When G-d Promised Us Pneumonia

I remember when we all jumped at once. Shy, red leaves glided in the wind like paper airplanes that never land. Smiles on the horizon of our eyes met faces we knew were out there but could not see.

It was summer. We were young, fruitful; an unlikely collection of flowers descending boldly upon a world which would have liked to believe we were mutants. We weren’t mutants.

The water was freezing. I was the first to dip my feet in because no one had summoned the proper courage to do so and because I knew the sun would break. So sitting on the dock, locking my knees with my hands, I met my fears at home and stretched out my legs to meet my reflection. It was numbing, liberating, tantalizing, except that Sarah conspired with Khalid to make my encounter with -15 degrees more intimate. They pushed me in, those weasels.

Days like those made me wonder what we're all really doing here. The four of us were never supposed to be. We were not allowed. We came from different sides of the same war zone—a bloodied, wretched place where children are dissuaded, disenfranchised, derelict. It dawned on me one night here that our very existence communicated a message that no tank or anti-tank ever could.

We were Muslim. Or maybe Jewish. No, seriously, what were we? Our elusive aura deluded even the most perceptive. We made no apologies. This frustrated the compartmentalizers, I'm sure. Not because they wanted our apologies, but because they didn't: they wanted to figure it out for themselves, but they couldn't. We were confusing. We were proud. We were just us, without conditions or preconditions: self-made heartbeats who thumped and longed for the impolite.

After my body recovered from the trauma, I shouted this to Sarah. I said, Hey, Sarah, what makes us beautiful? She held her head high, clearly still reeling from the success of her mischief, and, gazing outward in my general, ambiguous direction, yelled back: We don't apologize!

When the sun broke, I butterflied back to the base where the others were chatting. Opening my eyes after the last stroke I saw Khalid, Sarah and Amra lying on the plywood and staring at the caricatures of the sky. They were arguing with one another about the personification of the clouds. I spotted my moment. Yes, that's right, I attacked, splashing them with some of their own medicine in the form of ice on bear skin. Who ever said that revenge wasn't sweet?

Soon, we were freezing together—laughing, diving, spitting in the face of tanks and anti-tanks. The expanse of the lake was rejuvenating. We couldn't see its end but we imagined it. We embraced it, like a young love whose capacity it is to hurt us, but which we’d never fail going to bat for.

G-d promised us pneumonia, but we didn't always believe G-d, we only trusted Him.

And I remember. Purple flirted with orange above us when Khalid suggested it, that we'd all jump at once. He said it'd free us. That is, if you want to be freed. We scrambled back to the dock and readied the cameramen who weren't there to greet us, but who we hoped would take a photograph for the compartmentalizers to mull and choke over. We wanted this one imprinted in our minds. Like that time Amra crisscrossed a farm in India running from a cow she was charged to take care of but which refused to be milked. Like all those times when we'd choose dairy she'd suddenly complain that she's lactose intolerant, and how we'd always know that she's really just a coward. Coward, get it? Amra said we weren't funny.

We lined up symmetrically along the rugged floor of the last refuge point that still imprisoned us, and jumped.