The Seven Good Years (13 page)

T
he air-raid siren catches us on the highway, driving to Shira's father's place north of Tel Aviv. Shira pulls over to the side of the road and we get out of the car, leaving the badminton rackets and feathered ball on the backseat. Lev holds my hand and says, “Daddy, I'm a little nervous.” He's seven, and seven is the age when it's not considered cool to talk about fear, so the word
nervous
is used instead. Following Home Front Command instructions, Shira lies down on the side of the road. I tell Lev that he has to lie down, too. But he keeps standing there, his small, sweaty hand clutching mine. “Lie down already,” Shira says, raising her voice to be heard over the blaring siren. He doesn't, and I remain standing, too.

“How'd you like to play a game of Pastrami Sandwich?” I ask Lev. “What's that?” he asks, not letting go of my hand.

“Mommy and I are slices of bread,” I explain, “and you're a slice of pastrami, and we have to make a pastrami sandwich as fast as we can. Let's go. First, you lie down on Mommy,” I say, and Lev lies down on Shira's back and hugs her as hard as he can. I lie on top of them, pressing against the damp earth with my hands so as not to crush them.

“This feels good,” Lev says, and smiles.

“Being the pastrami is the best,” Shira says under him.

“Pastrami!” I yell.

“Pastrami!” my wife yells.

“Pastrami!” Lev yells, his voice shaky, either from excitement or fear. “Daddy,” Lev says, “look, there are ants crawling on Mommy.”

“Pastrami with ants!” I yell.

“Pastrami with ants!” my wife yells.

“Yech!”
Lev yells.

And then we hear the boom. Loud, but far away. We stay lying one on top of the other, without moving, for a long time. My arms are starting to hurt from carrying my weight. From the corner of my eye, I can see other drivers who've been lying on the highway get up and brush the dirt off their clothes. I start to stand up.

“Lie down,” Lev tells me, “lie down, Daddy. You're ruining the sandwich.”

I lie down for another minute, and say, “Okay, game's over. We won.”

“But it's nice,” Lev says. “Let's stay like this a little more.”

We stay like that a few seconds longer. Mommy on the bottom, Daddy on the top, and Lev and a few red ants in the middle. When we finally get up, Lev asks where the rocket is. I point in the direction from which the explosion came. “It sounded like it exploded not far from our house,” I say.

“Oof,” Lev says, disappointed, “now Lahav will probably find pieces again. Yesterday, he came to school with a piece of iron from the last rocket, and it had the symbol of the company on it and the name in Arabic. Why did it have to explode so far away?”

“Better far away than close by,” Shira says as she wipes sand and ants off her pants.

“The best would be if it was far enough away so nothing happens to us, but close enough so I could pick up some pieces,” Lev sums up.

“The best would be badminton on Grandpa Yonatan's lawn,” I disagree with him, and open the door to the backseat of the car.

“Daddy,” Lev says as I'm buckling him in, “promise that if there's another siren, you and Mommy will play Pastrami with me again.”

“I promise,” I say, “and if it gets boring, I'll teach you how to play Grilled Cheese.”

“Great!” Lev says, and a second later, he adds more seriously, “but what if there aren't any more sirens ever?”

“I think there'll be at least one or two more. Don't worry,” I reassure him. “And if not,” Shira adds from the front seat, “we can play it without the sirens, too.”

Etgar Keret was born in Ramat Gan and now lives in Tel Aviv. A winner of the French Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres, he is a lecturer at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the author, most recently, of the story collection
Suddenly, a Knock on the Door
. His work has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has appeared in
The New Yorker
,
The Wall Street Journal
,
The Paris Review
, and
The New York Times
, among many other publications, and on
This American Life
, where he is a regular contributor.

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