In front of us the great plain of the land of the Philistines. Ahead of us the blue sea. To the right, Majdal, the center of the trapped enemy forces. To the left of us, Nir Am, Gvaram, and Yad Mordechai.2 Somewhere to the north the police station of Iraq Suweidan winks at us as if the enemy wanted to remind us that the fighting is not yet over.
All around us the debris of the recent battle. Bloody knives, ammunition boxes, discarded water bottles, knapsacks, a small artillery piece disabled by its fleeing crew.
Just two days ago Egyptian soldiers were here. They were the ones who kept the Negev isolated and maintained the connection between their forward units and the rear. All that remains of them is the signs of their flight. A dirt-covered rifle is lying over there. Someone brought it here from a foreign country, kept it clean, and wrote his name on its shoulder sling. Where is this someone now? Was he killed? Or did he run away leaving his rifle behind?
This is the slope where Bulli fell. I remember the song that he taught us in those distant days: "The world is so beautiful and so good ..." I shake off the memory. Over there is the Vickers that mowed him down with his people. The barrel is still pointing at the slope they stormed. The Egyptian was standing here and firing until the last, when they reached him and left him dead beside his weapon.
Behind the positions lies a row of the enemy dead, still unburied. The stink is awful. Still something draws me there. I want to look into their faces.
A broad-shouldered Arab with a pointed beard is lying on his back. The bullets hit him in the stomach and his trousers are stained with blood. His twisted face could almost be laughing. His eyes are wide open - the glassy eyes of a corpse.
For a moment I converse with him, this dead enemy. What brought him here? Military obedience? Idealism? Was he married? Perhaps he had children? The ways of Fate are curious. If our comrade had just held his weapon a few millimeters differently, this man might have now been sitting in a cafe in Majdal writing a letter to his wife, or dreaming about other women. Now he is lying here. His fingers are clutching at the ground, and it is hard to say whether what is lying here is a man or simply something in the form of a man.