiled at him, but now her words suggested a genuine interest in hearing what he had to say. Was it his service in the IDF that had opened the door to their having a real conversation? Or was it something else?

“Karma, you’re such a friendly dog,” Jenny said, reaching out to caress the soft fur on his head. “You know, Roni, you’re truly a dog person. I can see that now.”

“He’s a good dog,” Roni admitted.

“So where did you get him? Adopted from a shelter? He seems too well-behaved to be from one of those.”

“No, no shelter. I’ll tell you sometime.”

“You better!” Jenny said. Karma lowered his head to sniff the scent on the pavement of a previous canine visitor. “Goodbye, Karma! Roni, let’s get together soon. Text me.”

“Okay,” he replied. He stood in place, watching Jenny continue up the street, not moving until Karma pulled on the leash and he realized it was time to go home.

*

That night, the war came back to him. The acrid smell of gunpowder, the deafening explosions. The flashes of light, the uncompromising darkness. The gunfire nearby, the shriek of shelling in the distance. The shouted commands he could barely hear because of the constant ringing in his ears. The rubble, the destruction. Adjusting the weapon on his shoulders, his eyes scanned the nearby buildings. His comrades crouched for cover, urging him to do the same.

His eyes watered, his mouth was parched. He shouldn’t be here, he thought, but he had no choice but to be here. This was a just war; it was his country’s very existence was at stake. But still…

In the rubble to his left, he spotted a pair of eyes low to the ground. A child, perhaps? There was movement amidst the broken blocks, the shattered glass, the debris. An animal crept forward, its body nearly dragging on the ground in attempts to avoid the metal and cement that had once been a building, a home. It appeared to be—it was—a dog.

“Look!” Roni said, but no one heard him amidst the havoc of the operation. He slowly rose from his crouch and slid around a fallen wall to approach the animal.

“Soldier, stay in place!”

Roni ignored the order and continued forward. When the dog slunk back, Roni held out his hand. “Come here. Who’s a good dog?”

The dog sniffed at his hand and its tail wagged tentatively, picking up speed when it sensed no danger. The animal was slightly underweight, but overall appeared to be in good shape. Roni petted its head, and the dog stayed in place.

“Soldier, get back here!”

Roni took one last glance at the dog, and then turned to rejoin his comrades in the shelter of the ruined building.

“Looks like you have a friend!”

The dog had followed him, and again Roni petted it. He reached into his pocket for the other half of an energy bar, a treat he had planned to enjoy by himself if he survived this patrol. He’d barely had time to slip off the wrapping before the dog took a big, toothy bite of the snack.

Even his commander was impressed at how quickly the dog took to Roni.

“Looks like destiny brought you together.”

“Karma,” Roni said.

He smiled in his sleep, but the shriek of shelling spun his dream in a different direction, into the nightmares that kept him trapped in Gaza, even now after his release from reserve duty. His eyes were closed, but he could see it all, replaying in his mind the horror and destruction. Boom! Crash! The collapse of a wall. A body among the rubble. The cry of injured comrades, the death of Palestinians. The blood, the wetness. The wetness?

It was Karma licking his face, over and over, calling on his master to wake up from a tortured night and take him on an early morning walk.

*

“So, Roni, how did you get him? You promised to tell me.”

Roni smiled at Jenny, pleased at how she petted his panting dog as Karma rested under their table at the sidewalk café. “Karma’s a good dog,” he said.

“You’re avoiding my question. Why can’t you tell me? Did you steal the dog?”

He laughed at that, but then the smile faded from his face.

“You brought him back from Gaza, didn’t you?”

He nodded, cleared his throat. “I found him there, and he followed me. He took to me just as quickly as I took to him.”

“You rescued a dog! Maybe he was held hostage, an Israeli dog taken captive into the Gaza Strip. Maybe he belongs to a family evacuated from a kibbutz or a moshav? Does he have a microchip under his skin? Can you trace his owner?”

“No one’s reported a missing dog like him.”

“He seems to be in good shape. He must have been someone’s pet. Wait a minute. Is that what he was? The pet of a Palestinian in Gaza? Roni, look at me.”

“What can I say? I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

“If he belonged to a Palestinian family –”

“I’ll never know,” Roni said, avoiding her eyes.

“Don’t be like that, Roni,” Jenny said, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “He’s a good dog, and you rescued him from a bad life.”

“Maybe,” Roni said despondently, but then he looked up. There was kindness and understanding in her eyes; she appeared truly interested in his story, in what he had to say.

“Karma,” she said, and the dog looked up at her. “Destiny! You were destined to come out of the war together.”

Roni reached under the table and lovingly grabbed the fur at the back of his dog’s neck. The dog turned his head, stuck out his long, pink tongue, and Roni was sure that Karma was smiling at him.