The Key

Ido Tzvi Eli

5/2010

First were the MAZAP officers, who surrounded him with yellow tape, pushed back the curious onlookers, pulled out their little sealed nylon bags and stomped around in the demarcated space.

One female kibbutznik from “Kol Ha’Aretz” was speaking to a few characters that came to her from every direction. “It was I who noticed him first, I didn’t understand what he had to find here, I immediately called the police.”
“He probably got confused when he tried to run away from the people here. In the entire country you hear of these cases,” declared the man with the visor hat knowingly, and turned the visor around on his head.
The other people grouped around nodded their heads. More and more people continued to arrive. A strong sense of terror bordering on panic floated in the air, right beside the general spirit of patriotic determination and urgency that infused the assembled. Of course, this wasn’t the first time, not the first and only instance – but the helplessness, the uncertainty and the danger to the public order only grew with additional case.
“As one whose been to every godforsaken corner in this land, I’m telling you that it will end badly if we don’t do something drastic,” yelled the bus driver of the tourist bus that stopped by the side of the road because of all the commotion, “Yesterday they’re there, today they’re here, and where will they be tomorrow? How long will we be silent? How long will we bow our heads and shut up? If we don’t unite and go to war they will kick us the hell out of here.”
A serious-looking officer arrived and asked the crowd to disperse, “It is difficult to investigate with all of this here and we need to clear him out of here soon.”
“Where will you take him? The entire country is filled with them, we don’t want to see him already, didn’t you get that officer?” said the next door neighbor, flapping his head in frustration.
The chief inspector tried to explain that he too is a human being, that he too is Israeli (Jewish, in other words), that he also needs air, that it’s hard for him too, that he can’t take it anymore—but “If you want victory, let the security forces do their work and do not interrupt. In a bit we will sweep up the last bits of the bothersome reminders and bothersome memories and we could return to our beloved quiet. Now back, please.”
“Really, it’s about time, these anti-Semitic Scandinavian tourists are always asking questions, they don’t understand that after the Holocaust no one has the right to come and criticize us, especially when we didn’t do anything, we are the victims of those lowlifes around us, like the one who lies there, that’s all,” and with that the driver turned around and walked back to his bus full of curious and astonished tourists. And again murmurs of agreement all around, and again indignant sighs and righteous anger.
The police high command assembled close to the TV cameras; the general attended a secret meeting; ministers, panic-stricken, abandoned a ceremony of solidarity with the Jewish-Democratic state of Israel at the home of some ambassador from Oceania, and went to a special government meeting; in the offices of the media, angry beepers announced a special press conference called by the Prime Minister, and no questions will be taken on the matter; concerned citizens were kept informed in their houses by a special program broadcast by the Office of Denial and Suppression.

The operative decision was already taken: a military bulldozer will cut down, turn over, and bury the deceased and will cover him with the earth of that place. The tree planters of the Jewish National Fund will be brought afterwards to plant various trees according to their experience of many years in such matters in order to set up a new national park, additionally: “To bury and disappear that which it is appropriate to forget, to bestow onto Zionism an ever-green validity,” according to the appointed regional inspector.

“A youth in sandals, short pants and an undershirt cut his way through the noisy masses, and stopped beside the key, “What luck, I thought I wouldn’t find it.”
“Who areyou!?” asked the new inspector in anger.
“I live over that hill and this is the key to my house, my mother would have killed me, thanks for watching it for me,” smiled the youth in shyness, took the key, and pushed his way from beyond the disappointed crowd and ran up the hill.
The prime minister proudly promised in that same evening that we will be able to bury many more keys.

The end