Piekne, mlode twarze

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Beautiful, Young Faces

By

Naomi Ragen


The morning after two young boys out walking in the clean air of Judea,
were taken, their skulls smashed, their bright, young faces crushed with
stones so that even their mothers could not recognize them; the morning
after that happened, I took a bus to downtown Jerusalem.

I sat there. The voice of the radio blared. It was an Israeli newscaster
interviewing someone. I was in the back of the bus, and all I heard was
the word ?peace?. Again and again, questions began and ended. Peace,
peace, peace. While Yasir Arafat hadn?t condemned the boys? deaths, an
interviewer or interviewee pointed out, (a leftist Israeli politician? A
leftist reporter? Who can say? And, frankly, who cares?) one of his
deputies had.

Yes, I thought. A real humanist, to condemn that.

The bus was one of the older, smaller ones Egged has replaced recently and
so it was crowded. Many bearded men holding holy books. Many religious
women in their modest clothing reading Psalms. I watched them, the way
their lips moved over the words, silently, in that bus, as the reporter
talked and talked and talked of peace. Outside, a strange rain began to
fall. Rain in May, unheard of in Israel. It rolled down the face of the
glass in large, uneven drops. A bus pulled up beside us filled with
children on their way to school. From the blue, long-sleeved shirts I
could see they were from Beit Yaakov, a haredi girls seminary. And there
were boys too. Young boys in payot who pressed their faces against the
glass. They were so beautiful, those faces